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The US is to supply direct military aid to the Syrian opposition for the first time, the White House has announced.
President Obama made the decision after his administration concluded Syrian forces under Bashar al-Assad were using chemical weapons, a spokesman said.
Ben Rhodes did not give details about the military aid other than to say it would be "different in scope and scale to what we have provided before"
If any issue has exposed the Obama administration's weakess on the world stage, it is the Syrian crisis. From the moment the first anti-government protestors took to the streets two years ago, President Barack Obama has appeared like a startled rabbit caught in the glare of a major international crisis.
Rather than seeing the explosion of political dissent in Syria as a golden opportunity to rid the world of a ruthless and brutal dictatorship that has been actively hostile to American interests in the region for more than four decades, Mr Obama was seized by a fit of inaction. According to his reasoning, supporting the rebels might draw the US into another costly war which would outweigh the benefit of removing the Assad gang.
We do [share the US judgment]. I discussed this with President Obama on my recent visit. Our intelligence agencies have been sharing information. We share their view that, as we put it, growing levels of information about chemical weapons used by the regime and no firm evidence that chemical weapons have been used by the opposition.
"I welcome this candid assessment by the Americans. I think it, rightly, puts back centre stage the question, the very difficult question to answer but nonetheless one we have got to address: what are we going to do about the fact that in our world today there is a dictatorial and brutal leader who is using chemical weapons under our noses against his own people."
Originally posted by sylent6
I'm so confused on what is he trying to accomplish here.
The man has really lost all clear signs of good judgment.
Originally posted by teachtaire
Is anyone concerned about what the Russians are saying about this? There's something about the dollar dropping by more than 50 cents compared to the kopec???? "Доллар упал на 54 копейки"edit on 14-6-2013 by teachtaire because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by sylent6
I'm so confused on what is he trying to accomplish here.
The man has really lost all clear signs of good judgment.