In 2012, Obama said any use or movement of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a “red line” and draw a U.S. military response. A year later, when U.S. officials determined that chemical weapons were used to kill hundreds outside Damascus, Obama sought congressional approval for military action and then pursued a diplomatic solution with Russia.
Kerry noted the shift came after then-British Prime Minister David Cameron failed to get parliamentary approval to join in airstrikes and after many U.S. lawmakers voiced their reluctance to approve the use of American force. He said Obama ultimately opted for a better solution: a diplomatic deal that enabled Syria to give up its declared chemical weapon stockpiles.
“The bottom line is, folks, the president never retracted his intent to (use force), he just got rid of the need to do it by embracing a different approach that got all the weapons out,” Kerry told reporters at the State Department. He said the negotiated response was more effective than military action because there was no guarantee airstrikes could have accomplished the same thing.
Kerry acknowledged that people far and wide saw the sequence of events as Obama backing down. And he said that view damaged America’s effectiveness.
“I will acknowledge to you absolutely, I heard it all over the place,” he said. “The perception hurt, yes. The perception hurt.”
Kerry said, “I don’t think it’s fair because I don’t think it actually reflected the decisions that he made and it doesn’t reflect the reality of what we were able to achieve.”
democrat stooge bought into it:
And wasn’t alone
Kerry is the same idiot who said Air Conditioners were a bigger threat then the terrorists what a stupid blabbering liberal demacratic pinhead
It makes little to no sense, Assad had won, why he would do this, where are all Gaddafis chemical weapons where did they go? So we dont walk blindly into WW3, I would like this investigated, was it a stockpile on the ground smuggled in by terrorists(freedom fighters)or dropped from airplanes because the inspectors missed a stash? Who profits with an Assad loss, OPEC.
This is the same scenerio they used aginst Gaddafi, yes a dictator, blood on his hands but no threat to the USA.
Should we continue Obamas policy of destabilization of the ME? We can then begin on Northern Africa EU just cant get enough refugees flooding in.
Actually, no one ever said that all of Syria’s chemical weapons were gone. The agreement with Assad, which averted threatened U.S. airstrikes, likely removed something over 90 percent of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles from the equation. The agreement was successful to that degree, and taken credit for to that degree, but it didn’t get them all. Some supplies of nerve agents were always thought to remain, and chlorine gas—an agent with industrial applications that was used in several documented attacks—was never part of the agreement to begin with.
From How Is Syria Still Using Chemical Weapons?:
The Obama administration’s chemical weapons agreement—which the Assad regime accepted under threat of U.S. airstrikes—reduced known Syrian stockpiles of chemical weapons by over 90 percent. The Obama administration’s only remaining option to push the matter further would have involved military action against the Assad regime itself culminating in regime change—something that would have met with immediate republican resistance. There was also the “small” complicating factor of Russia’s direct military support for the Assad regime. Did anyone want a direct military confrontation with Russia?
Republicans haven’t even been willing to support Obama’s coalition efforts against ISIS in Syria. To republicans, it’s as if Operation Inherent Resolve, underway since October 2014, has never even existed, and has accomplished absolutely nothing. I’ve never even heard one of the sumbitches publicly say the name of the military operation, which has included, to date, over 11,000 U.S. airstrikes. Obama’s formal request for an authorization to use military force against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is probably still gathering dust in the same bottom desk drawer where John Boehner left it. Republicans have also pretended that document in question never existed.
@Greg: “We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out,” then-Secretary of State John Kerry said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in July 2014. Don’t you ever feel ignorant when you are always wrong?
No, I don’t, because I’m not always wrong. I am sometimes wrong.
Kerry didn’t lie in July 2014. Kerry was simply wrong. Subsequent events have demonstrated that to be the case.
I, too, sometimes say things that are wrong. Actually, no one ever said that all of Syria’s chemical weapons were gone would be such a statement. I should know enough by now not to emphasis a point by using words such as “never.”
The right, on the other hand, is generally totally full of shit, and generally incapable of acknowledging that they’ve ever been wrong about anything. They conveniently forget or modify their recollections of the past as needed.
Getting around 90 percent of the known stockpiles of chemical weapons out of Syria was a good thing to have done. Their potential use by the Assad regime has been substantially reduced to that degree, and the chances of chemical stockpiles falling into the hands of ISIS has been substantially reduced to that degree. It’s better that this happened than didn’t happen, and we have Obama to thank for the fact that it did.
Do you think Trump has some secret plan to eliminate them all? We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get us sucked into an interminable ground war in Syria as a means of diverting attention from the disaster his administration is rapidly becoming. The chemical attack provides him with an open invitation to do exactly that. He should recognize that this may have been done in a deliberate, calculated, purposeful fashion. The logic and motivation behind it wasn’t the logic of strictly military thinking. No specific military tactical advantage was gained, or could have been hoped for. There’s something else behind it, which would make a president like Obama very, very wary.
Trump? He may not know a trap when he sees one.
Let’s see. Obama lies, Rice lied, Clinton lied, Holder lied, . Was there anyone in the Obama administration who was not a liar?
Just a few minutes ago, we launched more than 50 cruise missiles against al-Shayrat, an Assad regime airbase near Homs. Keep your fingers crossed. We’ve just directly attacked Russia’s Syrian ally.
@Greg: Trump was damned if he did, damned if he didnt. Imagine Madcows rant if Trump had struck a deal with Putin to close the barn door after 1400 men women and children were gassed. I guess dropping just bombs is ok. The middle east will never see the glory of socialist democracy, only a despot is able to keep the factions in hand, keep them from murdering each other. So after Assad is ousted what despot can rebuild Syria back to the once modern cities that were destroyed? Remember the Grand Gaddafi must go plan, as successful as Sadam must die.I think they are/were all bastards, but millions had pathetic lives, families and homes could even attend the church/mosque of choice.