Motley Moose – Archive

Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, held an on-the-record conference call yesterday and the White House posted a transcript.

This is what the Administration thinks it knows:

… Today, at the President’s direction, we have pulled together a revision of our intelligence community assessment that we have provided to Congress and we are now updating the public now.  I’ll just draw your attention to a few elements of that assessment in our response.

First of all, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.  Our intelligence community has high confidence given the multiple independent streams of information associated with their reporting.

The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date.  I would note that that casualty data is likely incomplete, but that is what we’ve reviewed through our investigation.

This is clearly a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria that now totals more than 90,000 deaths.  But as we’ve consistently said, the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses red lines that have existed in the international community for decades.

I’d also note that we believe that the Assad regime maintains control of chemical weapons within Syria, and we have not seen any reliable reporting or corroborated reporting indicating that the opposition has acquired or used chemical weapons. …

Here’s where the Administration is going:

… I’d also note that both the United States and the international community have other legal, financial, diplomatic and military responses available to us.  We’ve prepared for many contingencies within Syria.  We are going to make decisions about further action on our own timeline.  This is clearly a complex and evolving situation in Syria.  And we are going to make decisions that are consistent with our own national interests and that advance our objectives, which is achieving a negotiated political settlement that establishes an authority that can provide stability and administer state institutions in Syria, protecting the rights of all Syrians and securing unconventional and advanced conventional weapons within Syria while countering terrorist activities.

We’re also going to be consulting in the days ahead with both Congress and the international community.  We will be providing this assessment to Congress, and we will also be consulting with them about our assessments on chemical weapons and our policy response.

The President will also be consulting with his G8 partners in the United Kingdom beginning next week, and we’ll continue to have discussions both with friends and allies, including those who have joined us and the Friends of the Syrian People and at the United Nations where we are sharing this information. …

In response to questions at the end of his prepared remarks Rhodes responded:

So that is something — that is a decision that has been taken to increase both the type and scale of the support we’re providing, and it’s been taken in part because of our assessed use of chemical weapons.  Then there are other options that are noted at the end of the statement, and that’s a wide range of options available to us.  That could include potential military options.  That could include potential international action.  We’ll be consulting at the G8 and the United Nations about what might be necessary, even as we deal with the humanitarian situation in which the United States is providing $515 million in humanitarian assistance for the Syrian crisis and seeking to rally others to provide more as well.

So there’s a range of options available to us, but we’re going to do what we think is most important and effective to deal with the situation.  And we also are going to act very deliberately so that we’re making decisions based on the U.S. national interest as well as our assessment of what can make a difference on the ground in Syria.

We, for instance, have focused on different incidents that we associate with this assessment.  So, for instance, a March 19th attack of this year in which we assessed that sarin was used in the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal; an April 13th attack that was also in the Aleppo area in the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood; a May 14th attack, also this year, in the town of Qasr Abu Samra, which is north of Homs; a May 23rd attack in the eastern part of Damascus, in Adra.

So these are several of the incidents that are associated with our assessment.  And the point is we’ve been pulling this information together over a period of months, so it didn’t just come together in the last couple of days.  This has been something that we’ve been reviewing for weeks and are just now given a high degree of confidence in the assessment and a position to share with Congress and the public.  And it also will allow the President to consult with his G8 partners in the coming days.

So far a “No” on a no-fly zone:

On the second question, that is a separate question, and we have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone.  And we have a range of contingency plans that we’ve drawn up.

But to speak to this issue for a moment, we still believe that the best thing that we can do in terms of effecting the situation on the ground is strengthening the opposition; that a no-fly zone, while there is a contingency plan for many different things, would carry with it great and open-ended costs for the United States and the international community.  It’s far more complex to undertake the type of effort, for instance, in Syria than it was in Libya.

But furthermore, there’s not even a clear guarantee that it would dramatically improve the situation on the ground where you have regime forces and irregular regime-associated forces essentially comingled with opposition forces in a civilian population.  That is a very hard challenge to get at from the air.  That doesn’t mean that we’ve ruled anything out other than the provision of U.S. boots on the ground — which nobody has suggested — but it does mean that I think people need to understand that not only are there huge costs associated with the no-fly zone, not only would it be difficult to implement, but the notion that you can solve the very deeply rooted challenges on the ground in Syria from the air are not immediately apparent.

The whole, rather lengthy, transcript is worth a read.

I’m not sure how I feel about greater US involvement which can largely be attributed to my lack of detailed knowledge about all the internal and external issues surrounding the conflict.  While at its core the Syrian conflict is an internal struggle there are a number of outside players directly involved on both sides.  I hope someone with a better understanding of all of this will close some of the gaps in my knowledge.

What I do know is that I appreciate an Administration not running around making hasty statements and even hastier plans (see McCain, John).  I appreciate the Administration will be talking to the international community in coming days and weeks.

I hope in the long-run whatever decisions are made will end up being the correct ones.