On Wednesday, President Barack Obama told PBS reporters that America could be threatened by Syrian chemical weapons in the event that the West does not intervene in that civil war. He said that, unchecked, Syrian chemical weapons could fall into the wrong hands and be “directed at us.” A CNN reporter reacted to that news by saying it was “very dubious” that the United States could be directly threatened by Syrian chemical weapons.
Obama told PBS reporters that the crisis in Syria represents a threat to American national security because Syrian chemical weapons could be directed at U.S. interests:
When you start talking about chemical weapons in a country that has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world, where over time, their control over chemical weapons may erode, where they’re allied to known terrorist organizations that, in the past, have targeted the United States, then there is a prospect, a possibility, in which chemical weapons that can have devastating effects could be directed at us.
CNN anchor asked Suzanne Malveaux asked Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jill Dougherty if the president was referring to the United States itself or American interests abroad or allies like Israel. Dougherty agreed that Obama was probably not talking about the United States when he said “us.”
“National interests can be affected by what happens to the allies of the United States,” Dougherty said. “And it is very dubious that Syria could ever launch some type of chemical weapons directly against the United States.”
Watch the clip below via CNN:
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