Micah Zenko makes the important and obvious objection to the “limited” attack on Syria that is being planned:

Subsequently, the United States will be correctly perceived by all sides as intervening on behalf of the armed opposition. From there, it is easy to conceive how the initial limited intervention for humanitarian purposes – like Libya in 2011 – turns into a joint campaign plan to assure that Assad is toppled.

Since almost everyone concedes that the planned strikes are virtually useless, it is hard to believe that the administration won’t feel compelled to launch additional attacks on the Syrian government when the first strikes fail to change regime behavior.

There will presumably be increasing domestic and international pressure for an escalation of U.S. involvement once the U.S. begins attacking Syria, and once Obama has agreed to take direct military action of one kind he will have greater difficulty resisting the pressure for even more.

There is also always a possibility that Assad and his patrons could retaliate against U.S. forces or clients, in which case the pressure to escalate U.S. involvement will become much harder to resist. The U.S. is rarely in the habit of bombing a foreign government without sooner or later being drawn deeper into a larger conflict with it. Watching Obama’s creeping interference in Syria’s civil war over the last year gives me no confidence that he would be able to resist demands for future escalation.

It goes without saying that any military strike on Syria at the present time won’t be legal. It will probably have consequences for other U.S. interests that aren’t being considered right now. Far from boosting U.S. credibility with Iran, this will almost certainly undermine negotiations and increase tensions with Tehran. If U.S.-Russian relations were deteriorating before now, they will get much worse once the U.S. starts attacking Syria, and that could affect cooperation on any number of other issues. Launching attacks on their client will be sure to intensify Iranian and Russian paranoia about U.S. motives, and that could easily have undesirable effects in the months and years to come.

More from The American Conservative:

Two Bad Reasons To Attack Syria

Obama And The Urge To Meddle In Foreign Conflicts

The Reckless 'Kill Assad' Option

SEE ALSO: Obama Orders Up Report To Justify Syria Strike

Join the conversation about this story »

With the U.S. darkening the doorway of direct military intervention in Syria, we thought it necessary to break down the weapon the U.S. will most likely employ in what is being described as an impending, but limited strike on Syrian military targets. 

With assets from the U.S. Navy's 5th and 6th fleets positioned off the coast of the Mediterranean, the U.S. will likely turn to a tested weapon that has been fired more than 2,000 times in combat over the last 30 years — the Tomahawk cruise missile. 

Tomahawks come in four varieties; the Block II TLAM-A, a nuclear version; Block III TLAM-C, a conventional version; the Block III TLAM-D, a cluster bomb version; and the newest Block IV TLAM-E, called the Tactical Tomahawk, it can hover over it's target for hours and change directions long after it's been fired. 

Used in virtually every conflict since the Gulf War, here's everything you need to know about the Tomahawk Cruise Missile:

First, the specs:

Contractor: Raytheon Missile Systems Company, Tucson, AZ
Unit Cost: Approximately $600,000 for older Tomahawks, $1.45 million for Tactical Tomahawks.
Length: 20.3 feet 
Diameter: 21 inches 
Wingspan: 8 feet 9 inches 
Weight: 3,330 pounds
Speed: Subsonic (meaning slower than the speed of sound.)
Range: Block II TLAM-A - 1350 nautical miles
Block III TLAM-C - 900 nautical miles
Block III TLAM-D - 700 nautical miles
Block IV TLAM-E - 900 nautical miles
Warhead: Block II TLAM-N - W80 nuclear warhead
Block III TLAM-C and Block IV TLAM-E - 1,000-pound warhead
Block III TLAM-D - conventional submunitions dispenser with combined effect bomblets.

But Tomahawk missiles have been around for decades.

The first precision guided Tomahawk cruise missiles were developed nearly 40 years ago, and have been an important part of military kinetic operations ever since.

They were originally produced by General Dynamics.

Modern Tomahawks are insanely accurate.

Modern Tomahawks are designed to be able to fly through an open window at a designated time. 

From weapons developer Raytheon: "Today’s Tomahawk Block IV can circle for hours, shift course instantly on command and beam a picture of its target to controllers halfway around the world."

Even before the 2004 debut of the Block IV, Tomahawk cruise missiles boasted an impressive 85% direct hit record since the first Gulf War.

They can be fired from underwater.

Tomahawks can be fired from submerged submarines, enabling militaries to seemingly produce a long-range precision-guided missile from absolutely nowhere. A 2003 upgrade gave U.S. cruise-missile-capable submarines the ability to carry as many as 154 Tomahawks at a time. 

Check out what it looks like when a cruise missile is fired from a submarine:

They played a huge role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Coalition forces fired more than 700 cruise missiles in the first year of the war. 

And in the 2011 U.S.-led intervention in Libya.

Operation Odyssey Dawn, the international effort to enforce U.S. Security Council Resolution 1973, involved firing 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles at roughly 20 Libyan radar and anti-aircraft sites

In that operation, the U.S. used a mixture of the old Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the tactical Tomahawks, which can hover over a target, according to a Pentagon press briefing. 

"They allow us to penetrate what we would call a medium to high threat without putting air crew at risk [and] create the conditions for manned aircraft," then Vice Adm. William Gortney, director of the Joint Staff, told press in 2011. 

SEE ALSO: REPORT: Obama Is Considering A Limited Two-Day Strike On Syrian Military Targets

Join the conversation about this story »

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the Pentagon has presented President Obama with "all options for all contingencies" in Syria. "He has seen them, we are prepared... We are ready to go," Hagel told the BBC on Tuesday.

But in Washington, there is fairly broad agreement on what option Obama should choose: a limited "surgical" strike.

While this would punish Bashar al Assad for using chemical weapons on civilians, some foreign policy analysts say that in the long run, it won't do much to stop his government's violence against civilians. Even so, a strike could come as early as Thursday. 

Obama hasn't made a final decision about military action in Syria, The New York Times' Michael R. Gordon and Mark Landler report, but administration officials say he's "likely to order a limited military operation — cruise missiles launched from American destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea at military targets in Syria, for example." He probably won't try to oust Assad or try to "fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict on the ground." In other words, Assad would be punished, but not removed, and the U.S. would not try to help the rebels win.

While there is some disagreement among lawmakers over whether Obama should consult Congress first before taking action, there is remarkably broad agreement about what Obama should do. The U.S. and allies must "take limited military actions," GOP Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a statement — "without boots on the ground," the U.S. can "significantly degrade Assad's air power and ballistic missile capabilities and help to establish and defend safe areas on the ground." Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, ranking member of the House foreign affairs committee,said on Sunday, "I certainly would do cruise missile strikes. I think you can do that without boots on the ground..." On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk called for the same thing: no "boots on the ground," but "a proportional response with cruise missiles would, I think, be a better way to go." So did GOP Rep. Peter King: "I would say cruise missiles. I would not put American troops on the ground." Republican Sen. Bob Corker said as much on Monday. That follows that he said on Fox News Sunday: "I think we will respond in a surgical way."

This is being presented as the sensible middle ground — more than doing nothing, less than risking the lives of American troops. And the term "surgical" makes one of the many not-good options in Syria sound less bad. But it would not actually be all that surgical. It would be very difficult to take out Syria's chemical weapons stockpile with military strikes, Time's Mark Thompson reports. A strike will have to take out the artillery and missile units that could launch chemical weapons instead. It would take about 75,000 troops to seize those weapons.

Further, Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon tells Politico's Jonathan Allen that to actually stop the civil war, the U.S. will have to do more than air strikes. It would probably need to send ground troops. "Limited military involvement isn’t going to produce an outcome," O'Hanlon says. And Zbigniew Brzezinski said, "Action, if it is to be taken, should be part of some broader strategy. Otherwise, it may be an appropriative, punitive response, but would it solve the problem?" Military action might be "morally justified" but "will have consequences that may not be all that desirable." At The New Yorker, George Packer literally has a debate with himself over whether sending a message to Assad is worth risking the much worse things that could happen next.

And the man who outlined the plan for cruise missile strikes in Syria is skeptical it will work. Foreign Policy's John Hudson reports:

"Tactical actions in the absence of strategic objectives is usually pointless and often counterproductive," Chris Harmer, a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said. "I never intended my analysis of a cruise missile strike option to be advocacy even though some people took it as that."

Click here to follow The Atlantic Wire.

More From The Atlantic Wire:

Why Isn't Revenge Porn Illegal Everywhere?

18% More Troops Committed Suicide Than Died In Combat Last Year

This Homeland Security Employee Is Preparing For A Coming Race War

SEE ALSO: The Long Political Tradition Of Chilling With People You Later Want To Attack

Join the conversation about this story »

Imagine trying desperately to catch your breath, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't manage it. While this is happening, you may experience spastic twitching, drooling, and your head is probably pounding unlike any other headache you've ever had, you're vomiting and maybe even defecating, and all of this is totally out of your control.

That's what nerve toxins like Sarin do.

Journalists at ABC talked to a doctor about the effects:

[Nerve toxins] break down an enzyme that allows nerves to talk to each other, so victims become over-stimulated. In addition to other symptoms, there's chest tightening, rapid breathing, vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, headache, changes in heart rate, loss of consciousness, convulsions and paralysis. Eventually, and depending on dose levels it could only be a matter of minutes, you do die of respiratory failure, Adalja said.

Though the victims look peaceful and generally intact in death, don't be deceived, the painful, terrifying symptoms from the exposure to chemical weapons set in almost instantly, often with deadly results.

Here's a more bookish definition from the Federation of American Scientists:

After exposure to small to moderate amounts of vapor, there are usually miosis and conjunctival injection, rhinorrhea, and pulmonary signs, although the latter may be absent even in the face of mild to moderate pulmonary complaints. In addition to these signs, an exposure to a high Ct may precipitate copious secretions from the nose and mouth, generalized muscular fasciculations, twitching or seizure activity, loss of consciousness, and apnea. Cyanosis, hypotension, and bradycardia may be present just before death. 

"Conjunctival injection" and "rhinorrhea" basically mean sudden onset of fluids running out of your mouth, nose and eyes. Pulmonary signs mean heart arrhythmia (lack of regular rhythm) and tightness in the chest.

Add that to "fasciculations, twitching, or seizure activity" and the victim's sheer terror must be at an all time high.

Cyanosis is like when someone's lips turn blue, except in this case it happens around all the mucous membranes because of a lack of oxygen. That's right, your cardio pulmonary system starts to malfunction, eventually leaving victims unable to breath and/or pump blood.

Bradycardia basically means an incredibly slow heart rate, which goes against what would normally be associated with high amounts of stress and fear — of course because it's chemically induced.

Victims usually expire as a result of the heart stopping.

Death can occur in as quickly as a few minutes, but victims can linger for upward of 30 minutes to 18 hours.

Join the conversation about this story »

All signs coming out of the White House indicate that America will strike Syria in the coming days.

And according to one eminent geopolitical expert, the choice is largely unavoidable at this point.

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, told Business Insider that the U.S. "has to respond given international norms against the use of chemical weapons" because the "costs of not responding at this point are too high."

Those costs include letting down key allies, losing credibility on a key human rights issue, and condoning the tactical use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or other rulers.

Bremmer, who thinks that cruise missile strikes with the potential of allied air strikes is the most likely action, said that now it's a matter of choosing targets that would deter Assad from using chemical weapons in the future.

"The U.S. is determining the minimum threshold of force for enforcing the 'red line' — and they'll surely make explicit the consequences of further chemical strikes, etc. — without full intervention in the war," Bremmer told BI.

The U.S. has decided that it does not need United Nations or NATO approval for a strike, Kevin Baron of Defense One reports. Instead, it will rely on backing from a "coalition of the willing" that includes the Arab League and Turkey as well as France, the UK, and Germany.

“In certain circumstances we can bypass it, but international law does exist," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Europe 1 radio on Monday. "The only one that is not on the table is to not do anything.”

Bremmer echoed Fabius' point that the most recent chemical attack — which killed hundreds and caused"neurotoxic symptoms" in thousands — cannot be ignored.

"When Germany says something has to be done, something has to be done," Bremmer said.

There are notable detractors, including Christopher Harmer of The Institute for the Study of War.

Harmer, a former U.S. Navy planner who creates highly-detailed proposals for surgical strikes, argues that the reported strike plan "will be ineffective unless it is part of a coherent, properly resourced effort towards achieving clearly articulated U.S. strategic aims in Syria."

America has not explained its strategic objectives in its recent statements to the press.

This may be because, as Bremmer told BI, that "it is not necessarily in U.S. or Israeli interest for the action to lead to the toppling of Assad ... but that's not the case of many countries (e.g. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) that are aligned with the US in taking military action."

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean the U.S. doesn't have strategic objectives. Harmer explains them as "helping the moderate and more secular elements of the opposition defeat both the Iranian-backed Assad regime and the al Qaeda-affiliated extremists who threaten to hijack the rebellion."

Interpreter Magazine Editor-in-Chief Michael D. Weiss, who coversSyriaextensively, explained what to expect (if anything) on the strategic front.

What to watch for: Not surgical strikes on delivery systems but buildup in Turkey/Jordan for weapons-running/FSA training.

— michaeldweiss (@michaeldweiss) August 26, 2013

The first without the second is merely symbolic. The second in conjunction with the first means US getting serious.

— michaeldweiss (@michaeldweiss) August 26, 2013

The U.S. has been training and sharing intel with moderate rebels in Jordan and Turkey for months, and America could bolster those efforts without delving too deeply in the 29-month civil war.

"It is extremely hard to keep intervention limited — that's why the Obama administration has been so unwilling to engage over the past two year," Bremmer told BI. "That reality hasn't suddenly changed with the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government."

SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About The Missile The US Will Likely Use To Attack Syria

Join the conversation about this story »

Buried inside a Telegraph post about secret Russian and Saudi talks was a strange passive-aggressive alleged quote from the Saudi head of intelligence about terrorist attacks at the Sochi Olympics in 2014.

The talks — divulged in leaked documents— were allegedly about an oil deal that would stabilize Russia's markets, if Saudi Arabia curtailed the amount of oil it put on the global market. In exchange for their global price fixing — the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes that Russia "relies on an oil price near $100 to fund the budget"— Russia would back off its support for Assad.

But there was a threat allegedly hidden in there right along with the fruit.

From The Telegraph [emphasis theirs]:

[Soudi intel chief] Prince Bandar [bin Sultan] pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord. “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” he allegedly said.

Along with Saudi officials, the US allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise. Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves the guy.

From WSJ:

They [Saudi officials] believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn't: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout.

Saudi Arabia's distaste for Syria and Iran is as epic as it is old, so its geopolitical alignments with the U.S. comes as no big surprise. The Saudis and Qataris have been running guns in line with American interests in the Arab uprisings for quite some time now.

On the flip side, Russia's (alleged) reaction is quite disconcerting, if you're in the anti-Assad camp.

Russia — notoriously rife with corruption and fat cat oligarchs— would rather keep supporting Assad than allegedly fix global oil prices or make lucrative weapons deals (another Saudi initiative).

That, folks, is simply astounding.

Join the conversation about this story »

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a Pro-Assad regime hacker group, claims it gained control over a handful of web domains of major media sites including Twitter, The New York Times, and Huffington Post U.K.

The group said in a tweet that it took over the Twitter.com domain. The SEA said it was able to change some of the basic information in Twitter's domain registry, such as the admin name and the email address for contacts, at DomainTools.com, here. However, it looks like that information has been switched back to normal.

A Twitter spokesperson directed Business Insider to the company's status page, which states that the site's domain records were modified.

Twitter says the attack affected the service it uses to host images on its site and some of those images were briefly affected. Twitter hasn't expanded on the cause of the attack, but says no user information was compromised.

The New York Times website was taken down today too. The newspaper said the site went down after an attack on the company’s domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. Employees were told to stop sending sensitive emails during the attack, The Times' Christine Haughney wrote.

Marc Frons, chief information officer for The New York Times, issued a statement this afternoon warning employees that the external attack was by “the Syrian Electronic Army or someone trying very hard to be them.” 

The Times has a temporary home set up and are continuing to publish as they work through the outage at news.nytco.com.

The Huffington Post website appears to be working.

The SEA claims to be loyal to Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, in his ongoing civil war with loosely organized, moderate rebel groups and Al Qaeda-affiliated militants. The SEA has previously attacked the BBC, National Public Radio, Human Rights Watch, The Onion, and the Financial Times.

Here's the tweet from the SEA saying it has taken over Twitter:

Here's another tweet from the SEA claiming it took over The New York Times and The Huffington Post domains:

Some people said they saw the following image when they tried to load the New York Times website today:

The twitter account of Huffington Post Tech took the opportunity to mock the SEA's efforts of hacking their website:

Do we need to wear pants? We're confused. RT @Official_SEA16: @Twitter, are you ready? #SEApic.twitter.com/8DxYrxcf1B

— HuffPost Tech (@HuffPostTech) August 27, 2013

Join the conversation about this story »

The U.S. is on the brink of a military strike against Syria, with much of the push for intervention coming from video evidence of an alleged chemical attack on Aug. 21.

The attack injured roughly 3,600 and killed hundreds, producing horrifying images of dead and injured— many of them children.

Those were just a small portion of many terrible and violent videos to come from the two-year-old conflict.

Fortunately, another video has come from the war-torn country: a father being reunited with the son he thought was lost. According to the video's description, it was filmed on Aug. 25 in Zamalka.

Max Fisher at The Washington Post found the video which was posted Monday by Syrian activists. You don't need to speak Arabic to understand the raw emotion and amazing moment when a father once again holds his son.

Fisher writes:

The man who first appears when the video opens isn’t the father – he’s someone else, perhaps another relative. It’s not until a minute in that the boy’s father appears, his face twisted in joy, running out of the house to see his son.

Watch the video:

Join the conversation about this story »

Oil has been rising lately, as the prospects for some kind of strike in Syria seem like almost a sure thing.

But why does Syria really matter to oil?

Michael Wittner at SocGen has produced a special 3-page note for clients on the matter of what a strike would mean for the oil market.

He notes that Syria itself is not a real player in the oil market, so that's not the issue.

The concern is "spillover." And he's got his eye on Iraq, where violence is getting worse, and where the fighting in Syria has a parallel.

Wittner writes:

Our big worry is Iraq. The Sunni vs. Shiite conflict in Syria has a direct parallel in Iraq, and the violence in Iraq has reached levels not seen since 2008. For oil, the northern pipeline carrying Kirkuk grade to Ceyhan, Turkey in the Med has been repeatedly attacked for the last 2-3 months, reducing exports from 350 kb/d to under 200 kb/d (on average). Our concern is that the oil-directed attacks move south and potentially disrupt the 2 Mb/d of Basrah grade exported through the Basrah port complex on the Persian Gulf. There are signs that the non-oil violence (bombings, etc) may be moving south, and oil-directed attacks may follow. Iran, who is Syria’s only state ally in the region (Hezbollah and Russia are Syria’s other allies), may choose to stir up such attacks, in order to hurt the economies of the Western countries by causing an oil price spike.

Base case scenario: $125 for Brent We believe that in the coming days, Brent could gain another $5-10, surging to $120-$125, either in anticipation of the attack or in reaction to the headlines that an attack had started. In our base case, we assume an attack begins in the next week. If it takes longer, and there are no signals that an attack is imminent, the oil price uplift from the entire Syrian situation will start to fade. Our base case scenario does not include any actual supply disruptions resulting from the US-led attack on Syria.

Upside scenario: $150 for Brent If the regional spill over results in a significant supply disruption in Iraq or elsewhere (from 0.5 – 2.0 Mb/d), Brent could spike briefly to $150.

Oil is up again this morning, although modestly.

Join the conversation about this story »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most Americans want no part of a U.S. military intervention in Syria, but there is a growing sense in Washington that President Barack Obama would face more political risks from a weak response to Syria's use of chemical weapons than from an attack on Bashar al-Assad's government.

As Obama's administration builds a case for a likely military action in Syria, several analysts said such a move probably would not have lingering negative consequences for the president at home - as long as the intervention was short-lived.

By declaring last year that Assad would cross a "red line" that could trigger a U.S. response if he used chemical weapons, Obama ensured that foreign foes and allies - as well as his Republican political rivals - would view any failure to respond as a sign of presidential weakness.

"Obama has to consider the implications for other policy areas if he fails to act," said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was a domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. "Doing nothing - that is what would be devastating."

After the chemical attack near Damascus last week that killed hundreds of Syrian adults and children and injured many more, Obama "doesn't have that luxury," of inaction, he said.

Obama, who has long been wary of any involvement in Syria's civil war, and U.S. allies appeared on Tuesday to be carefully laying the groundwork for a coordinated military response.

POLLS SHOW SINKING SUPPORT FOR INTERVENTION

Polls show large majorities of Americans, weary of more than a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, strongly oppose a U.S. military mission in Syria. A Reuters-Ipsos poll last week found about 60 percent of Americans are against U.S. intervention in Syria, while just 9 percent support it.

More Americans favor intervention if Syria has used chemical weapons, but even that support has dipped as the situation in Syria has deteriorated, according to the poll.

However, U.S. military action typically sparks a surge of at least short-term support for their president's actions, as Americans rally around the troops.

"My prediction would be that public opinion would swing very quickly to support the military action in Syria," said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark. "The danger for Obama is if it becomes more prolonged."

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have been sending mixed signals on Syria, arguably giving Obama more room to maneuver.

Republicans, led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, have criticized Obama for moving too slowly and called fora strong military intervention.

McCain suggested on Tuesday that a brief attack by cruise missiles, aimed more at sending a message to Assad than altering the course of Syria's civil war, could make the situation worse by allowing an emboldened Assad to claim that he had withstood an assault by the Americans.

Meanwhile, some liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans - including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a potential 2016 presidential candidate - have opposed any U.S. intervention.

NO 'LASTING' POLITICAL IMPACT

Obama faces the decision on Syria just as Congress prepares to return to Washington next week to renew a lingering budget fight over government spending and the federal debt limit.

Some Republicans are threatening another government shutdown if Democrats don't agree to deeper spending cuts, or to delay funding for the president's healthcare overhaul.

The intense focus in Congress on domestic policy issues means the impact of any short-term military action inSyria could be limited.

"It's one of those things that, however tragic, won't have any lasting political impact one way or the other," Republican strategist Rich Galen said of a short-term U.S. intervention in Syria.

"We are locked in a cycle of domestic turmoil, and politically that will overwhelm everything else."

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Lindsey and Peter Henderson; desking by Christopher Wilson)

Join the conversation about this story »

The world is watching Syria closely as tensions rise in the wake of what appeared to be chemical weapons attacks.

Meanwhile in Europe, Germany is in campaign mode with parliamentary elections coming in September.

Everyone expects Chancellor Angela Merkel to see a big victory.

Morgan Stanley's Hans Redeker argues that the conflict in Syria, the parliamentary elections in Germany, and the direction of the euro are all connected.

And all of it should have implications in the financial markets.

Here's Redeker in his FX Morning note:

Syria and the German election. The escalation of the Syrian conflict comes at an unwelcome time for Chancellor Merkel, so far running a successful election campaign. German public opinion is against any German involvement in the conflict. In 2002, it was Chancellor Schroeder’s anti-Iraq war rhetoric winning him the election. International military conflicts at election times tend to support Germany’s political left, thus reducing Merkel’s chances of continuing the CDU/FDP coalition with the current margin. Should Merkel fail to secure a majority with her current junior coalition partner, the FDP, then we believe that EUR will develop a temporary rally. Hence, an escalation of the Syrian conflict has the potential to lift EUR.

The German elections will be held on September 22.

SEE ALSO: 15 Charts That Should Terrify Saudi Arabia

Join the conversation about this story »

Unnamed officals from U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies reportedly claim that intercepted communications involving top Syrian officials prove that the Syrian government was responsible.

Noah Shachtman of Foreign Policy reports that U.S. intelligence services overheard an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanging "panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people" and caused"neurotoxic symptoms" in thousands.

On Saturday the German magazine Focus, citing a former Mossad officer, reported that Israel's electronic intelligence Unit 8200 intercepted the communication of the Syrian army during the attack.

"The analysis has clearly shown that the bombardment with poison gas missiles was made by Syrian government forces," according to the officer.

Shachtman also reports that it was unclear who ordered the attack, citing a U.S. intelligence official who wondered if there was a "sort of general blessing to use these things" or if each attack requires specific orders from the top.

"We don't know exactly why it happened," the official told FP. "We just know it was pretty fucking stupid."

Other reported evidence

Arab diplomats told The Wall Street Journal that Israeli spy services provided the CIA with "intelligence from inside an elite special Syrian unit that oversees Mr. Assad's chemical weapons" indicating that certain types of chemical weapons were moved near the Eastern Ghouta region of the capital in advance of the attack. The U.S. spy agency reportedly verified the intel.

U.S. officials told WSJ that Mr. Obama's aides reviewed satellite images that officials said showed how continued shelling by the Syrian army — which was launching "Operation City Shield" against rebel positions in the area — destroyed evidence of chemical-weapon use.

Syrian weapons expert and blogger Eliot Higgins has done extensive analysis on intact rocket shells found at the site of the apparent attack and noted that "a high explosive warhead ... would serious damage the rocket on impact."

FP's intelligence source and his colleagues reportedly came to the conclusion that the weapon was filled with nerve agent as opposed to a conventional explosive.

"Why is there so much rocket left? There shouldn't be so much rocket left," the intelligence official told FP.

Higgins concluded that the evidence seems to "strongly indicate the munition was fired from the north, where 6-8km away you'll find a number of military installations, connected by a 2km road to the 155th Brigade missile base."

The decision to strike

Taken together, the information convinced the administration that Assad's forces had used chemical weapons against its own people. France, the UK, and Germany as well as Turkey back U.S. military action.

Last week a Reuters poll found that about 60% of Americans are against any type of U.S. intervention in Syria, while just 9% support it.

The White House reportedly plans to announce at least some of its evidence before taking any military action.

David Kirkpatrick and Mark Landler of The New York Times report The Arab League said that "responsibility falls on the Syrian regime" but did not support retaliatory military action by the U.S.

The New York Times notes that "Egypt, still the most populous Arab state with the largest Arab military, disagreed" with Saudi Arabia over explicitly condemning Mr. Assad for launching the attack. (Such a condemnation would help the West justify military action.)

Nevertheless, Obama administration officials told The Times that they were satisfied with the Arab League statement.

Cruise missiles 

Any attack would likely be limited, reportedly involving a barrage of sea-launched cruise missiles from four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean and lasting no more than two days.

On Tuesday The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reported that the "the initial target lists included fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria’s Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed."

On Tuesday State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the goal of the operation would “not about regime change.”

UN approval

On Wednesday UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said it seemed that "some kind of substance" had been used near Damascus on August 21, but emphasized that any U.S. military action would need to be approved by the United Nations Security Council.

The UK has drafted a resolution to be put forward to the United Nations Security Council, which includes two countries — China and Russia (which has backed Assad from the beginning) — that have blocked any previous actions against Assad.

On Tuesday Kevin Baron of Defense One reported that the U.S. has decided that it does not need UN or NATO approval for a strike. 

SEE ALSO: IAN BREMMER: The US Has To Attack Syria

Join the conversation about this story »

BEIJING (Reuters) - The worsening Syria conflict has exposed an uncomfortable truth behind China's cherished policy of non-interference: Beijing cannot do much to influence events even if it wanted to.

With weak and untested military forces unable to project power in the Middle East, China can only play a low-key role in a region that is crucial for its energy security.

As the United States and its allies gear up for a probable military strike on Syria, raising fears of a regional conflagration, China remains firmly on the sidelines, despite it having much more at stake than some other big powers.

The Middle East is China's largest source of crude oil. Without it, the world's second-largest economy would shudder to a halt. In the first seven months of this year, China imported about 83 million metric tons (91.49 million tons) of crude from the region, half its total, with top suppliers including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

China has few economic interests in Syria itself but believes it has a strategic and diplomatic imperative to ensure Middle East stability and to protect a vital energy source.

Retired Major General Luo Yuan, one of China's most outspoken military figures, told the official People's Daily last year that with so much oil at stake "we cannot think that the issues of Syria and Iran have nothing to do with us".

China insists it is neither backing nor protecting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying it only vetoed U.N. resolutions it thought would worsen the crisis. Beijing has also hosted both government and opposition officials in an attempt to find a political solution, albeit with few results.

Even if the government were to go against its principle of not interfering in the affairs of other countries, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is still far from capable of all but the most token presence in lands far from home.

"In terms of the PLA becoming actively involved, doing things the United States and its allies plan to do in the next few days, it does not at the moment have the wherewithal to do that," said Ross Babbage, a military analyst in Canberra and a former senior Australian defense official.

China's military, despite making rapid progress in stealth fighter technology and launching its first aircraft carrier, is largely untested. It last fought a war in 1979, against Vietnam, which did not go well for the ill-prepared Chinese.

Chinese ships have participated in anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia, but when it came to evacuating its citizens from Libya in 2011 during fighting there, China was forced to rely mainly on chartering ferries.

The PLA is for now focused on operations in the Pacific, Babbage said.

"But to conduct the sort of operations we're talking about here, into the Mediterranean, they're really not geared for that. Could they do it in 10 years time? Absolutely, if they chose to do it."

President Xi Jinping said last month that becoming a maritime power was an important task for China as "the oceans and seas have an increasingly important strategic status".

NOT YET A SUPERPOWER

Publicly, China has shown few signs of wanting to get more deeply involved in the Middle East, whether militarily or diplomatically, a region it has little experience in, unlike the United States, Russia, Britain or France, the other veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council.

China has gone through the motions of sending envoys to Syria, and hosting government and opposition officials in Beijing, though some of its diplomatic efforts have come across as insensitive in the Arab world and have provoked a backlash.

Early last year, demonstrators hurled rocks, eggs and tomatoes at the Chinese embassy in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution backing an Arab plan urging Assad to give up power.

China does not think responsibility for security there lies in China's hands as it has no way to effectively get involved, said Yin Gang, an expert on China's Middle East policies at government think-tank the China Academy of Social Sciences.

"If there is stability that's good for China, and if there is chaos that is bad for China. But China does not have the ability to maintain stability there," Yin said.

"It's impossible, totally impossible. China has no way of using military forces to protect its interests in the Middle East. The best way to protect its interests would be to diversify its oil imports, get more from Russia, from other parts of the world."

For China, the Middle East is also a mysterious region about which the Chinese know little, said Xu Guangyu, a retired major general and now senior adviser to the government-run China Arms Control and Disarmament Association.

"China has no way of knowing what's really going on in these countries," said Xu, who agreed that China's armed forces were simply not up to the task of a Middle Eastern adventure.

"We need to adopt a neutral position," he said.

Still, there has been discussion on the fringes, on websites frequented by hawkish military types, of whether the time is right to re-focus its military for more of a aggressive role in the Middle East.

China effectively relies on a strong U.S. military presence in the region to guarantee stability and the smooth flow of oil, especially through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened in the past to close in the event of war.

That could increasingly grate on the Chinese and prompt a strategic re-think, said a diplomatic source who is familiar with China's Middle East policy.

"At some point China is going to say: why should the United States be protecting our oil?"

(Additional reporting by David Lague in HONG KONG; Editing by Robert Birsel and Mark Bendeich)

Join the conversation about this story »

On Tuesday, a 2007 quote from then-Sen. Joe Biden popped up again. 

"I want to make clear and submit to the United States Senate pointing out the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran," Biden said on the campaign trail, in response to a hypothetical question about what he would do if then-President George W. Bush ordered a strike on Iran.

"And I want to make it clear, I want it on the record, and I want to make it clear, if he does, as chairman of the foreign relations committee and former chair of the judiciary committee, I will move to impeach him."

That quote, along with other past positions from President Barack Obama on the subject of war and Congressional authorization, have come under renewed scrutiny as the U.S. prepares to wage an offensive in Syria — which, now, is only a matter of time away. Obama shows no signs of waiting for Congressional authorization and is instead preparing to unilaterally authorize strikes, despite the lack of an immediate threat to the U.S. — though the White House argues it does meet that test.

On Tuesday, the White House and Biden were sounding the drums for war. Speaking at the American Legion National convention in Houston, Texas, Biden said there was "no doubt" the Assad regime had been responsible for a recent chemical-weapons attack that killed hundreds of people. He vowed that Assad would be "held responsible."

Flash back to the same 2007 presidential campaign, however, and Obama himself also outlined, specifically, presidents could authorize attacks without Congressional approval.

He was asked this possibility by the Boston Globe about Iran. Here's the relevant portion of his answer (emphasis added):

Q: In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites -- a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?)

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.

Obama already has established a precedent in his presidency for disregarding that pretty firm statement. In 2011, Obama authorized the U.S. to become part of an international coalition that established a no-fly zone in what was then an escalating conflict in Libya to prevent attacks against civilians.

In a 32-page report to Congress, the Obama administration attempted to outline why it had not gone beyond its Constitutional authority, saying it was "consistent" with the War Powers Resolution of 1973:

As the President explained, much was at stake when Qadhafi began attacking his people and threatened to show "no mercy" to the city of Benghazi and its population of 700,000: "In this particular country - Libya - at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi's forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground." The United States and its international partners acted decisively and with unprecedented speed to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a nofly zone.

It's important to note that in today's situation in Syria, most Congressional leaders aren't seeking to authorize the actions. Though some from both the left and the libertarian right are needling Obama to wait until Congress can vote, both House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi released statements saying Obama should closely consult with Congress on the mission's actions and objectives.

The use of a variation of "consult" is important — it suggests that they are not seeking a vote, and may not even want one.

By Wednesday morning, however, at least 37 members of Congress had signed onto a letter spearheaded by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) that urged him to call Congress back before making any decision.

"Congress is not a potted plant in this process, and President Obama should call us back into emergency session before authorizing the use of any military force," Rigell said in a statement. "We stand ready to share the burden of decisions made regarding U.S. involvement.” 

Join the conversation about this story »

The U.S. will probably send several Tomahawk missiles at Syria sometime this week, defense analysts tell Bloomberg.

The choice of the 30 year-old Tomahawk when the U.S. could deploy newer, equally effective weapons — drones, cyber attacks, special operators that make ninjas look amateur, etc. — is likely one of messaging. 

Stephanie Gaskell of Defense One talked to a few experts about the choice:

“Using newer technology in this situation leaves opportunity for misinterpretation. If we executed a cyber-strike would the Syrians and the international community understand what we meant?” Ben FitzGerald, an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security and expert on the impact of technology on conflict, told Defense One. “The messaging associated with more traditional weapons, like Tomahawks, is less ambiguous,” he said. “They’ve been used before and precedents have been set. Clarity and certainty is more important than sophistication.”

The Tomahawk missile packs a 1,000-lb warhead, smart guidance systems that have an 85% percent hit rate on targets the size of a common window, and can circle their targets for hours before making a final approach.

The fallout of launching at Syrian targets will of course result in Syrian casualties, possibly even the deaths of Russian advisers, but they allow the U.S. to send a clear, kinetic message and obliterate physical objectives, all without putting American lives at risk.

"They allow us to penetrate what we would call a medium to high threat without putting air crew at risk [and] create the conditions for manned aircraft," then Vice Adm. William Gortney, director of the Joint Staff, told press in 2011. 

It's not as if the U.S. (and Israel for that matter) are without other, just as effective, options.

"The United States' ability to employ offensive cyber effects is unmatched. As far as defensive, all signs point to USCYBERCOM and other national-level elements having moved aggressively to make a lot of progress in that arena," Robert Caruso, a former assistant command security manager in the Navy and consultant, told Business Insider.

The purpose is obviously to send a message as much as it is to destroy targets, since the stated aim of the administration is not to remove Assad, but rather, to "provide a response."

From The Hill:

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday said that there was “no military solution to the conflict in Syria,” suggesting a U.S. strike would be limited. But he added that “there must be a response” to the latest attack.

The response from Syria, on the other hand, has taken on all the characteristics of panic. They've not only threatened to bomb Israel for America's actions (an idea they didn't even float when Israel itself launched attacks against Syrian targets), they've also blamed American agents for perpetrating the chemical attacks as a part of a false flag.

Certainly the desperation is thick, and despite Washington voicing clear intent not to remove Assad, desperation may lead to desperate measures.

"There is a legitimate concern Iran will counter any attempt to unseat Assad with cyber effects and attacks of an asymmetric nature, against the US and her allies," one official with the U.S. Navy told Business Insider. "I am most concerned with their electronic warfare capabilities, which we don't have as much visibility on as I'd like."

Iran has already proven itself capable of hacking attacks, and so has Syria— so it could just be that the two embattled countries have a message of their own to return.

Join the conversation about this story »

The reported chemical weapons attack in Syria last week that killed more than 1,000 people and sent the Western world baring down on the conflict may have been ordered by the little brother to Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, according to a new report from Bloomberg.  

Bloomberg cites an unnamed UN official who monitors armed conflicts in the region. The official said that the attack appears to have been a brash act by Maher rather than a strategic decision by the Bashar.

From Bloomberg:

The use of chemical weapons may have been a brash action by Maher al-Assad rather than a strategic decision by the president, according to the UN official, who asked not to be named.

Israeli television has also reported that Maher ordered the attack. 

The timing of last week's chemical weapons attack was widely seen as odd, given the presence of UN officials investigating previous claims of chemical weapons attacks. 

Bashar al Assad, in an interview with a Russian newspaper over the weekend, denied the claims and called them an "insult to common sense."

If Maher were at the helm of the attack, it would explain its brashness and why those in the presidential palace did not seem to know beforehand.

Many were surprised when Hafez al Assad chose the quieter Bashar, an ophthalmologist, over the more military minded Maher. And when Bashar assumed power in 2000, he immediately installed Maher as chief of security. He is widely believed to wield a tremendous amount of autonomy over military affairs.

The 45 year old commands the Syrian Republican Guard and the Army's Fourth Armored Division.

SEE ALSO: IAN BREMMER: The US Has To Attack Syria

Join the conversation about this story »

On Tuesday, The New York Times, Twitter, and the Huffington Post U.K. suffered website difficulties after apparently coming under attack from the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).

The pro-Assad SEA appears to have been able to attack the domain name registrar for the websites, changing ownership of the sites to "SEA." In the case of The New York Times, the attack appeared to take the website down for a number of hours.

During the attack, Business Insider reached out to a hacker affiliated with the SEA who calls himself "Th3 Pr0." While Th3 Pr0 is usually very prompt in his responses, he took several hours to respond. He apologized for the delay, explaining that he was "busy."

Asked if SEA were involved in the attack and why Twitter — a technology company as opposed to SEA's standard media company targets — was attacked, he responded:

Yes we are, we attacked Twitter because the suspensions of our accounts for 15 times and we did warned them, NYtimes was hacked as a part of our campaign against the media who keep publishing false/fabricated news about Syria

Th3 Pr0 responded to our email at around 5 a.m. Syrian time. When asked how long SEA had been working on the hack, he said that they began around 14-15 hours before he emailed me, which would have made it around nine hours before people began noticing the attacks.

The group had began planning the attack just a few days ago, according to Th3 Pro. "We started collecting information about Melbourne IT [the companies' domain name registrar] and what the domains that they are hosting it like a 2 days ago," he emailed, adding that just three people were involved in the attack and that Twitter and The New York Times were the primary targets.

It's obviously wise to take all this with a pinch of salt. Th3 Pr0 claims to be an 18-year-old high school student who lives in Syria, but other hacking groups have emailed Business Insider, arguing that Th3 Pr0 is in fact an older man who does not live in Syria. These claims are difficult to verify.

The attack on The New York Times and Twitter may appear to be a step up from previous attacks, which were enabled by phishing for passwords and usually focused on Twitter accounts — low-hanging fruit, really. However, as Christopher Mims of Quartz notes, they were probably enabled by a phishing attack on Melbourne IT with a creative use of relatively simple techniques. Melbourne IT told CNET that "the credentials of a Melbourne IT reseller (username and password) were used to access a reseller account on Melbourne IT's systems."

The group still seem to have access to Melbourne IT's blog at least.

It's tempting to denounce the SEA's attack as pointless, but silly as the attacks on Western media outlets might seem, they certainly achieve their objective of gaining worldwide attention.

Join the conversation about this story »

At this point you've probably heard about the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) compromising the websites for The New York Times, Twitter, and Huffington Post U.K.

Lesser known, though, is that potential New York Times readers found themselves redirected to a site laced with malware.

From Threatpost:

[The SEA was] then able to change the records so that rather than pointing to nytimes.com, for example, the Times’ name servers pointed to a domain controlled by the attackers. Officials at CloudFlare, a cloud hosting provider that was involved in the effort to counter the attack, said that the domain to which visitors were redirected was serving malware.

Threatpost — a cybersecurity website — noted that Tech company Cloudflare ended up helping the New York Times sort out the mess, which started when MelbourneIT, the registrar the Times, was compromised.

Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, wrote in an analysis of the attack and its aftermath. In it, he describes how tech professionals recognized the malware-laden redirect site and revoked the domain, stemming the tide of exposed users.

From Cloudflare:

Since the cache [Time To Live] on the domain was relatively short, shortly after the domain was revoked traffic largely stopped flowing to the malware infected sites.

And here's Prince's brief explanation on"cleaning up the mess:"

At the registry, Verisign rolled back changes to the name servers and added a so-called registry lock to NYTimes.com. This prevented further changes even if initiated by the registrar. While quick action by OpenDNS and Google limited the impact on their customers, web surfers using other recursive DNS providers continued to be served hacked results. Unfortunately, because recursive DNS servers cache results for a period of time, even after the records were corrected, many name servers were still pointing to the incorrect locations for affected domains.

The registrar of the primary domain the Syrian Electronic Army was using as a name server for the domains they hacked revoked the domain's registration this afternoon. Since the cache TTL on the domain was relatively short, shortly after the domain was revoked traffic largely stopped flowing to the malware infected sites. That did not mean all hacked sites came back online. In some places, DNS recursors continue to have the cached bad records. They will expire over the next 24 hours and traffic to sites will return to normal.

The latest New York Times attack is one in a long string of media-related hacks on behalf of the SEA. Consequently, the SEA has vowed more attacks following any American attack on Syria.

And as if to characterize their prowess, Prince notes that the Times' registrar MelbourneIT is not the easiest target.

"This was a very spooky attack," Prince writes, "MelbourneIT is known for having higher security than most registrars. We are hopeful that they will post the details of the attack as they are discovered so organizations can understand the threat and how to better protect themselves."

Join the conversation about this story »

The Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-Assad hacking group, successfully compromised some large media sites yesterday by attacking Twitter, The New York Times, and Huffington Post UK.

It was able to do this by interfering with these sites' domain name systems (DNS), altering high-level details about how people access these web pages.

It began in Australia at a company called Melbourne IT, which handles the New York Times' Web hosting. The SEA used phishing tactics (which usually means tricking someone to type in a password and capturing it as it's typed) in order to break in.

Once inside, the hackers knocked the Times offline by reassigning its DNS information. DNS is best understood as the phone book of the Internet – when you type  "newyorktimes.com" into your URL bar and press enter, DNS turns this into a query of the server at the appropriate IP address. It's much easier to remember "New York Times" than it is to remember "170.149.168.130," for example.

By severing the NYT's connection to DNS, the only way anyone could actually access the site was by typing in the IP address, and this is just not information people care to remember. Since everyone types out the DNS-enabled URL – newyorktimes.com – and because the hackers had total control of the DNS settings, they were able to reroute anyone attempting to access the site to a different web page of their own choosing.

In fact, some people who tried to access the Times' site yesterday were redirected to this image instead:

Twitter was compromised as well, though it remained online and operational while the "viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted." Again, the source of the trouble was the Syrian Electronic Army fiddling with DNS. Although repairs have begun to normalize everything, image problems still persist across Twitter for some users, with the occasional blank user avatar and the blank picture attached to tweets.

If this is the first time you've heard of the SEA, it isn't some brand-new organization. The group's been active since 2011 and hasn't been afraid to cause all kinds of big-time trouble since then. This is just the group's most recent display of its capabilities.

Join the conversation about this story »

(Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council was set for a showdown over Syria on Wednesday as Britain sought authorization for Western military action that Russia called premature and seems certain to block.

U.N. chemical weapons experts investigating a gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus made a second trip over the front line to take samples.

The United States and European and Middle Eastern allies have already pinned the blame on President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Even if a skeptical Russia blocks U.N. approval, U.S.-led air strikes onSyria, possibly lasting several days, look all but certain - though the timing is far from clear.

That has set Western leaders on a collision course with Moscow, Assad's main arms supplier, as well as with China, which also has a veto in the Security Council and has criticized what it sees as a push for Iraq-style "regime change" - despite U.S. denials that President Barack Obama aims to overthrow Assad.

A Syrian minister showed up at the U.N. team's Damascus hotel to deliver what he said was evidence that it was rebel "terrorist groups" who had used sarin gas last Wednesday - "with the help of the United States, the United Kingdom and France".

Elsewhere in the capital, Syrians were stocking up on food, bottled water and other essentials and bracing for bombing.

Western action seems less likely as long as U.N. experts are in Syria. Ban said: "They are working very hard, under very, very dangerous circumstances.

"Let them conclude their work for four days and then we will have to analyze scientifically with experts and then I think we will have to report to the Security Council for any actions."

WORLD UNSETTLED

Uncertainty over how the escalation of the conflict at the heart of the oil-exporting Middle East will affect trade and the world economy sent oil prices to their highest levels in six months, while stocks fell. Fears over the economy of Syria's hostile neighbor Turkey pushed its lira to a record low.

Obama and his allies, not to mention Western electorates, show little appetite for new foreign wars and are wary of Islamist militants among the Syrian rebels. But leaders say they cannot let Assad get away with using chemical weapons and that they feel obliged to act to enforce a ban on using poison gas.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would propose a resolution on Wednesday to the other four permanent Security Council members in New York, seeking authority to take "necessary measures" to protect Syrian civilians. Sure of a Russian veto, Western diplomats saw it as part of diplomatic strategy to isolate Moscow and rally a broad coalition behind Washington.

"We've always said we want the U.N. Security Council to live up to its responsibilities on Syria. Today they have an opportunity to do that," Cameron said in a statement. The five-way meeting was under way by 10 a.m. in New York (1400 GMT).

"Of course there will be a Russian veto, but that's part of the objective - to show that we tried everything and the Russians left us no choice," a senior Western diplomat said.

"The Americans want to go quickly," he added.

A senior U.S. official said no decisions had been made but added that U.S. efforts to address the Syrian crisis through the Security Council had been regularly blocked by Moscow.

RESPONSIBILITY

The U.S.-led NATO alliance said evidence pointed to Assad's forces having used gas, calling it a threat to global security.

Russia, however, has said rebels may have used gas. Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov said: "It would be premature, at the least, to discuss any Security Council reaction until the U.N. inspectors working in Syria present their report."

Ban pleaded for unity in the Security Council after more than two years of paralysis during which Syria's civil war has split the Middle East on sectarian lines and fuelled rival camps in the world body along divisions that echo the Cold War.

Ban's special envoy for Syria, Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, said "international law is clear" in requiring Council authorization for any military action. But Western leaders have made clear they are ready to act without it, citing precedents for foreign intervention to protect civilians.

It remains unclear how definitive may be any evidence found by the U.N. experts, who arrived in Damascus 10 days ago to look into earlier, smaller instances of poisoning. Many toxins decay quickly and it may be hard to say which side released them.

There was tension behind the scenes between United Nations officials and Western governments. One U.N. official said: "The U.N. is annoyed and feels the Western powers haven't shared data or evidence with them, which is a problem.

"It kind of undercuts U.N. authority."

Brahimi said: "I know that the Americans and the British and others say that they know chemical weapons have been used.

"We would be very, very interested in hearing from them what this evidence they have is."

U.N. INVESTIGATES

Rebel fighters and opposition activists showed the inspectors homes in the eastern Damascus suburb of Zamalka that had been hit by last week's gas release. The experts also tested and interviewed survivors in hospital, as they did on a first trip on Monday that came under sniper attack.

Amateur video showed the convoy of white U.N. jeeps driving along a road, accompanied by rebels. One pick-up truck was mounted with an anti-aircraft gun. Gunmen leaned from the windows of another. Bystanders waved as the vehicles passed.

As long as the U.N. team is in Syria, Western action is less likely - making the presence of the investigators led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom a key element in the timing of attacks, expected to be limited to a few days.

Strikes, expected to involve cruise missiles fired by U.S. ships in the Mediterranean, are also unlikely before Obama has a U.S. intelligence report on the August 21 gas attack. Its conclusions, however, are scarcely in doubt.

Cameron will give the British parliament an opportunity to be seen to support his policy in a debate scheduled for Thursday. Like the United States, Britain has warships in the Mediterranean. It also has an air base on Cyprus, 200 km (120 miles) from the Syrian coast.

The British government is not obliged to hold a parliamentary vote, but with the public wary of new military entanglements after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cameron will want to show that he has broad backing. A YouGov poll published on Wednesday showed 50 percent of the British public opposed a missile strike, with just 25 percent in favor.

The French parliament was also recalled on Wednesday, but only for a session set for next Wednesday, September 4.

GLOBAL DIVISION

Syria's war has killed more than 100,000 people and driven millions from their homes, many crossing borders into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

It has heightened tensions between Assad's sponsor Iran and Israel, which bombed Syria this year, and has fuelled sectarian bloodshed in Lebanon and in Iraq, where bombs killed more than 70 people on Wednesday alone.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that U.S. action would be "a disaster for the region".

Like Russia, China is wary of Western interference in the affairs of sovereign states. The official People's Daily newspaper said air strikes would add "oil to the flames of Syria's civil war" and added that, as in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Washington and its allies wanted Assad out.

Western governments have rallied support from the Arab League and Syria's Muslim neighbor and NATO member Turkey, and have begun to lay out arguments they say show that they can satisfy some criteria of international law.

Australia, which takes over the chair of the Security Council on Sunday, added its voice on Wednesday to the Western view that continuing deadlock along Cold War lines in the top United Nations body would not rule out an attack on Syria.

French President Francois Hollande has cited a 2005 U.N. provision for action to protect civilians from their own governments, which was inspired by the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Similar arguments were used by NATO to bomb Russian ally Serbia in 1999 after the killing of civilians in Kosovo.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague sought to justify an attack on the grounds of defending Britain's national security.

(Additional reporting by Wiliam Maclean and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn in London, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Yeganeh Torbati and Yara Bayoumy in Dubai, Anthony Deutsch and Thomas Escritt in The Hague, Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Will Waterman and David Stamp)

Join the conversation about this story »