Poll finds most Americans oppose even limited strike
Only 1 in 5 Americans believe that not responding to chemical weapons attacks in Syria would embolden other rogue governments, rejecting the heart of a weeks-long White House campaign for U.S. military strikes, an Associated Press poll concluded Monday.
The survey of 1,007 adults nationwide found that most Americans oppose even a limited attack on Syria despite Obama administration warnings that inaction would risk national security and ignore a gruesome humanitarian crisis. And a slim majority — 53 percent — say they fear that a strike would lead to a long-term U.S. military commitment in Syria.
The survey reflects a U.S. public that is tired of Mideast wars after a dozen years of military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. It undercuts political support Obama is hoping to garner as he seeks congressional authorization this week to strike the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Released Monday, the poll was conducted Sept. 6-8 by GfK Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved land line and cellphone interviews with 1,007 adults across the country. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.
IS IT SYRIA OR OBAMA? GOP LEANS ANTI-WAR
The Republican Party may be turning antiwar.
Some of the shift is driven by visceral distrust of President Obama, who has been proposing military strikes against Syria. Some is driven by remorse and the Iraq war. And some is fed by the isolationist and libertarian strains of the grass-roots Tea Party movement.
Plenty of Republicans, including key congressional leaders, support Obama's push for military action against the Syrian regime for allegedly using chemical weapons.
But among constituents, rank-and-file members of Congress and many in the party's echo chamber, the trend is decidedly antiwar.
In 2002, just seven Republicans in Congress opposed giving Bush authorization to attack Iraq. Now, nearly 170 oppose or lean toward opposing Obama's request for authorization to strike Syria, according to news media tallies.
Clinton throws support to Obama
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton endorsed President Obama's attempt to win congressional approval of a military strike in Syria, saying Monday that any move by the Assad regime to surrender its weapons to international control would be an "important step."
But Clinton cautioned that the removal of its chemical weapons stockpile should not be an "excuse for delay and obstruction" by Syria.
Clinton met with Obama at the White House as the administration sought to sway skeptical lawmakers in Congress to approve a plan to punish Syria's government for last month's chemical weapons attack.
The former first lady offered her first public statements on the Syrian crisis, adding her voice to a series of Obama allies who have supported the military action.
"I will continue to support his efforts and I hope the Congress will as well," Clinton said at forum on wildlife trafficking, an issue that was one of her priorities at the State Department.
report: Assad rejected use
Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders to use chemical weapons, according to a weekend report in a German newspaper.
The widely read Bild am Sonntag reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence that Assad did not approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds in Damascus' eastern suburbs.
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