Alan Grayson: ‘They have no smoking gun that the attack was ordered by Assad’

Ezra Klein interviews Democrat Rep Alan Grayson, one of the most vocal opponents of military action against t Syria in the Democrat Party.   

From Wornblog

Alan Grayson is a Democratic congressman from Florida and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He’s also one of the House’s most vocal skeptics of striking Syria. We spoke on Friday. A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows:
Ezra Klein: Let’s begin at the beginning. Give me your broad thoughts on intervening in Syria.

Alan Grayson: The great uncovered story at this point is there’s no practical way for military action to significantly deter the use of chemical weapons. What I’m hearing from other members is that the efficacy isn’t there. There’s no connection between what’s being proposed militarily and what’s happened. This is weighing heavily on internal discussions among members. For people who have to vote on this, it’s another mismatch between means and end.

The ideal attack would be some kind of magical-wand attack where you eliminate the chemical warfare capability. But there is this practical fact that if you blow up a chemical weapon, you spread poison gas in the immediate vicinity. It’s even worse than an attack on a nuclear facility: Then there’s some risk radioactivity will spread. If you attack a chemical stockpile, it’s guaranteed it will spread.

EK: But the Pentagon knows that, right? My understanding of the target plan is that it focuses on military infrastructure: Things like rocket launchers and runways and aircraft. In theory, the idea is this is the infrastructure that delivers chemical weapons, but in practice, it’s punishing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by degrading his general military capabilities.

AG: Well, first you can see that’s not ideal. Talk to people in the public about this and say we’re not going to do anything to prevent a future chemical attack but do this other thing; you’ve lost them. But there are other problems:

One problem with that scenario is he has more-than-adequate resources. He completely controls Syrian airspace. He has enormous staggering stockpiles of ammunition collected over 41 years. He and Saddam Hussein were in some kind of competition to see who could roll up the biggest supply of munitions. Enormous resources there have been devoted for decades to getting the latest weaponry from the Russian. It’s actually a significant source of foreign exchange for the Russians at this point! So, there’s so much there that the idea that you can eliminate it with a few missiles and bombs is not right.
Then you run into the second problem, which is that the Russians will replace the weapons immediately. They’ve said it on the record. They’ve suggested they might even replace it with better stuff.

Third, the administration won’t do anything that will degrade Assad’s capability to the point where he’d be unable to withstand the attacks from al-Nusra, the radical fundamentalist group composed of al-Qaeda graduates. [President] Obama and [Secretary of State John F.] Kerry have specifically said in public that the purpose is not regime change. They’re not going to hit Assad so hard it would change the result of the war. Despite the fact they were backed into a corner by [Sen. John] McCain [R-Ariz.] to change the language of the resolution, it has not in any way altered the military plans. So, a) Assad has so much stuff, b) the Russians will replace it, and c) we don’t want to weaken him too much. Sometimes there is no solution to the equation.

EK: It seems to me that “c” is the biggest problem there. The kind of calibration required to hit Assad hard enough that he won’t use chemical weapons again and maybe will come to the negotiating table, but not so hard that he’s actually weakened in his civil war, seems to suggest you can use military force, which is a very blunt object, in a very precise way.

AG: It’s beyond calibration. It’s more like titration. You can’t do that in warfare. It doesn’t work that way. The one thing you can be sure of in warfare is you can’t be sure of anything. This is reminiscent of President [Lyndon B.] Johnson picking out individual bombing targets in the war in Vietnam.

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If Obama wants war with Syria he needs to produce smoking gun evidence that Basher al Assad was responsible.  So far we've seen nothing close to that.