The United States and its allies have concluded that the government of Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons in Syria's protracted civil war, leading President Barack Obama to broaden aid — including military support — to opposition groups.

The intelligence community concluded with "high confidence" that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons — including the nerve agent sarin — "on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year."

"The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete," said Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes.

The use of chemical weapons crosses the so-called "red line" first established by Obama last year, which he said would prompt the administration to alter its posture. The administration said on Thursday that Obama had decided to broaden support to the Supreme Military Council, a principal opposition group in Syria, and Rhodes said that assistance "will include military support."

Rhodes declined to specify what kind of military support the United States would provide to the SMC, but noted that Obama had not decided to establish a no-fly zone, as some Republicans have demanded.

Rhodes cited the "great and open-ended cost" associated with establishing a partial or complete no-fly zone over Syria, seeming to suggest that the prospect of such action, for now, was unlikely.

He added: "We're looking at a wide range of types of support we can provide both to the political opposition and to the SMC on the ground. I'm not going to be able to detail every single type of support that we are providing, but it's suffice to say it's important to note that it is both the political and the military opposition that will be -- that is and will be receiving U.S. assistance."  

Slideshow: Syria uprising

/

A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

Reuters reported that Obama administration officials have said that any arming of the rebels would likely be limited to small arms and ammunition rather than anti-aircraft weapons.

Obama first laid out his "red line" in August.

"We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized," Obama told reporters at that time. "That would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

The president noted earlier this year that there had been preliminary indications of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. But he resisted taking action until he said the intelligence community could conclude with certainty that such weapons had actually been used by Assad.

To that end, Rhodes said that the United States and its allies had begun acting in April to assist the SMC by providing increased support in response to Assad crossing a "red line."

But Rhodes also noted that the United States had prepared for "multiple contingencies" — military, diplomatic, or economic — to help put pressure on the Assad government.

"We're going to make decisions about further actions on our own timeline," he said, later adding: "We're looking at a wide range of types of support we could provide."

The topic of Syria is sure to loom large next week as the leaders of the world's largest economies gather for the G8 conference in Ireland.

The Obama administration had come under pressure from hawkish Republicans in Congress to take a more active role in ousting the Assad regime, either by directly arming rebels, or by enforcing a partial or complete no-fly zone in Syria.

“I applaud the president’s decision and I appreciate it," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one such hawk, said Thursday on the Senate floor.

"But the president of the United States had better understand that just supplying weapons is not going to change the equation on the ground [or] the balance of power. These people – the Free Syrian Army – need weapons, heavy weapons to counter tanks and aircraft, they need a no-fly zone, and Bashar Assad’s air assets have to be taken out and neutralized. We can do that without risking a single American airplane."

Said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio: "It is long past time to bring the Assad regime's bloodshed in Syria to an end. As President Obama examines his options, it is our hope he will properly consult with Congress before taking any action."

It’s not just Republicans who have directly or indirectly put pressure on the president for more action.  Former President Bill Clinton reportedly told McCain in a closed-press event Wednesday that he agreed with the Arizona senator about the need for Obama to act more forcefully to support Syrian rebels, saying Americans expect their presidents to be able to “see down the road” and set aside public opinion.

Slideshow: The lives of Syrian rebels

NBC News

People resisting the army of President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria cope with loss and prepare for fighting.

Launch slideshow

But there are delicate considerations involved in the administration's decision to become more involved. Namely, the U.S. is worried about navigating a thorny relationship with Russia, which has been resistant to apply much pressure to the Assad regime.

Some U.S. officials have also expressed concern that arms supplied to rebels could fall into the hands of fighters who could eventually pivot to use those very arms against U.S. interests or allies.

And then there is the issue of scarce political appetite among most Americans for increased military involvement in Syria following more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just 15 percent of Americans said in June's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that they favor U.S. military action in Syria; only 11 percent want to provide arms to the opposition. A plurality of respondents -- 42 percent -- prefer to provide only humanitarian assistance, and 24 percent believe the U.S. shouldn't take any action.

NBC's Mark Murray and Carrie Dann and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• 'Long overdue': Reactions to White House announcement on Syria
• Kids wage war in Syria, UN report says
• Analysis: A battle may be won, but war will rage on for Syria's Assad

This story was originally published on Thu Jun 13, 2013 5:17 PM EDT

On Thursday, the White House announced that the U.S. government plans to provide support to opposition groups in Syria after determining that President Bashar Assad's regime has, in fact, used chemical weapons against rebel groups.

Political leaders started praising the decision almost immediately.

In a joint statement, U.S. Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “A decision to provide lethal assistance, especially ammunition and heavy weapons, to opposition forces in Syria is long overdue, and we hope the President will take this urgently needed step."

The two, however, said that "providing arms alone is not sufficient," and urged the president to "rally an international coalition to take military actions" against Assad.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was also pleased with the decision and had a call for further action.

"It is long past time to bring the Assad regime's bloodshed in Syria to an end," said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. "As President Obama examines his options, it is our hope he will properly consult with Congress before taking any action."

And House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., released a statement saying, "I am pleased that President Obama's Administration has joined the growing international chorus declaring that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, crossing the red line drawn by the president last August."

But Rogers doesn’t want the assistance to stop there: “As I called for in a USA Today op-ed earlier this week," Rogers said, "the United States should assist the Turks and our Arab League partners to create safe zones in Syria from which the U.S. and our allies can train, arm, and equip vetted opposition forces."

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army — an opposition group made up mostly of defected Assad regime troops — was "happy."

"The leadership of the Free Syrian Army in Damascus and its countryside said it is happy about the  American statements on the situation in Syria," spokesman Musab Abu Kudada told NBC News.

And while saying that the U.S. should have taken this step earlier, Kudada warned, "We hope that the U.S. administration is aware of its responsibilities towards the Syrian people after these statements."

NBC News' Ammar Cheikh Omar in Antakya, Turkey, contributed to this report

George Frey / Getty Images

A new National Security Agency data center is seen in Utah. The secretly obtained information processed at such "data farms," much of it from overseas, has allies questioning U.S. practices.

The United States is facing concern from allies over its programs that track phone and Internet messages around the world.

The European Parliament planned Tuesday to debate the spy programs revealed by Eric Snowden, who worked for contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and whether they have violated local privacy protections.

EU officials in Brussels pledged to seek answers from U.S. diplomats at a trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting in Dublin later this week.

The global scrutiny comes after revelations from Snowden, who has chosen to reveal his identity. Snowden has fled to Hong Kong in hopes of escaping criminal charges as lawmakers including Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., accuse him of committing an "act of treason" that should be prosecuted.

Officials in Germany and the European Union issued calm but firm complaints Monday over two National Security Agency programs that target suspicious foreign messages — potentially including phone numbers, email, images, video and other online communications transmitted through U.S. providers. The chief British diplomat felt it necessary to try to assure Parliament that the spy programs do not encroach on U.K. privacy laws.

A senior U.S. intelligence official on Monday said there were no plans to scrap the programs that, despite the backlash, continue to receive widespread if cautious support within Congress. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive security issue.

The programs were revealed last week by The Guardian in the U.K. and The Washington Post in the U.S.

One of the NSA programs gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records to search for possible links to known terrorist targets abroad. The other allows the government to tap into nine U.S. Internet companies and gather all communications to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

The Obama administration now must deal with the political and diplomatic fallout of the disclosures. Privacy laws across much of Western Europe are stricter than they are in the United States.

"It would be unacceptable and would need swift action from the EU if indeed the U.S. National Security Agency were processing European data without permission," said Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian member of the European parliament and a leader in the Alde group of liberal parties.

Additionally, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters Monday that Chancellor Angela Merkel would question Obama about the NSA program when he is in Berlin on June 18 for his first visit to the German capital as president. In Germany, privacy regulations are especially strict, and the NSA programs could tarnish a visit that both sides had hoped would reaffirm strong German-American ties.

In London, British Foreign Secretary William Hague was forced to deny allegations that the U.K. government had used information provided by the Americans to circumvent British laws. "We want the British people to have confidence in the work of our intelligence agencies and in their adherence to the law and democratic values," Hague told Parliament.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was open for a discussion with allies about the spy programs. His administration has aggressively defended the two programs and credited them with helping stop at least two terrorist attacks, including one in New York City.

Related:

• Where will unmasked NSA leaker go?
• Other famed leakers in recent history
• Source of NSA leaks comes forward

The specter of the bogus claims that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction — used to justify war —  hangs over the debate on how world leaders will respond to the possibility that Syria deployed chemical weapons.

Obama administration officials say they know they have to deal with the Iraq WMD legacy and will need definitive proof to persuade Russia, Syria’s only remaining ally in the U.N. Security Council, that Bashir Assad’s regime used deadly sarin gas against the opposition in the country’s bloody two-year civil war.

One senior U.S. defense official told reporters Thursday, "We have seen very bad movies before" — referring to previous instances where initial intelligence was proven wrong.

President Barack Obama has called the use of chemical weapons by Assad, a "red line" that if crossed would be a "game-changer" in the U.S. response to Syrian aggression.

The White House said Thursday that the U.S. believes "with some degree of varying confidence" that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons — specifically the nerve agent sarin — against its own people.

A letter from the White House to members of Congress said the assessment was based on "physiological samples" but called for a United Nations probe to corroborate it and nail down when and how they were used.

"We are continuing to do further work to establish a definitive judgment as to whether or not the red line has been crossed and to inform our decision-making about what we'll do next," a White House official said.

"All options are on the table in terms of our response," the official added.

U.S. intelligence agencies say that blood samples from two attacks last month in Aleppo tested positive for sarin.

Still, those sources say there is “no absolute proof” deadly agents were deployed by Assad's troops.

Administration sources tell NBC News they still have not been able to connect all the dots to prove who actually used the chemical weapons, whom they used them against, or when or where they were used. 

Secretary of State John Kerry discussed Syria with his Russian counterpart in Brussels last week, but the Russians remain unpersuaded to take action against the Syrian government, and the international community is demanding hard evidence to prove Syria is using chemical agents.

The proof, however, could be difficult to obtain.

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said that the United Nations can't take action based on intelligence from one country, said a team of experts assembled to investigate chemical weapons in Syria remains "grounded" in Cyprus because the Assad regime has blocked it from entering the country.

The U.N. has repeatedly called on Syria to let its inspection team in.

"The fact-finding team is on standby and ready to deploy in 24-48 hours," the U.N. spokesman said. 

Syria's information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said in an interview with Russian TV that the government has not and will not use chemical weapons and blamed potential evidence of their existence on "armed terrorist groups," the state news agency reported.

The chemical weapons investigation and counterclaims recall the experience in Iraq, where U.N. inspection teams were hampered in their effort to find weapons of mass destruction amid U.S. intelligence reports suggesting they were being hidden by Saddam.

It was the alleged existence of the so-called WMD the George W. Bush administration used to justify war in Iraq.

Despite a massive search by U.S. forces, no weapons of mass destruction ever turned up.

Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz.,  was swift to react to the latest reports that Syria used chemical weapons, saying, “I think it's pretty obvious that red line has been crossed." He said the administration should now consider a military approach in Syria he has been advocating for two years that falls short of boots on the ground.

“That is to provide a safe area for the opposition to operate and  to establish a no-fly zone and provide weapons to the people in the resistance who we trust,” McCain said.

A White House official called for a high level of scrutiny, but also caution.

"Given our own history with intelligence assessments, including intelligence assessments related to weapons of mass destruction, it's very important that we are able to establish this with certainty and that we are able to present information in a way that is airtight," the official said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related: White House: US believes Syrian regime used chemical weapons

When President George W. Bush made the decision to invade Iraq, there was no way to know the lasting ramifications of his choice. But a decade later, it's clear that the conflict not only transformed his own political party, but all of American politics.

Republicans found their edge on national security matters eroded, laying the groundwork for President Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House. The Iraq War, which was waged for nearly nine years, changed Washington by empowering the Democrats to take on the role of the party of counter-terrorism and defense.

On the night of March 17, 2003, in a nationally televised speech, Bush said he was giving Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave their country or else face an American invasion.

Saddam had “harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda,” Bush said. “The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”

To the Iraqi people, Bush pledged, “The day of your liberation is near.”

Two nights later Bush was back on the air at 10:16 p.m., telling the American people that the invasion had begun. But he warned that the campaign “on the harsh terrain” of Iraq “could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.”

Ten years later, Bush’s warning has a haunting resonance for Americans, perhaps especially for those in his own party.

Preemptive invasions and wars of national liberation have gone out of favor with Americans, including many members of Bush’s party. Some of the disenchantment is due to the cost of Iraq operations which, as of Jan. 2012, the Congressional Budget Office estimated to be $767 billion.

Edge over Democrats destroyed
A new generation of House Republicans, many of them elected after Bush left office in 2009, has voted for spending cuts – even in the face of warnings that they will hurt Pentagon operations. The post-Bush Republicans put debt reduction ahead of overseas engagement.

They’re wary of any “sustained commitment” of the kind that Bush called for in 2003. Some, led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, are fearful of the concentration of power in the presidency that the Iraq War and the war against al Qaeda have brought about.

In the 2004 campaign, Bush conflated the danger of Saddam Hussein with the danger of terrorist attacks on the United States. Exit poll data from the 2004 election showed that more than seven out of 10 voters were worried that there would be another major terrorist attack in the United States. Of that group, Bush won 53 percent, while Democratic opponent John Kerry won 46 percent.

Fifty-five percent of voters in 2004 considered the war in Iraq to be part of the war on terrorism, and of that group, four out five voted for Bush.

Bush had an 18-point advantage over Kerry on the question of whom voters trusted to deal with terrorism.

By 2006, the cost of the Iraq insurgency had destroyed whatever illusion of post-9/11 Republican electoral ascendancy there may have been. Conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru said last week at a debate at the American Enterprise Institute on the future of the Republican Party, “You could make the argument that the beginning of the end of Republican dominance in Washington was the Iraq War, at least a stage of the Iraq War, 2005-2006.”

The outcome of the 2006 midterm elections was a disaster for Bush’s party, as Republicans lost 30 seats in the House and six in the Senate, losing control of both chambers.

The exit polls from the 2008 and 2012 elections showed how thoroughly the Iraq War had destroyed the GOP edge over the Democrats on national security and foreign policy.

In 2008, more than three out of five voters disapproved of the Iraq War. Although 2008 Republican candidate Sen. John McCain was critical of Bush’s conduct of the war and especially of Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, McCain was identified with the war and was the foremost proponent of the Iraq troop surge in 2006. His Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, won 76 percent of those who disapproved of the Iraq War.

In the 2012 exit poll, of the relatively small group of the voters – only 5 percent – who chose foreign policy as the most important issue facing the country, 56 percent voted for Obama and only 33 percent for Republican Mitt Romney.

When asked who they’d trust to handle an international crisis, 42 percent said Obama, 36 chose Romney and 13 percent said both.

By losing the 2008 and 2012 elections, Republicans in effect handed responsibility for national security to a Democratic president for eight years, giving Obama the chance to show that a Democratic commander-in-chief can be just as or even more assertive than Bush was in using drones to kill suspected terrorists. Having Obama in charge means that it’s now a Democratic president who invokes the White House's inherent constitutional authority to wage war, with minimal consultation from Congress. Whether Democratic presidential contenders in 2016 will continue this robust assertion of presidential war-making power is unclear.

Ron Edmonds / AP file photo

President Bush holds a press conference in the Rose Garden with members of his Cabinet. From left to right, Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John E. McLaughlin, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and FBI Director Robert Mueller Monday, Aug. 2, 2004, in Washington.

'War weariness'
In the wake of the GOP defeats in 2008 and 2012, the party is defined at least partly by Rand Paul, whose father Ron was one of only six Republican House members to vote against the Oct. 10, 2002 authorization to use military force against Iraq.

Former Bush administration official Peter Wehner, who described himself as part of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party, said at the AEI debate last week that there is a concern in his wing of the GOP about “a kind of war weariness because of Iraq and Afghanistan … and I think Rand Paul tapped into it in a very creative and politically intelligent manner” with his filibuster against the possibility of Obama using drones to kill American citizens who may be terror suspects in the United States.

Paul also rails against U.S. aid to Egypt, where anti-American protests have taken place.

Wehner said he disagrees with Paul’s foreign policy views, but predicted a spirited intra-party debate over U.S. role in the world. “It may up being an acrimonious one because I think there are a lot people – including sort of traditional conservatives and a lot of people on talk radio – who had been strong supporters of President Bush and the Iraq war and the effort in Afghanistan – who spoke quite favorably about Rand Paul. I think that symbolized a kind of shift in thinking.”

Joining that debate the morning after Paul’s filibuster was McCain. Paul’s speculation about Obama using drones in the United States had “done a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them believe that somehow they are in danger from their government,” McCain said. “They are not. But we are in danger from a dedicated, longstanding, easily replaceable leadership enemy that is hell-bent on our destruction….”

Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, potential 2016 Republican presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida warned that Americans “need to engage in the world…. We can't be involved in every armed conflict. But we also can't be retreating from the world….”

A divided party might have a hard time winning the next election. But divided as Republicans are now, so Democrats were at the height of the Bush era, and yet they won the 2008 election.

The weekend before American troops invaded Iraq, Kerry, then a contender for the 2004 Democratic nomination, faced a heckling reception from some of the activists at the California Democratic Party’s convention in Sacramento as he tried to minimize the importance of his vote for the resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq.

“It’s disappointing to me that he gave President Bush preemptive war power without really having it be an issue,” said one of the Democrats heckling Kerry, Tim Steed, who was then 22 and chairman of the Orange County Young Democrats, who supported Kerry’s rival Howard Dean. Iraq “is a very divisive issue for our party and that is a shame,” Steed said.

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 3:43 AM EDT

President Obama will visit Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan this spring, the White House announced Tuesday.

It will be his first trip to Israel as president. Republicans have been hotly critical of Obama for not having visited before now.

The planned trip came after a Jan. 28 talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said. 

"The start of the president's second term and the formation of a new Israeli government offer the opportunity to reaffirm the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Israel and to discuss the way forward on a broad range of issues of mutual concern, including Iran and Syria," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. 

Obama did travel to Israel as a senator in July of 2008 during his run for president.

NBC's Shawna Thomas contributed to this report.

Days after Israel’s air strike on Syria prompted a new round of fiery rhetoric from Hezbollah and objections from Russia, Vice President Biden will meet with key figures in the Syrian conflict while visiting Europe this week, senior White House officials said Thursday.

Biden will attend the 49th Munich Security Conference Saturday, where he will have bilateral meetings with the United Nations envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, as well as the head of the Syrian Opposition Council, Moaz al-Khatib. But White House officials suggested the meeting would not result in any additional U.S. involvement in the conflict beyond the humanitarian assistance it has been providing.
 
“I think the vice president, in his meetings with the leadership of the Syrian opposition as well as other international partners, is going to be discussing how we can continue to provide humanitarian assistance,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, on a conference call with reporters previewing the visit.

Biden will also talk with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov -- a meeting that will take place just days after Russia rebuked Israel for launching a military strike in Syria.

And in the meeting with Lavrov, Rhodes said Biden will stress that it is “very important for the Russians to put their full weight into political transition in Syria.”

The conversation will also likely touch on Russia’s human-rights record, which came to a head when the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions and denies visas to Russians accused of human rights abuses and corruption. 

Passage of the act set off a series of retaliatory actions from both the Russian and U.S. governments that could complicate U.S. efforts to “reset” the countries’ relationship.

“We have real differences, and we don't hide them,” said Tony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser. “But going forward, there is a real potential not only to work through those differences, but to continue the agenda that we set over the past four years.”

In addition to Biden's stop in Germany, where he will meet one-on-one with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the vice president also will be meeting with the heads of France and the United Kingdom. Syria will figure into all of those discussions, said Blinken, who will soon move roles to serve as the president’s deputy national security adviser.

President Barack Obama said he would have to rethink his current opposition to U.S. military engagement in Syria if the regime there were to use or move its chemical and biological weapons.

The president told NBC's Chuck Todd that he couldn't be "absolutely confident" that the stockpiles of weapons possessed by Bashar al-Assad's regime were completely secure.

"What I'm saying is we're monitoring that situation very carefully," Obama said in a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room.

But if the Assad regime were to use its weapons stockpiles, or alternatively, move it around, Obama suggested military action could be on the table.

"We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized," the president said. "That would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

Earlier this month, when asked about contingency planning for the Syrian conflict, Secretary Hillary Clinton drew the "red line" at only the use of chemical weapons.

"Both the minister [Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu] and I saw eye to eye on the many tasks that are ahead of us, and the kinds of contingencies that we have to plan for, including the one you mentioned in the horrible event that chemical weapons were used. And everyone has made it clear to the Syrian regime that is a red line for the world," Clinton said at the time.

But today, he made sure to emphasize that all major players in the region have been informed of where his line falls.

"We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that's a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons," he said. "That would change my calculations significantly."

Obama also made a point of saying that the issue of chemical weapons doesn’t just concern Syria and the United States, but also allies in the region including Israel.

While the international community would still like to see a political solution to the violence in Syria, Obama said, “at this point the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant."

The U.S. will most likely provide even more monetary humanitarian assistance to help those fleeing the Syrian conflict on top of the $82 million the government has already given. According to USAID, the United Nations “estimates that approximately 2 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, approximately 1 million people are internally displaced, and more than 140,000 people have fled to the neighboring countries of Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.”