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Analysis - No good military options for U.S. in Syria
Reuters ^ | 4-27-2013 | Phil Stewart and Peter Apps

Posted on 04/27/2013 6:20:01 PM PDT by haffast

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite President Barack Obama's pledge that Syria's use of chemical weapons is a "game changer" for the United States, he is unlikely to turn to military options quickly and would want allies joining him in any intervention.

Possible military choices range from limited one-off missile strikes from ships - one of the less complicated scenarios - to bolder operations like carving out no-fly safe zones.

One of the most politically unpalatable possibilities envisions sending tens of thousands of U.S. forces to help secure Syrian chemical weapons.

Obama has so far opposed limited steps, like arming anti-government rebels, but pressure to deepen U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war has grown since Thursday's White House announcement that President Bashar al-Assad likely used chemical weapons.

After fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon is wary of U.S. involvement in Syria. The president's top uniformed military adviser, General Martin Dempsey, said last month he could not see a U.S. military option with an "understandable outcome" there.

"There's a lot of analysis to be done before reaching any major decisions that would push U.S. policy more in the direction of military options," a senior U.S. official told Reuters.

That caution is understandable, given the experience of Iraq where the United States went to war based on bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. The Pentagon has made repeated warnings of the enormous risks and limitations of using American military might in Syria's civil war.

snip

(Excerpt) Read more at uk.news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: benghazi; gas; hagel; israel; obama; oil; peaceandsecurity; pipelines; waronterror
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To: jonrick46

Ran across this this morning, thought you’d be interested:

EXCLUSIVE! Benghazi GUN-RUNNING & The Russia, China, Iran, Syria PIPELINE
by Chip Jones on November 16, 2012
http://cleowaller.blogspot.com/2013/03/exclusive-benghazi-gun-running-russia.html


41 posted on 04/29/2013 7:00:02 AM PDT by haffast (Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. -Abe Lincoln)
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To: haffast

http://conservativereport.org/russian-pipeline-gun-running-benghazi/

42 posted on 04/29/2013 7:08:34 AM PDT by haffast (Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. -Abe Lincoln)
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To: haffast

I think we have homed into the story behind the story.

This is getting good.


43 posted on 04/29/2013 9:27:50 AM PDT by jonrick46 (The opium of Communists: other people's money.)
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