President Obama on Wednesday said the U.S. will investigate whether chemical weapons were used in Syria, where both the government and opposition forces have accused one another of using such weapons in an attack Tuesday.
“With respect to chemical weapons, we intend to investigate thoroughly exactly what happened,” Obama said at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. “Obviously in Syria right now, you have a war zone. You have information filtered out, but we have to make sure we know exactly what happened, what was the nature of the incident, what can we document, what can we prove? So I’ve instructed my teams to work closely with all of the countries in the region and international organizations and institutions to find out precisely whether or not this red line was crossed. I will note, without, at this point, having all the facts before me, that we know the Syrian government has the capacity to carry out chemical weapon attacks, we know that there are those in the Syrian government who have expressed a willingness to use chemical weapons, if necessary, to protect themselves.”
