Obama trying to Get Congress to back him on Syria involvement

Syrian rebels urged President Bashar al-Assad’s officers to defect, seeking to swing momentum in the country’s civil war during a lull created by President Barack Obama’s decision to consult Congress on military strikes.

As Obama’s top aides embarked on a campaign to win support for an attack on Syria, a key group fighting to topple Assad said it’s already seeing benefits, including a faster flow of arms, because of the international outrage at his alleged use of chemical weapons. Meanwhile Russia reiterated its skepticism about what the U.S. says is the evidence against Assad, while Obama’s Arab allies stopped short of endorsing unilateral U.S. action. Oil extended declines.

Syrian officers who abandon Assad will get guarantees that “we will protect them and their families,” Mohammed Almustafa, media coordinator for the Free Syrian Army’s leadership, said by phone today from an undisclosed location on the Syria-Turkey border. He said there’s been a surge in defections, and a parallel increase in weapons supplies for the rebels in the past two weeks, with Turkey and “some Arab countries” being especially supportive. The claims couldn’t be verified.

Some U.S. legislators, such as Arizona Senator John McCain, have pushed for a more aggressive involvement in the Syrian civil war, aimed at removing Assad, and say limited strikes to punish the use of chemical weapons, of the kind Obama and Kerry are advocating, won’t achieve anything.

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Others are against all intervention. “I don‘t see American interests involved on either side of this Syrian war,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a potential contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said yesterday.

Barack Obama may not be the only president that Congress hears from on the Syria issue.

Russia President Vladimir Putin has proposed sending a delegation of Russian lawmakers to lobby the U.S. Congress against a military strike on Syria.

"Russian television showed Putin meeting on Monday with Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the upper house, and Sergei Naryshkin, the lower house speaker, at his residence outside Moscow," reports the Associated Press.

A divided U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday approved a resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria by a vote of 10-7, with one senator merely voting "present."

The panel's action clears the way for a vote on the resolution in the full Democratic-controlled Senate, likely next week. The Republican-led House of Representatives must also pass a version of the measure before it can be sent to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Obama is asking Congress to back his call for limited U.S. strikes on Syria to punish President Bashar al-Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians. - reuters