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Official: White House seeks Syria response ‘just muscular enough not to get mocked’
The Hill ^

Official: White House seeks Syria response ‘just muscular enough not to get mocked’ By Justin Sink - 08/28/13 12:45 PM ET

A U.S. official briefed on the military options being considered by President Obama told the Los Angeles Times that the White House is seeking a strike on Syria “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”

“They are looking at what is just enough to mean something, just enough to be more than symbolic,” the official told the paper, giving credence to similar reports describing a limited military strike in the aftermath of last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack.

NBC News reported earlier this week that the administration would launch three days of missile strikes, while CNN cited a senior administration official saying that the White House wanted to conclude any action before the president departs for the G-20 summit next week.

The New York Times also reported that the initial target list drafted by the Pentagon had fewer than 50 sites. The Pentagon has moved four U.S. Navy destroyers off the Syrian coast, which can launch low-altitude cruise missiles at selected sites.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that no course of action had been decided upon, but that the administration was not seeking “regime change” with its response.

“It is not our policy to respond to this transgression with regime change,” he said.

In the U.K., foreign secretary William Hague said at a press conference that the government there was approaching the retaliation in Syria as a “very different situation from Iraq.”

“Our government is going about it in an entirely different way,” he said.

Meanwhile, Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi said Wednesday said his county would turn into a “graveyard of the invaders” if foreign powers intervened in its civil war.

The “colonialist threats” of Western powers “do not terrorize us because of the will and determination of the Syrian people, who will not accept being humiliated,” Halqi said, according to AFP.