A purported chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1,000, including many children, has elicited the ire of the West.

The USS Barry and three other warships promptly took up positions off the coast of Syria, poised to unleash a storm of Tactical Tomahawk missiles.

While Syrian and Iranian officials have said they will defend themselves against any Western strike, their best defense seems to be appealing to the U.N. for time.

Nevertheless, it seems their time is quickly running out.

Having seen 30 years of continuous service, Tomahawk missiles are one of the most reliable weapons on the battlefield.

More than 2,000 have been fired in combat — and they've become so much more lethal since the first.

With advanced contour mapping, they fly low to the ground to avoid radar. Assad has better air defenses than Libya did in 2011, however, thus the need for maximum redundancy.

It wasn't long before Business Insider visited the Barry in late 2012 that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer sat off Libya, launching 55 Tomahawk cruise missiles to suppress the county's air defense system during Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Senior U.S. officials told NBC News that a strike on Syria, which would include the Barry, could happen as soon as Thursday, August 29, 2013.

When we visited, the ship was preparing for its major five-year inspection before a Mediterranean deployment. None of the crew we spoke with last fall suspected they'd be sailing off Syria's coast right now, contemplating an attack on that country's military units allegedly responsible for an August 21 chemical attack on Syrian citizens. But there they are.

The Navy invited Business Insider for a weekend of tests off the Atlantic in late 2012 onboard the USS Barry. The Navy arrived at 5 a.m. to put us on this water taxi by 7:00.

After an hour of heaving seas and whipping saltwater spray, the 505-foot Arleigh Burke-class destroyer came into sight idling off the Virginia seaboard.

At this point some visiting physicists realized how we'd be getting aboard.

House Speaker John Boehner sent a strongly worded letter to President Obama on Wednesday, urging him to provide answers to pressing questions about possible military action in Syria.

"I have conferred with the chairmen of the national security committees who have received initial outreach from senior Administration officials, and while the outreach has been appreciated, it is apparent ... that the outreach has, to date, not reached the level of substantive consultation," Boehner wrote in the letter.

Here are the 14 specific questions that Boehner wants answered:

• What standard did the Administration use to determine that this scope of chemical weapons use warrants potential military action? 
• Does the Administration consider such a response to be precedent-setting, should further humanitarian atrocities occur?
• What result is the Administration seeking from its response?
• What is the intended effect of the potential military strikes?
• If potential strikes do not have the intended effect, will further strikes be conducted?
• Would the sole purpose of a potential strike be to send a warning to the Assad regime about the use of chemical weapons? Or would a potential strike be intended to help shift the security momentum away from the regime and toward the opposition?
• If it remains unclear whether the strikes compel the Assad regime to renounce and stop the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people, or if President Assad escalates their usage, will the Administration contemplate escalatory military action?
• Will your Administration conduct strikes if chemical weapons are utilized on a smaller scale?
• Would you consider using the United States military to respond to situations or scenarios that do not directly involve the use or transfer of chemical weapons?
• Assuming the targets of potential military strikes are restricted to the Assad inner circle and military leadership, does the Administration have contingency plans in case the strikes disrupt or throw into confusion the command and control of the regime’s weapons stocks?
• Does the Administration have contingency plans if the momentum does shift away from the regime but toward terrorist organizations fighting to gain and maintain control of territory?
• Does the Administration have contingency plans to deter or respond should Assad retaliate against U.S. interests or allies in the region?
• Does the Administration have contingency plans should the strikes implicate foreign power interests, such as Iran or Russia?
• Does the Administration intend to submit a supplemental appropriations request to Congress, should the scope and duration of the potential military strikes exceed the initial planning?

In addition to Boehner, other lawmakers have raised concerns about Obama's level of consultation on any military action, which appears imminent. More than 100 lawmakers — 97 Republicans and 17 Democrats — signed a letter spearheaded by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) that urges Obama to seek Congressional authorization before any strike. 

Boehner letter to Obama on Syria

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Over the course of the 29-month Syrian conflict, Russia has provided the regime of Bashar al-Assad with supplies including guns, grenades, tank parts, fighter jets, advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, long-range air defense missiles, military officers as advisors, diplomatic cover, and lots of cash.

So why does the Kremlin back Assad so staunchly? 

There are three primary reasons, as illustrated by this report by Krishnadev Calamur of NPR. 

1) Strategic: Syria's port of Tartus hosts the only remaining international military base outside of the former Soviet Union.

2) Financial: As of June 2012, Russia’s economic interests in Syria total approximately $20 billion, about $5 billion of which are weapons sales. 

3) Philosophical: Andranik Migranyan, director of the New York-based Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, a nongovernmental organization funded by private Russian donors that is considered close to the leadership in Moscow, told NPR's Robert Siegel: "Russia's position is very easy to understand."

"First, Russia is against any regime change from outside of Syria or any other country because according to Russia, any attempt to change the regimes, they are ended up in a chaos and results are quite opposite what were the intentions," Migranyan said. "This was proved in Iraq after the invasions of Americans over there. This was proved in Libya. This was proved in Egypt. And Russia is against principally this regime changes."

SEE ALSO: RUSSIA TO WEST: We Told You Not To Overthrow Qaddafi!

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The U.S., despite lack of U.N. approval and growing demands for legal justifications, is determined to strike Syria in response to an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack attributed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Earlier we posted a Reuters map that listed the U.S., British, and French forces and bases that are positioned near Syria. But that doesn't tell the whole story, since it does not illustrate what those assets are threatening.

So we added to it with information from maps created by Foreign Policy, Agence France-Presse, the Institute for the Study of War, The Telegraph and two via BBC in addition to highlighting U.S. military bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. 

SEE ALSO: Unnamed US And Israeli Officials Say Intercepted Syrian Communications Prove Chemical Attack — UK Officials Draft UN Strike Resolution

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Even as some of his aides create the impression that a military strike on Syria is imminent, President Barack Obama says he has not made a decision on how to proceed. 

He did assert, however, to a war-weary nation that possible U.S. involvement would not be a repeat of long, drawn-out conflicts of recent past.

"We can take limited, tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict, not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about," Obama said he said in an interview with PBS NewsHour after his speech at the "Let Freedom Ring" event in Washington.

"But if we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way — we send a shot across the bow saying, stop doing this, that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term, may have a positive impact on our national security over the long term, and may have a positive impact in the sense that chemical weapons are not used again on innocent civilians."

Obama also said, firmly, that the U.S. has "concluded" that the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad carried out the recent chemical-weapons attack that killed hundreds of people — something that echoed comments from Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden over the past two days. Obama cited the need to send a "pretty strong signal" to Assad. 

Obama made the case that a response was in the U.S.'s national interest, pointing out that Syria has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the region. He said he worried that they could fall in the hands of terrorists. 

"We cannot see a breach of the nonproliferation norm that allows, potentially, chemical weapons to fall into the hands of all kinds of folks," Obama said.

Obama's comments on Syria came about an hour after House Speaker John Boehner wrote him a letter that asked him to outline specific answers to questions about any possible military action.

SEE ALSO: John Boehner Asks Obama 14 Questions About Syria

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Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who helped sell Congress and the American people on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under former President George W. Bush, believes the Obama administration has failed to justify any potential military intervention in Syria.

“One thing that is very interesting, it seems to me, is that there really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto scheduled to air later Wednesday, as quoted by The Hill.

White House press secretary Jay Carney pressed the administration's argument earlier this week, telling reporters that failing to respond to a reported chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime in Syria would pose a "significant" threat to U.S. national security.

Rumsfeld made news in June when he told a conservative gathering that he was unsure if President Barack Obama had switched sides in the War on Terror.

"You know, I just don't feel competent to answer," he told a questioner. "I can't tell." 

NOW: See why former Secretary of State Colin Powell believes the situation in Syria is 'beyond US capabilities'

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Barring some strange turn of events, it’s likely that the United States and key NATO allies will be raining TLAMs (“cruise missiles” to civilians) on Syria by the end of this week. This will be in response to reasonably hard evidence – smart money is on Israeli SIGINT [Ed note: Signals Intelligence] as the main source – that Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical rockets recently in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, killing at least hundreds of innocents.

This was probably not the first time the regime used chemicals in its war against the diverse, largely Sunni coalition that has been fighting to overthrow the regime for the last two years, but it was the first large-scale atrocity in this war that used some version of WMD. President Obama’s “red line,” proffered exactly a year before this latest murderous outrage, seems to have been well and truly crossed.

Thus the White House has little choice but to do something, for the sake of any credibility, though it’s obvious that Obama, who came into office castigating his predecessor’s reckless wars of choice in the Greater Middle East, is a highly reluctant war leader. As well he should be, given the Republic’s recent track record in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where initial successes were ruined by bad strategy that failed to subdue resistance movements that, by historical standards, were anything but robust.

OSF (ie Operation SYRIAN FREEDOM) is what this administration must avoid, and presumably will at nearly any cost. Using TLAMs and limited conventional bombing to damage Syrian’s chemical capabilities, plus the C2 nodes that support WMD, is a reasonable goal, though it’s far from a panacea. Really taking out Syria’s moderately impressive air defenses – a bigger goal – is a tall order, if one that can be done by NATO in a week or more of sustained effort, 24 hours a day. Lives will be lost, and not just Syrian.

The strategy of the Syrian nightmare merits a book in itself, not a mere blog post, but I will share some strategic insights in no particular order, based on my experiences with America’s post-Cold War military adventures.

1. The enemy gets a vote. Always. He will react in ways you cannot accurately predict. Israel is close-by: hint.

2. When your enemy is on “death ground” – as Assad and his Alawi and Christian supporters surely are – they care a lot more about this fight than you do, or ever will.

3. “Surgical strikes” belong in PowerPoints by greedy defense contractors, not the real world of warfare.

4. When all belligerents in a conflict are morally repugnant, you ought to choose sides carefully (better yet: don’t).

5. Proxy wars will last far longer, and turn out far nastier, than seems logical, especially when the stakes seem high for one or more outside players.

6. If you want to seriously effect change you will wind up putting boots on the ground. Period. If you ignore this reality – or worse, guess wrong about how many troops you need – you may create a firestorm (see: Iraq 2003).

7. Putting Western boots on the ground in cultures where we and our values are hated is a bad idea unless you are willing to play by their rules, ie be highly brutal on a grand scale towards even civilians. Better not to do it.

8. Never, ever stop thinking about the value of the object, ie what do we really want here? Negative aims are fine, but not having clear, achievable aims is a good way to lose quick.

9. Certain cultures are not impressed by “surgical strikes.” They use mass brutality and think anything less is weak, even effeminate.

10. US and NATO are very good at ISR and precision strike, we have learned an enormous amount about the tactics of hi-tech killing over the last dozen years of war in CENTCOM. But this is not the same thing as strategic wisdom or political insight. Strategy trumps tactics in the long run, always.

More as it happens … and you can bet a lot more will be happening soon.

SEE ALSO: COLIN POWELL: Syria Is An 'Internal Struggle' That Is Beyond US Capabilities

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As tensions rise in Syria, economists and investors are scrambling to figure out what the means for the rest of the world.

Analysts have been quick to tie the recent rise in oil prices to the Syrian conflict.

But as BI's Rob Wile has been reporting, there are other major short-term forces driving prices.

Arguably the biggest of those non-Syria forces is Libya.

Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid reminds us in his Early Morning Reid note:

Although the attention has been on Syria, our commodities research team highlights that the freefall in Libyan oil production is having a more dramatic and immediate impact on the physical oil market. Indeed, Libya normally produces about 10x more oil than Syria. Libyan oil production has dropped to as little as about 200kbd (from an average of 1.4m bbb/day) as of the most recent reporting period as labour strikes disrupted port operations and consequently crude oil exports. They note that the impact of these supply disruptions particularly in Libya is acute for the Brent balance from both a regional as well as crude oil quality perspective.

For the most part, analysts believe any supply-related price increases will be short-lived as machinery becomes more energy-efficient and consumers shift toward greener alternatives.

SEE ALSO: 15 Charts That Should Terrify Saudi Arabia

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AP sources: In spite of Obama's assertion, intelligence on weapons use in Syria no 'slam dunk'

WASHINGTON (AP) — The intelligence linking Syrian President Bashar Assad or his inner circle to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed at least 100 people is no "slam dunk," with questions remaining about who actually controls some of Syria's chemical weapons stores and doubts about whether Assad himself ordered the strike, U.S. intelligence officials say.

President Barack Obama declared unequivocally Wednesday that the Syrian government was responsible, while laying the groundwork for an expected U.S. military strike.

"We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out," Obama said in an interview with "NewsHour" on PBS. "And if that's so, then there need to be international consequences."

However, multiple U.S. officials used the phrase "not a slam dunk" to describe the intelligence picture — a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet's insistence in 2002 that U.S. intelligence showing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk"— intelligence that turned out to be wrong.

A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria is thick with caveats. It builds a case that Assad's forces are most likely responsible while outlining gaps in the U.S. intelligence picture. Relevant congressional committees were to be briefed on that evidence by teleconference call on Thursday, U.S. officials and congressional aides said.

The complicated intelligence picture raises questions about the White House's full-steam-ahead approach to the Aug. 21 attack on a rebel-held Damascus suburb, with worries that the attack could be tied to al-Qaida-backed rebels later. Administration officials said Wednesday that neither the U.N. Security Council, which is deciding whether to weigh in, or allies' concerns would affect their plans.

Intelligence officials say they could not pinpoint the exact locations of Assad's supplies of chemical weapons, and Assad could have moved them in recent days as U.S. rhetoric builds. That lack of certainty means a possible series of U.S. cruise missile strikes aimed at crippling Assad's military infrastructure could hit newly hidden supplies of chemical weapons, accidentally triggering a deadly chemical attack.

Over the past six months, with shifting front lines in the 2½-year-old civil war and sketchy satellite and human intelligence coming out of Syria, U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country's chemical weapons supplies, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official and three other U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence shared by the White House as reason to strike Syria's military complex. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Syrian issue publicly.

U.S. satellites have captured images of Syrian troops moving trucks into weapons storage areas and removing materials, but U.S. analysts have not been able to track what was moved or, in some cases, where it was relocated. They are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad's forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored.

In addition, an intercept of Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander, the officials said.

So while Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that links between the attack and the Assad government are "undeniable," U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad's orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

Ideally, the White House seeks intelligence that links the attack directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military decided to use chemical weapons without Assad's authorization. Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government's control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

The U.S. has devoted only a few hundred operatives, between intelligence officers and soldiers, to the Syrian mission, with CIA and Pentagon resources already stretched by the counterterrorism missions in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the continuing missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

The quest for added intelligence to bolster the White House's case for a strike against Assad's military infrastructure was the issue that delayed the release of the U.S. intelligence community's report, which had been expected Tuesday.

The uncertainty calls into question the statements by Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden.

"We know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons," Kerry said. "We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places where the attacks took place."

On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said it didn't really matter whether the administration knew those details with total certainty.

"We ultimately, of course, hold President Assad responsible for the use of chemical weapons by his regime against his own people, regardless of where the command and control lies," Harf said.

The CIA, the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, many U.S. lawmakers believe there is reasonable certainty Assad's government was responsible and are pressing the White House to go ahead with an armed response.

"Based on available intelligence, there can be no doubt the Assad regime is responsible for using chemical weapons on the Syrian people," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Short of putting troops on the ground, I believe a meaningful military response is appropriate."

Others, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed serious concern with the expected military strike.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday that all the evidence points in one direction.

"There is no evidence that any opposition group in Syria has the capability let alone the desire to launch such a large-scale chemical attack," Hague told British broadcaster Sky News.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron has recalled Parliament to debate the issue Thursday.

___

Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Julie Pace and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.

___

Follow Dozier on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier

and Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo

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Expected Western strikes on Syria will target the military, intelligence services and possibly sites with symbolic regime links, but will not alter the balance of power in the country, experts say.

The raids, if they go ahead, would be aimed at punishing President Bashar al-Assad's regime and sending him a message rather than wiping out his military capacity and handing the rebels a decisive advantage, they say.

"Specific targets should include the Damascus-area headquarters, barracks and support facilities of the fourth and Republican Guard armoured divisions, two units heavily involved in the bombardment of civilian areas," said Jeffrey White of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.

"Allied forces should also strike higher-level military and intelligence headquarters and command-and-control facilities associated with military operations around the capital."

The Republican Guard, reputed to be one of the best armed and best trained units in the country, is commanded by the Syrian president's brother, Maher al-Assad. Highly feared, it has special responsibility for defending the capital.

Washington and its allies are pressing for military action against Assad's regime over deadly suspected chemical attacks, despite stern warnings against intervention from key Damascus supporters Russia and Iran.

Analysts expect to see cruise missiles launched from US and allied submarines, ships and possibly warplanes from outside Syria's territorial waters and airspace.

French General Vincent Desportes, former director of the Ecole de Guerre military training academy, told AFP any strikes would be "more symbolic than military".

"It is a question of reestablishing the West's credibility by doing something. The declared 'red line' cannot be crossed to this degree without something being done, otherwise all US credibility would be lost, particularly where Iran is concerned."

"But it should not be too much, because if President Assad dies or if the regime collapses, that would lead to a terrible bloodbath, chaos on a national scale. It would be another strategic failure, the like of what was seen in Libya," he added.

Desportes agreed that any strikes would be brief, with symbolic targets that could include government buildings, military command centres, air force bases and even the presidential palace -- as long as it could be ascertained that Assad was not inside.

Strategic leaks from the capitals concerned have already indicated that any strikes will be limited in time and space.

They will not be powerful enough to weaken the state's military capacity and tilt the balance of power in favour of the rebels, analysts say -- even if, as White believes, they could "encourage fissures within the regime, increase defections and bolster the armed and political opposition".

Christopher Harmer, a naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said a Tomahawk attack would not have the capacity to eliminate the regime's military or chemical weapons capabilities, "nor cause more than a temporary degradation in regime operations".

"Targets chosen to simply punish the Assad regime will have little impact on the strategic outcome," he said.

The US fleet currently has around 200 Tomahawk missiles on four ships in the Mediterranean, an arsenal that Harmer said would be more than enough to carry out a series of medium-intensity strikes on various targets.

But with the countdown practically in public, and the Western powers clearly stating their intentions, experts believe the missiles are likely to destroy only buildings evacuated days earlier, deserted command posts or runways that can quickly be repaired.

"Targets chosen to simply punish the Assad regime will have little impact on the strategic outcome," Harmer said.

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The White House is expected to brief high-ranking members of Congress of its plans for strategy in Syria on Thursday. 

"Today, Senior Administration Officials will hold a briefing for Congressional leadership and the Chairs and Ranking Members of national security committees as a part of our continued consultations on Syria," a White House official said in an email. "We will provide further details today as we can."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) tweeted about the briefing late Wednesday night, and said it would be by conference call. Cornyn, who just last year relinquished membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is presumably one of the briefing's attendees.

POTUS planning to consult with Congress on conference call Thursday on his plans for Syria

— JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) August 29, 2013

The briefing comes as Obama takes more heat for his lack of consultation with Congress over possible military action in Syria — and as initial drums for strikes are losing steam.

On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner sent Obama a letter asking him for answers on 14 questions about the situation in Syria. 

"I have conferred with the chairmen of the national security committees who have received initial outreach from senior Administration officials, and while the outreach has been appreciated, it is apparent ... that the outreach has, to date, not reached the level of substantive consultation," Boehner wrote in the letter.

In addition to Boehner, other lawmakers have raised concerns about Obama's level of consultation on any military action. More than 100 lawmakers — 97 Republicans and 17 Democrats — signed a letter spearheaded by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) that urges Obama to seek Congressional authorization before any strike. 

Meanwhile, intelligence officials told The Associated Press that the intelligence gathered — linking President Bashar al-Assad to a recent chemical-weapons attack — is not a "slam dunk." Significantly, questions remain as to whether Assad ordered the strike or if it was the work of a rogue officer.

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Last night President Barack Obama publicly said for the first time that the U.S. has concluded the Syrian government carried out a chemical attack that killed hundreds of civilians and injured thousands last week.

Obama, knowing that are detractors of the administration's matter-of-fact approach, addressed the key arguments for and against limited military response against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Speaking with the PBS Newshour's Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff in the Blue Room of the White House, Obama detailed the basic argument for a limited strike so that "the international norm against the use of chemical weapons" is "kept in place" in addition to saying the U.S. wants to avoid further direct intervention in the brutal civil war.

We've highlighted some of the key parts.

First, Obama established "what's at stake here," including:

• "... terrible things have been happening in Syria for quite some time."
• "... the Assad regime there has been killing its own people by the tens of thousands."
• "... I’ve also concluded is that direct military engagement, involvement in the civil war in Syria, would not help the situation on the ground. And so we’ve been very restrained."

The president brought up the "red line" and argued that a military response to Assad's regime using chemical weapons on his own people has to do with "not only international norms but also America’s core self-interest."

Here's Obama on America upholding international norms against chemical weapons:

"We’re consulting with the international community. ... we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable."

And here's the perceived threat to U.S. national security interests:

"We’ve got allies bordering Syria. Turkey is a NATO ally, Jordan a close friend that we work with a lot. Israel is very close by. We’ve got bases throughout the region. We cannot see a breach of the nonproliferation norm that allows, potentially, chemical weapons to fall into the hands of all kinds of folks."

As for the attack itself, Obama made a key point about who is capable of carrying out a large scale chemical attack: 

"We do not believe that, given the delivery systems, using rockets, that the opposition could have carried out these attacks. We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out. 

When asked what a limited strike would accomplish, Obama reiterated that "there need to be international consequences" if America and its allies conclude that the Syrian government gassed its own people.

The president then addressed concerns raised by long U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan:

"... we can take limited, tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict, not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about – but if ... we send a shot across the bow saying, stop doing this, that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term ... may have a positive impact in the sense that chemical weapons are not used again on innocent civilians."

One thing Obama didn't talk about is explicit congressional approval for such an action.

Check out the interview below:

SEE ALSO: 20 Reasons Why Tomahawk Missiles Should Put Assad In A State Of Panic

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The Economist is out with a new cover today advocating a clear position on potential military action in Syria.

"Hit him hard," the cover reads. The text is on top of a picture of President Bashar al-Assad's face, on top of a backdrop of Syrians among the dead in the 2.5-year long civil war. 

The cover comes as Western nations are said to be preparing a military response for the latest chemical weapons attack in the country, which both the UK and U.S. governments have said were carried out by the Assad regime. 

Here's the cover:

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Brent crude oil prices have been surging in recent weeks.

Today, they are right around $116 per barrel, down around 0.5%. Market pundits have tied the move to Syria, where it appears the threat of a conflict breaking out into the broader Middle East is receding. At least for now.

UBS's Julius Walker reiterates that it's the regional spillover that counts for oil prices, not what's actually happening in Syria.

"The issue is not curtailed Syrian oil production – its crude output has already shriveled to 40 kb/d from pre-crisis capacity of 350 kb/d," said Walker. "The fear is that a strike on Syria could lead to it retaliating, thus pulling in neighbouring countries. Even more worryingly, Assad supporters such as Iran or Russia could be prompted to intervene, risking a wider regional conflict."

"Oil prices had already risen in past weeks, as worker strikes have shut-in much of Libya’s production, bombings in Iraq become more frequent again, and the situation remains unstable in Egypt," continued Walked. "We estimate that, including Iran, some 2.5 mb/d of oil production is currently shut-in globally. The Libyan situation, in particular, looks likely to last for longer than initially expected."

Walker charted where we're seeing oil supply disruptions around the world.  As you can see by the light blue bars, Libya has experienced the biggest increases in disruptions in recent months.

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The UK government has put out a paper explaining why a strike on Syria is justified. Meanwhile, president Obama will brief high-ranking members of Congress on his plans today. 

Alastair Newton, senior political analyst at Nomura writes that the U.S. will probably delay a military strike against Syria until after the G20 summit in September. And it's likely to do so with or without the UK and France.

But the most important takeaway is this: "We cannot emphasize too strongly that, whatever option may be adopted we see little or no direct threat to global oil supply emanating from a U.S. strike against the Syrian regime."

In the aftermath of the coup in Egypt, Brent prices moved to the lower end of $105 - $120 per barrel range because of "misplaced, we believe concerns over the security of the Suez Canal," he writes. "We therefore see sentiment, ie, perceived geopolitical risk, rather than reality (with all due respect to Henry Kissinger’s famous quote, ie, “Perception is reality”) as the primary driver of the 15% or so increase in the price of Brent over the past two months."

Newton adds that even if a strike on Syria "does not lead to mission creep" i.e. an expansion of the mission beyond its initial goal because the first strike is successful, we have to take a bigger picture view of the situation. And the view is "bleak," since regional tensions will be exacerbated.

Bottom-line: A strike won't pose a direct threat to oil supply, but perceived political risk will impact prices.

"We therefore see recent price action around Brent in particular as an overreaction to the prospect and therefore expect the price to dip again after a strike (if not, perhaps, even before any military action relative to yesterday’s high)."

But perceived political risk in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is expected to push Brent prices to the upper end of $105 - $120 per barrel range through the third and fourth quarters.

SEE ALSO: 15 Charts That Should Terrify Saudi Arabia

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There are a lot of reasons that Vladimir Putin's Russian government is happy to keep supporting Bashar al-Assad's Syrian government in the face of growing Western pressure. Ultimately, supporting Assad helps the Russian government to achieve its strategic, financial, and philosophical goals.

But there is another factor that enables Putin to act freely with regards to Syria — the average Russian simply doesn't care about Syria.

A new poll from the independent Levada Polling Center found that only 8% of Russians said they had been closely following Syria, while 52% said they knew a little and 39% said they knew nothing at all.

That contrasts with one recent poll in the U.S., where 36% of respondents said they knew a fair amount or a great deal about Syria. The poll, conducted by Ipsos for Reuters, said that 36% felt they had heard a little about the conflict, and 28% said they had not heard anything at all.

51% of Russians polled by Levada said they did not favor Assad or the rebels, while 19% said they favored Assad and 7% said they favored the rebels.

Tellingly, 34% of respondents said that Russia should not take sides in the confrontation, but should try and use it to Russia's benefit. 21% said Russia should support Syria, while 11% said they should support the rebels. 34% said it was too hard to tell.

Within Russia, it seems like Syria isn't much of an issue: While Putin is facing some domestic resistance at the moment, opposition leaders such as Alexey Navalny have mostly focused their anger on domestic policy rather than foreign policy.

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Barack Obama could take military action against Syria without waiting for British support, senior Obama administration officials said, as David Cameron faced waiting until next week for a Commons vote sanctioning any air strikes.

The abrupt halt in British momentum towards military action left the diplomatic choreography in chaos and US officials "livid" with the British, according to Western diplomatic sources at the United Nations in New York.

However US officials said on Thursday Mr Obama would not be constrained by waiting for a British parliamentary vote or by trying to forge a consensus at the United Nations where an "intransigent" Russia has made clear it would veto any resolution to use force.

Asked whether the US would "go it alone" without Britain, a White House spokesman quoted William Hague saying that the US was "able to make their own decisions", adding that the administration appreciated UK support for a strong response to the chemical weapons attacks.

"We've also seen an acknowledgement from the Foreign Secretary about the United States' right and ability to make our own foreign policy decisions that are in our national security interest," said Josh Earnest, the White House deputy press secretary.

Mr Obama, who spoke with some senior members of the US congress on the Syria debate, is due to leave for Sweden next Tuesday, followed by the G20 summit in Russia on Thursday and Friday, potentially narrowing the timetable for action.

Analysts said the Mr Obama was highly unlikely to unleash the targeted missile strikes while alongside the Russian President Vladimir Putin, forcing a choice of acting either before next Tuesday or after the G20 summit closes next weekend.

"Why would you launch when Putin is sitting there? You either go before the trip to Russia or after and my guess is before," said Barry Pavel, a former White House defence official, adding the US could launch attacks over the weekend once UN inspectors have left Damascus.

"Britain is important diplomatically, but not required, and not required militarily. The White House could move ahead without the British," Mr Pavel added.

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, said on Thursday the UN inspection team in Syria would finish its work on Friday and meet him in New York on Saturday to discuss their findings.

Mr Ban confirmed their timetable after speaking on the telephone to Mr Obama when he urged the US president to allow the inspectors to finish their work and report back. "I told him [Mr Obama] that we will surely share our information and our analysis," he said.

The White House, however, said that the UN inspectors' mandate was not to allocate blame but only to establish whether chemical weapons had been used – a fact that had been agreed to by all sides.

Mr Obama's dilemma over whether to act without direct British support follows Mr Cameron's embarrassing climb-down on Wednesday over whether a Commons vote would be required to sanction UK military involvement.

"The Americans are livid with us," said one Western diplomat, who added British officials were astonished that the Prime Minister could have made such an "enormous miscalculation" amid such high stakes.

A furious-looking Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, refused to answer questions on Thursday as she left a meeting of the Security Council permanent members, but later said on Twitter that the Syrian regime "must be held accountable, which the Security Council has refused to do for two years", adding "The US is considering an appropriate response."

Mr Obama said on Wednesday there was "no doubt" the Assad regime was behind the chemical weapons attacks that killed at least 350 people, arguing that a "limited" strike would send a clear message to Assad to "stop doing this" and be beneficial to long-term US national security interests.

The administration said it was preparing to publish a declassified intelligence dossier last night. Officials told the Associated Press that the assessment was not a "slam dunk", however Mr Earnest said that both Democrat and Republican senators briefed on the classified intelligence had accepted that Assad was responsible for the attacks.

"I have no interest in any open-ended conflict in Syria, but we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable," Mr Obama told the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

However high profile voices, including the Republican speaker of the House John Boehner and Donald Rumsfeld, the former Defense Secretary who was the architect of intervention in Iraq, said the administration not yet properly justified an attack on Syria.

"There really hasn't been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation," Mr Rumsfeld told Fox News, adding that Mr Obama's indecision over Syria over the last two years had left a "vacuum" in the Middle East.

Seeking to justify the national security interest, Mr Obama also said that the US could be at direct risk of proliferation of Syrian chemical weapons, a contention that was challenged by those opposing military action.

Although facing calls from some members of Congress for a British-style debate on whether to take military action, Mr Obama is not constrained in the same way as a British prime minister.

Senate aides told The Daily Telegraph that Congress was split three ways on Syria, between anti-war Democrats and isolationist conservatives against action, hawkish neo-conservatives who want to see Assad forcibly removed and an emerging middle ground.

"This emerging third group supports a limited strike targeting the unit or brigade responsible for the chemical weapons strike," the aide said, "and as with all things, the middle ground is usually where the American people are."

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The Washington Post has published the U.S. intelligence community's 2013 'Black Budget,' which it obtained from Edward Snowden, and it provides an unprecedented view into CIA funding since 9/11.

Barton Gellman and Greg Miller of the Post report that the U.S. has spent more than $500 billion on intelligence since September 11, 2001, and during that time it transformed "a spy service struggling to emerge from the Cold War into a paramilitary force."

To accomplish that, a surge in CIA resources "funded secret prisons, a controversial interrogation program, the deployment of lethal drones and a huge expansion of its counterterrorism center," according to the Post.

At the same time the agency built a "Global Response Staff," which hired former U.S. commandos and began collaborating with U.S. Special Operations teams on capture/kill missions in addition to training and deploying a 3,000-member Afghan paramilitary force.

Gellman and Miller note that the Agency's increasingly dominant slice of intelligence community's (IC) $52.6 billion budget over the last 12 years "will likely stun outside experts."

Here are some of the more striking numbers from the Post and the budget:

• The CIA workforce has grown from about 17,000 ten years ago to 21,575 this year.
• In 2013 U.S. spy agencies were projected to spend $4.9 billion on “overseas contingency operations” — such as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — and the CIA accounted for roughly half of that sum.
• The CIA requested $14.7 billion in total funding for 2013, which is 28% of the total IC budget and $4.2 billion more than the NSA.
• In 1994, the only other time Black Budget information was leaked, the CIA accounted for just $4.8 billion of a budget that totaled $43.4 billion in 2012 dollars (i.e., 11% of the IC budget).

Here's a breakdown of where CIA funding currently goes:

The Post notes that there is no specific entry for the CIA’s fleet of armed drones in the budget summary, but more than $2.6 billion is provided for “covert action programs” that would include "drone operations in Pakistan and Yemen, payments to militias in Afghanistan and Africa, and attempts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program."

Gregory Johnson, a journalist who covers America's secret drone war in Yemen, summed up the overarching implications of the Black Budget revelations:

SEE ALSO: Leaked US Intelligence 'Black Budget' Includes New Information On The Bin Laden Raid

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Wednesday night Barack Obama laid out the preliminary case for attacking Syria, saying that military response to the use of chemical weapons has to do "not only with international norms but also America’s core self-interest."

"International norms" refers to the near-universal ban on chemical weapons.

"America's core self-interest" refers to maintaining credibility by following through on the threat to strike Syria should the "red line" be crossed.

But there are fundamental problems with both of these arguments.

First of all, Syria is one of the few countries that has never signed the U.N. Chemicals Weapons Treaty. Not having signed the treaty, they are not legally bound to it. Although Syria has signed the Geneva Conventions and the Geneva Gas Protocols, which ban such things as violence against non-combatants and the use of chemical weapons, those conventions only apply to the use of weapons against foreign countries, saying nothing about their use on one's own people, as noted by Northwestern politics professor Ian Hurd.

Furthermore, the U.S. hardly has the high moral ground after it supported Iraq with full knowledge Saddam Hussein was gassing Iranians and Kurds in 1988. What possible argument would the U.S. have for supporting, not to mention not intervening in, Iraq after it used chemical weapons?

The ban against chemical weapons is of only limited use in the first place, as former intelligence analyst Joshua Foust explains:

The problem with the norm against chemical weapons use is that it goes out the window when things go wrong. Dictatorial regimes who already abuse their citizens will not be above further abuse when it comes to defending themselves from an existential threat. In Assad’s mind, he is fighting, literally, for his life — so any perceived outcry over using chemical weapons is going to be outweighed by his need for survival.

The only legal ways to intervene militarily in another country are in cases of self-defense or with U.N. Security Council approval. This isn't a case of self-defense, and getting through the U.N. won't be easy.

Phillip Carter, senior fellow and counsel at the Center for a New American Security, explains at War on the Rocks:

The first exception to the rule covers actions taken pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution.  The US had this mandate in Libya, and for its recent actions in Afghanistan, Somalia, and the first Gulf War, among others.  However, because Russia and China plan to veto any intervention in Syria that comes before the Security Council, there appears to be no chance of obtaining UN sanction to act in Syria.

After all, the "Syrian regime has not abdicated its sovereignty in a way that invites attack" any more than "the U.S. Civil War justified direct intervention by the British," Carter writes.

It's also tough to argue for a humanitarian intervention based on the death of 100,00 Syrians, when the U.S. mission is explicitly not to topple the regime but only to send a message. In other words, it won't do much to stop the killing.

To put it simply, Washington proposes to violate international law in order to protect an international law which Syria has never officially promised to abide.

But just because it's illegal, doesn't mean that the war won't happen. After all, many claim that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was illegal, without a resolution from the UN Security Council. However, the US and UK argued that pre-existing resolutions from the Persian Gulf War in 1991 also authorized them to act in 2003, in order to defend Kuwait from imminent threat of Saddam's WMDs by "all necessary means."

Washington's intent in Syria, on the other hand, has no clearly defined legal justification — at least nothing resembling the Persian Gulf War — so Western lawyers have their work cut out for them.

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