US naval forces move toward Syria as Obama considers options.

[another_liberal]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Lasher (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Al Jazeera America

U.S. naval forces edged closer to Syria on Saturday as President Barack Obama weighed possible military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. Obama has previously emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war is problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike. Nonetheless, the president met with his national security team Saturday to consider possible next steps by the United States. It comes as the U.N.'s disarmament chief Angela Kane arrived in Damascus to further press the Assad regime into allowing weapons inspectors access to the purported site of a chemical assault earlier this week.

“The President has directed the intelligence community to gather facts and evidence so that we can determine what occurred in Syria,” a White House official told reporters . “We have a range of options available, and we are going to act very deliberately so that we're making decisions consistent with our national interest as well as our assessment of what can advance our objectives in Syria.”

Following the shift of U.S. naval forces toward Syria, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria without going into specifics. U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria. "The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options — whatever options the president might choose," Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.

(snip)

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top-ranking uniformed officer in the U.S. military, has twice urged caution on U.S. involvement in the conflict in two public letters within the last month. In a July letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee laying out U.S. military options, Dempsey warned of “unintended consequences” of direct U.S. action. “We could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control,” he said. While in an Aug. 19 letter to Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Ny, Dempsey said that U.S. involvement is not about “choosing between two sides” but choosing between multiple sides. He added that the Syrian opposition would not currently support American interests were they to displace the Assad government.

Read more: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/24/us-naval-fleet-positionstowardsyriaasobamaconsidersoptions.html

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"Unintended consequences" indeed! The Russian Federation, after all, does have a fleet based on the Syrian coast.

Despite intense rivalries, we have managed to avoid a war with Russia (or the Soviet Union) for nearly seventy years. Surely we are not going to let a civil war in Syria plunge us into one?

[Posteritatis]

1. The United States and Russia are not going to go to war. (nt)

[another_liberal]

2. Sorry . . .

I am not prepared to trust your all-knowing prescience on this one, Nostradamus.

[aristocles]

3. All part of "The Great Game" that has been going on for over 200 years.

Read "The Geographical Pivot of History", by Halford John Macinder.

We can get off this hamster wheel by becoming self sufficient in oil and pulling out of the Middle East.

[another_liberal]

4. Screw a bunch of oil!

Let's go Green instead, and get out of the Middle East most definitely.

[Pterodactyl]

5. Is this going to be Libyan War 2?

[another_liberal]

6. Not likely . . .

We are not going to be greeted as liberators by much of anyone in Syria, and it will not be a war which can be won totally from the air and without losses.

[Lasher]

7. Locking duplicate

Please continue discussion in this earlier thread.