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Four battleships move within striking range of Syria as President Obama weighs military options after a reported 1,300 are killed in nerve gas attack on Damascus

By C. J. Refsland on August 24, 2013 • ( 0 )

In light of new reports that the Syrian government used nerve gas against it’s own citizens, killing at least 213 and as many as 1,300, President Obama is considering military options to respond to an action he previously warned the Assad government was crossing a ‘red line’.

U.S. naval forces are moving closer as the president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.

The White House said the president would meet Saturday with his national security team to consider possible next steps by the United States.

WARNING: Graphic content

Escalation: Angela Kane, the UN’s high representative for disarmament, arrives in Damascus, Syria today to press President Bashar Assad to let UN investigators look into a reported chemical attack in a suburb that reportedly killed as many as 1,300

At the ready: Four battleships have been moved to within striking range of Syria as President Obama weighs his options following a reported use of chemical weapons against citizens Wednesday

Officials say once the facts are clear, Obama will make a decision about how to proceed.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria.

U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.

U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military actions, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

‘The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options – whatever options the president might choose,’ Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.

Hagel said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine ‘what exactly did happen’ near Damascus earlier this week.

Deadly attack: Activists say that somewhere between 200 and 1,300 were killed in a chemical weapons attack Wednesday near Damascus. Syria has one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons of any country

A new low: If the reports are true, the chemical attack Wednesday will have been the largest chemical attack on citizens since Saddam Hussein’s gassing on ethnic Kurds in 1988

According to reports, a chemical attack in a suburb of the capital killed at least 100 people.

It would be the most heinous use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.

Hagel left little doubt that he thinks the attack in Syria involved chemical weapons, although he stressed there is not yet a final answer.

In discussing the matter, he said, ‘it appears to be what happened – use of chemical weapons.’

The United Nations disarmament chief, Angela Kane, arrived in Damascus on Saturday to press the Syrian government to allow U.N. experts to investigate the alleged chemical attacks.

Obama remained cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaida.

He made no mention of the ‘red line’ of chemical weapons use that he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and that U.S. intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.

‘If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it – do we have the coalition to make it work?’ Obama said Friday. ‘Those are considerations that we have to take into account.’

Obama conceded in an interview on CNN’s ‘New Day’ program that the episode is a ‘big event of grave concern’ that requires American attention.

American attention: President Obama appeared on CNN’s ‘New Day’ Friday to discuss the alleged attack, saying it was a ‘big event of grave concern’ that requires American attention

He said any large-scale chemical weapons usage would affect ‘core national interests’ of the United States and its allies. But nothing he said signaled a shift toward U.S. action.

U.S. defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss ship movements publicly.

But if the U.S. wants to send a message to Assad, the most likely military action would be a Tomahawk missile strike, launched from a ship in the Mediterranean.

For a year now, Obama has threatened to punish Assad’s regime if it resorted to its chemical weapons arsenal, among the world’s vastest, saying use or even deployment of such weapons of mass destruction constituted a ‘red line’ for him.

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