McCain warns of economic crisis as forces evacuate Damascus

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said any military action under consideration by the president is not aimed at ousting Assad. Rather, he said, it would be a punitive measure for violating the international ban on chemical weapons.

“The optimal result [of military action] would be to deliver a hard enough slap on Syria that they would never resort to any further use of chemical weapons, and a slap which would keep the door open to getting these parties back into negotiations,” Richard Murphy, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

“The administration is trying to calibrate which targets to select, and not shut the door to political progress, which is very, very slow in the case of Syria,” Murphy added. In doing so, the U.S. would certainly have to take into account the “very strong position” of Iran, an ally of Assad that had been the target of chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq war.

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