House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) on Wednesday argued that the U.S. must take action to knock out the Syrian government’s capability to use chemical weapons.
“The United States has lost the faith of the opposition,” Rogers said on “CBS This Morning.” “They even at one point turned down a meeting with the Secretary of State of the United States, they were so fed up. And our allies in the region are getting very nervous about us. If we’re ever going to have a diplomatic solution where this regime doesn’t get to the point where it uses mass quantities of chemical weapons, we’ve got to rebuild our credibility, and one way to do that is to remove their capability to use chemical weapons on civilians.”
Rogers said there is a “high probability” that a chemical agent was used in Allepo, Syria on Tuesday. Both the Syrian government and opposition accused each other of using chemical weapons in an attack that reportedly killed 25 people. Two U.S. officials said that there was no evidence that either side used chemical weapons, according to the New York Times.
Rogers added that the U.S. doesn’t need to commit boots on the ground in Syria to address the issue of chemical weapons, alluding to other military options. Asked about those options, Rogers said, “Well, I don’t want to talk about all of our capabilities, but we do have the ability to remove their capability of using these particular weapons.”
“My argument would be that if we know that their intention to use these weapons and don’t do anything about it, that is a stain on our national character,” Rogers continued. “So we’ve got a growing, bloody conflict. You have a regime that’s under pressure. There’s at least a high probability that they have used, either most recently or in the past, some amount of chemical weapons. This is the time to act. Don’t wait until we have 5,000 dead. That’s too late, and it would cause a humanitarian crisis like we haven’t seen before. Jordan’s refugee problem would go up, Israel would have problems.”
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