Less than a week ago President Obama was calling for a strike on Syria because they posed a “serious threat to our national security,” but last night he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Syria, “doesn’t have a credible means to threaten the United States.” I guess if you are ok with the Boston Marathon style of attacks, then they pose no real threat.
President Obama: You know, what I’m thinking about is right now, though, how do we make sure we can verify that we do not have chemical weapons that can be used not only inside of Syria, but could potentially drift outside of Syria.
Wolf Blitzer: He said in an interview with Charlie Rose, that if you, the U.S. attack, launch military strikes, he said he will respond — anything, he said expect anything, not only from him, but from his allies. That sounds like a threat to the United States.
President Obama: Yeah. Mr. Assad doesn’t have a lot of capability. He has capability relative to children, he has capability relative to a — an opposition that is still getting itself organized, and are not professionally trained fighters. He doesn’t have a credible means to threaten the United States. His allies, Iran and Hezbollah, could potentially engage in asymmetrical strikes against us, but frankly the kinds of threats they could pose against us are typical of the kinds of threats we are dealing with around the world which I have spoken of recently, which is embassies that are being threatened, U.S. personnel in the region. Those are threats that we deal with on an ongoing basis, they are always of concern. Obviously we saw the situation in Yemen just a few weeks ago, where we wanted to respond by getting some of our folks out of there, but the notion that Mr. Assad could significantly threaten the United States is just not the case.