Defense Secretary Jim Mattis refused to be pinned down Tuesday about whether the use of chlorine gas as a weapon would trigger a military response against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In his first Pentagon news conference since becoming Pentagon chief, Mattis said the use of chemical weapons, which violates international law, would not be tolerated in Syria.
But when pressed repeatedly, Mattis refused to say whether chlorine gas, which is not a banned substance but has been weaponized by Syria, qualifies as a chemical weapon.
On Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer created some confusion when he said the “sight of people being gassed and blown away by barrel bombs,” could “hold open the possibility of future action.”
After his news conference, Mattis spoke informally with reporters and said he had a reason for not wanting the clear that up, implying that he did not want to signal to Assad where the U.S. red line might be.
But Mattis also indicated no appetite for widening the U.S. military role in Syria, calling the U.S. cruise missile strikes a singular event, and not a “not a harbinger of some change in our military campaign.”
“The goal right now in Syria … is focused on … breaking ISIS, destroying ISIS in Syria,” Mattis said.
Mattis called Assad’s use of chemical weapons “a separate issue that arose in the midst of that campaign,” which he said was addressed “militarily. But the rest of the campaign stays on track, exactly as it was before Assad’s violation.”
Mattis also made clear he holds Syria, not Russia, most responsible for the sarin nerve gas attack that killed as many as 100 Syrian civilians last week.
“I have personally reviewed the intelligence, and there is no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself,” Mattis said.
Asked why chemical attacks on civilian warranted a U.S. military response, but not conventional bombing that has killed hundreds of thousands more men, women and children, Mattis said, “I think there is a limit to what we can do, and when you look at what happened with this chemical attack, we knew we could not stand passive on this.”
But Mattis said with the U.S. focus on breaking ISIS, the U.S. could not enter, “full-fledged, full bore into the most complex civil war probably raging on the planet.”
Meanwhile, Gen. Joseph Votel, head of the U.S. Central Command, also gave new numbers on the accuracy of the cruise missiles, saying 57 of 59 hit their targets. Previously, U.S. military briefers said the accuracy rate was 100 percent.
