when is a "red line" not a "red line"

[DrLeftover]

When it is drawn by the White House

Despite a new U.S. intelligence community assessment that the Syrian regime likely used chemical weapons on its own people, the White House is still waiting for more evidence before deciding whether Bashar al-Assad has crossed President Barack Obama's "red line."

The White House scrambled Thursday to set up a conference call with reporters following Thursday morning's news that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded with varying levels of confidence that there has been small-scale use of sarin, a deadly nerve gas, inside Syria, most likely by the Syrian regime. Secretary of State John Kerry told lawmakers Thursday that the assessment referenced two instances of chemical weapons use in Syria.

A senior White House official said on the conference call that the intelligence community's assessment was not enough to determine that President Obama's red line regarding U.S. intervention in Syria has been crossed.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/04/25/white_house_we_don_t_know_if_syria_red_line_has_been_crossed

 

[Evil Eye]

It's more of a gradient.

 

[DrLeftover]

.... or something.

Despite evidence that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against its people, President Obama today said that the United States will not intervene in the conflict until both the administration and the international community can establish that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons. “We don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them, we don’t have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened,” he told reporters.

Even if those facts were established, the president — who previously said the use of chemical weapons would constitute a “red line” — was more cautious today about whether even definitive proof of their use would be sufficient to change his administration’s calculus in the region. “It would cause us to rethink the range of options that are available to us,” he said.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/346989/obama-talks-syria-benghazi-100-days-presser