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White House: Kerry did not gaffe By REID J. EPSTEIN | 9/9/13 2:06 PM EDT White House press secretary Jay Carney said Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertion that U.S.-led airstrikes on Syria would be “unbelievably small” was only in context to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think that Secretary Kerry clearly was referring to that in the context of what the United States and the American people have experienced over the past 10, 12 years, which includes large scale, long-term … open-ended military engagement with boots on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Carney said during Monday’s...

Making the case for intervention in Syria to a war-weary American public, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the strike will be "unbelievably small" — a comment that has already earned him relentless mocking in its immediate aftermath. "We’re not going to war. We will not have people at risk in that way," Kerry said during a press conference in London with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, according to a transcript released by the State Department. "We will be able to hold Bashar Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of...

As President Barack Obama kicks off an all-out push for a strike on Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry came under fire on Monday for saying any attack would be “unbelievably small” and suggesting the Syrian ruler still had a week to give up his chemical weapons to avoid a U.S. assault - a remark Kerry’s spokeswoman later attempted to clarify. The off-key comments came in a joint press conference in London with Britain’s foreign secretary, where Kerry said the strike would be able to harm Assad without putting American troops on the ground and with a “very limited, very...