Well, for the last several days President Obama and his entire national security team
have been reviewing the situation in Syria.
And today I want to provide an update on our efforts as we consider our response to the
use of chemical weapons.
What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world.
It defies any code of morality.
Let me be clear.
The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent
bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity.
By any standard, it is inexcusable.
And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable.
The meaning of this attack goes beyond the conflict on Syria itself.
And that conflict has already brought so much terrible suffering.
This is about the large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilized world long
ago decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that agree on little
else.
There is a clear reason that the world has banned entirely the use of chemical weapons.
There is a reason the international community has set a clear standard and why many countries
have taken major steps to eradicate these weapons.
There is a reason why President Obama has made it such a priority to stop the proliferation
of these weapons, and lock them down where they do exist.
There is a reason why President Obama has made clear to the Assad regime that this international
norm cannot be violated without consequences.
And there is a reason why no matter what you believe about Syria, all peoples and all nations
who believe in the cause of our common humanity must stand up to assure that there is accountability
for the use of chemical weapons so that it never happens again.
Last night, after speaking with foreign ministers from around the world about the gravity of
this situation, I went back and I watched the videos -- the videos that anybody can
watch in the social media, and I watched them one more gut-wrenching time.
It is really hard to express in words the the human suffering that they lay out before
us.
As a father, I can't get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child,
wailing while chaos swirled around him, the images of entire families dead in their beds
without a drop of blood or even a visible wound, bodies contorting in spasms, human
suffering that we can never ignore or forget.
Anyone who could claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated
needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass.
What is before us today is real, and it is compelling.
So I also want to underscore that while investigators are gathering additional evidence on the ground,
our understanding of what has already happened in Syria is grounded in facts, informed by
conscience and guided by common sense.
The reported number of victims, the reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured,
the firsthand accounts from humanitarian organizations on the ground, like Doctors Without Borders
and the Syria Human Rights Commission -- these all strongly indicate that everything these
images are already screaming at us is real, that chemical weapons were used in Syria.
Moreover, we know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons.
We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets.
We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places
where the attacks took place.
And with our own eyes, we have all of us become witnesses.
We have additional information about this attack, and that information is being compiled
and reviewed together with our partners, and we will provide that information in the days
ahead.
Our sense of basic humanity is offended not only by this cowardly crime but also by the
cynical attempt to cover it up.
At every turn, the Syrian regime has failed to cooperate with the U.N. investigation,
using it only to stall and to stymie the important effort to bring to light what happened in
Damascus in the dead of night.
And as Ban Ki- moon said last week, the U.N. investigation will not determine who used
these chemical weapons, only whether such weapons were used, a judgement that is already
clear to the world.
I spoke on Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem, and I made it very clear to him that
if the regime, as he argued, had nothing to hide, then their response should be immediate:
immediate transparency, immediate access, not shelling.
Their response needed to be unrestricted and immediate access.
Failure to permit that, I told him, would tell its own story.
Instead, for five days the Syrian regime refused to allow the U.N. investigators access to
the site of the attack that would allegedly exonerate them.
Instead, it attacked the area further, shelling it and systematically destroying evidence.
That is not the behavior of a government that has nothing to hide.
That is not the action of a regime eager to prove to the world that it had not used chemical
weapons.
In fact, the regime's belated decision to allow access is too late and is too late to
be credible.
Today's reports of an attack on the U.N. investigators, together with the continued shelling of these
very neighborhoods, only further weakens the regime's credibility.
At President Obama's direction, I've spent many hours over the last few days on the phone
with foreign ministers and other leaders.
The administration is actively consulting with members of Congress, and we will continue
to have these conversations in the days ahead.
President Obama has also been in close touch with the leaders of our key allies, and the
president will be making an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate
use of chemical weapons.
But make no mistake: President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who
would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people.
Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny.
Thank you.