Obama defends response to Syria

President Barack Obama forcefully defended his response to Syria's civil war, denying that his administration had been "bystanders" while President Bashar al-Assad massacres his people and warning that the United States cannot "rush to judgment" regarding the apparent use of chemical weapons against forces seeking the strongman's ouster.

"We don?t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them, we don?t have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened" Obama told reporters during a hastily announced question-and-answer session in the White House briefing room. "I?ve got to make sure I?ve got the facts."

"If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence? confirming the U.S. intelligence community's preliminary finding that Assad likely used the deadly nerve agent sarin, then America may find it hard to rally support from the international community and even some partners in the region who support Assad's ouster. So "it?s important for us to do this in a prudent way," Obama said.

But the president repeated that the use of chemical weapons would be a game-changer "because what that portends is potentially even more devastating attacks on civilians, and it raises the strong possibility that those chemical weapons can fall into the wrong hands,."

"By game changer I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us," said Obama, who has sent aid to Syria's opposition and neighboring countries like Turkey and Jordan but thus far resisted calls to arm the rebels or attack Assad's forces directly.

Obama said there is "a spectrum of options" that are "on the shelf right now" but might be used because using chemical weapons would represent "an escalation, in our view, of the threat."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-hold-press-conference-10-15-m-125455500.html

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