Web Video: Obama’s response to a 2013 chemical attack in Syria

MS. IFILL: More red lines crossed in Syria.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From tape.) What we’ve seen indicates that this is clearly a big event of grave concern when you start seeing chemical weapons used on a large scale. And, again, we’re still gathering information about this particular event, but it is very troublesome.

JEN PSAKI [Department of States Spokesperson]: (From tape.) There’s no reason, if there’s nothing to hide, for the regime not to let the investigative team in.

MS. IFILL: This week proved again why nothing is simple. What to do about the terrible pictures of apparent chemical attacks in Syria? What side to take with the nation, a longtime ally that has booted us out, that has booted out a democratically elected leader in favor of a military government? And who should Americans trust when the people we pay to protect us begin spying on us?

In a CNN interview today, the president spoke to the critics of U.S. inaction in Syria and Egypt.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: (From tape.) We remain the one indispensible nation. There’s a reason why, when you listen to what’s happening around Egypt and Syria, that everybody asks what the U.S. is doing. It’s because the United States continues to be the one country that people expect can do more than just simply protect their borders.

MS. IFILL: But, in Syria at least, doing more means turning to the U.N. rather than the U.S., Alexis?

ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: That’s right. What we heard from the president today in the interview and certainly from the White House this week was an effort to try to turn to the United Nations and United States allies abroad to try to work on both the investigation of what happened with the alleged chemical attacks but also to try to apply some pressure on the situation to try to assess where things go from here.

So what we heard at the White House earlier this week was, let’s take a long pause and try to figure out what the facts are on the ground and let the U.N. inspectors investigate. And what we heard from the president today was he actually said in the interview on CNN that he didn’t think there would be cooperation from the Assad government, which suggests that he’s going to have to be considering other options simultaneously.

We know that there have been meetings. There will be more meetings at the White House. We know that the administration has options that it is considering, it has been considering about, you know, how to proceed. But the president seems to be very concerned about not only the U.S. pressure to lead but also the American public’s desire not to lead.

MS. IFILL: Tell me about this red line issue, Tom, because we – the president is the one who used the word “red line” and seems like he’s been backpedaling from it ever since. Exactly what is the line that the administration is waiting? He says it’s a big event.

TOM GJELTEN: You know, the State Department spokeswoman, who we heard from earlier, Jen Psaki, was asked about this yesterday. And she said, well, the red line was already crossed. The red line was crossed some time ago and we took action, which raises the question, now what was the action that we took?

MS. IFILL: What was the action?

MR. GJELTEN: There was talk of providing more supplies – not even arms, more supplies to the rebel forces. So, clearly, the administration has walked way back from that idea that there is going to be something dramatic. You know, what President Obama originally said was going to change the whole calculus of what we do, but what he said today is that without a legal mandate to go into Syria, it would be very hard to do it. If he’s going to use that as the criterion for an intervention in Syria, it’s never going to happen.

MS. IFILL: So if a legal mandate, we assume it’s the United Nations –

MR. GJELTEN: That’s what he’s talking about.

MS. IFILL: What are we talking about? A resolution? Are we talking about a joint action? I don’t quite – maybe that’s the problem.

MR. GJELTEN: There have been –

MS. SIMENDINGER: The president was suggesting that, based on what we know from how the United States has done this in the past, most prominently dealing with Iraq – not a memory all of us enjoy, not one that the president enjoys – that there’s a discussion about having the provable evidence of weapons of mass destruction being either moved or used against Assad’s own people, the Syrian people. With that evidence, with some sort of independent verification of that, then the president is suggesting that provides the basis to go to the U.N. to seek a joint effort to try to force Assad to do something.

Now, as Tom suggests, that is a very long process. And what we’ve learned is, if the president wanted to use some interim military options, you would think about removing the U.N. inspectors who are already on the ground trying to get access to what is considered a battlefield. You would want to remove those folks. So then you would be undercutting your effort to get that independent evidence.

MS. IFILL: One of the things the president said today was that the idea that the U.S. can just sail to the rescue is overstated. Is he right about that?

MR. GJELTEN: Right. Well, I think that – I mean, when you consider that he has already definitively ruled out boots on the ground, the – you know, even if you did have some kind of mandate or legal foundation to do something, you’re talking about cruise missile strikes; you’re talking about, you know, air raids. That’s not going to do it.

So the United States is just not really in a position – particularly if you think about the reluctance of the military – to make a major difference on the ground in terms of the outcome of this conflict.

MS. IFILL: Let me read to you a tweet that Ambassador Rice, who’s now the national security adviser, Susan Rice –

MR. GJELTEN: Right.

MS. IFILL: – sent out this afternoon. She texted or whatever – someone did for her – what is Assad hiding – talking about Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. The world demands an independent investigation of Wednesday’s apparent CW –

MR. GJELTEN: Chemical weapons.

MS. IFILL: – chemical weapon attack, immediately. That’s pretty tough language. So is that what we’re reduced to, the national security adviser tweeting our displeasure?

MR. GJELTEN: You know, the one sort of promising development is that Russia is now sort of endorsing this call for the U.N. investigators to actually have access to those chemical weapon attack sites. And they are putting some pressure on the Syrian government. So, clearly, the administration is hoping that tough talk like this, with a little bit of help from Russia might actually move that investigation a little bit.

MS. IFILL: There was tough talk also from the new U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power.

MS. SIMENDINGER: Samantha Power, there’s obviously talk from the U.N. secretary general. There is – the president’s trying to build that coalition of folks who are willing to press. And what Tom is suggesting about Russia that’s important is Russia is, of course, an ally of Assad and his regime and an arms supplier. So to get – remember this relationship that the United States has put sort of on ice for a while with Russia and to be able to enjoin Russia to join this effort might be profitable in some ways that we don’t yet know.