“President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people,” US Secretary of State John Kerry declared Aug.26. ''The president has asked the Defense Department for options … for all contingencies,'' Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Aug. 23. And the countdown begins.
As it usually does before launching such military operations, the United States is trying to put together an international coalition designed to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It will do this to show that the whole world is concerned about what happened in Syria, and not just the Americans, and that the international community at large is horrified by the war crimes occurring in that country.
