NYT, WP: Obama Ready to Authorize Airstrikes on ISIL in Syria

Local Editor

US President Barack Obama is prepared to authorize air strikes in Syria as part of a strategy to battle Daesh [ISIL], two major US newspapers reported late Tuesday.

The New York Times and the Washington Post said Obama is willing to expand to Syria the campaign of airstrikes that the United States has so far limited to ISIL targets in Iraq over the past month.

In a prime-time address on Wednesday evening, Obama is to explain to Americans his strategy for "degrading and ultimately destroying the terrorist group," the White House said in a statement. People briefed on the president's plans described a long-term campaign far more complex than the targeted strikes the United States has used against al-Qaeda in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere.

On Tuesday, the president briefed Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate about his plans. Obama told them he believed he had the authority needed to order an expanded operation, though he would "welcome action by the Congress that would aid the overall effort," the White House statement said.

But Congress is divided on the need for a vote on military action before the midterm elections, and both sides appeared to be searching for a way to enlist congressional support without an explicit authorization of force. rebels who would fight ISIS - legislation that has been languishing on Capitol Hill.

Obama's speech to the nation, on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, is the culmination of weeks of anguished internal deliberations, followed by days of intense lobbying of allies by the president - at a NATO meeting in Wales, with Congress, and even over a three-hour dinner Monday night with members of the Democratic and Republican foreign-policy establishment.

On Wednesday, before the speech, the White House will send a delegation to meet with senators in a classified briefing. Among those going to the Capitol will be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey; the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olsen; and the deputy national security adviser, Antony J. Blinken.

Source: NYT, WP, Edited by website team