The verdict is in.
While Britain’s Parliament voted to not move ahead with military retaliation in Syria, President Obama is prepared to continue his plans for a strike.
According to the NYT:
The negative vote in Britain’s Parliament was a heavy blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, who had pledged his support to Mr. Obama and called on lawmakers to endorse Britain’s involvement in a brief operation to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for apparently launching a deadly chemical weapons attack last week that killed hundreds.
The vote was also a setback for Mr. Obama, who, having given up hope of getting United Nations Security Council authorization for the strike, is struggling to assemble a coalition of allies against Syria.
But the faltering support isn’t deterring the president and his administration. The U.S. is more prepared than ever.
Pentagon officials said that the Navy had now moved a fifth destroyer into the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Each ship carries dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles that would probably be the centerpiece of any attack on Syria.
And although officials are still saying that the president hasn’t made a final decision, all indications suggest that the strike will come soon, after the U.N. investigators sent to observe the area where the chemical attacks took place leave the country.
They are scheduled to leave as early as Saturday.
Meanwhile, someone claiming to be Hafez Assad, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s 11-year-old son, wrote a Facebook post that dared America to attack Syria.
“I just want them to attack sooo much, because I want them to make this huge mistake of beginning something that they don’t know the end of it,” part of the post reads.
But the authenticity of the writer’s identity is still being debated. There are, however, several clues that indicate the post is genuine. For one, many of the “Likes” are from family members and children of senior members of the Assad government. Check out the post, below:
Real or fake? You be the judge. But in any case, it looks like we need to brace ourselves for what’s coming next.
