President Barrack Obama said any action in Syrian will be a “limited, narrow act.”
Members of the local Syrian community chant after marching in protest against the United States' involvement in Syria, Friday, Aug. 30, 2013, in Allentown, Pa. President Barack Obama says he hasn't made a final decision about a military strike against Syria but is considering a limited and narrow action in response to a chemical weapons attack that he says Syria's government carried out last week. (AP)
The president made the comment after meeting with Eastern European leaders Friday.
"We're not considering any open-ended commitment,” the president said, according to a White House pool report. “We're not considering any boots on the ground approach."
The White House released a declassified intelligence assessment Friday that it believes proves that the Assad regime was behind the chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21 that killed 1,429 people in the country, 426 of whom were children.
Obama stressed, “I have not made any decisions."
"We have consulted with allies. We have consulted with Congress,” Obama said.
Obama met in the White House with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania, and President Andris Bērziņš of Latvia to the White House Friday.
Obama also said he understood the public's war weriness, but said chemical weapons are “a danger to our national security.”
"There is a certain weariness, given Afghanistan. There is a certain suspicion of any military action post-Iraq, and I very much appreciate that,” Obama said. “It’s important for us to recognize that when over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal.”
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