The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado. For locals, by locals. Sign up today!
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet supports President Barack Obama’s plan that calls for limited strikes against the Syrian government, the Democrat told the Denver Post editorial board this week.
Bennet will attend an intelligence briefing today as officials learn more about the situation in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is accused of being complicit in a chemical weapons attack last month that killed at least 1,400 of his citizens, including roughly 400 children. Bennet told the Post’seditorial board that “This is about picking your least bad outcome. I don’t think there’s any conceivable way that Syria ends well…. We’re going to have to figure out how to do it in a limited way that doesn’t entangle the United States for months or years in Syria.”
That's only $1 per issue!
President Obama has blamed al-Assad for the chemical weapons attack that killed civilians, though the Syrian government has denied responsibility. Obama earlier delayed an anticipated strike in favor of broader congressional support for action, but the president hasn’t ruled out the possibility he would unilaterally order an attack even if Congress rejected the idea.
The website Politico listed Colorado’s other senator, Mark Udall, among a list of Democrats and one independent who are “officially undecided or possibly opposed” to the Syrian strikes. In a vote Wednesday in the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Udall’s first cousin, New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, voted against a resolution that would support military action against Syria.
“I want to repeat that I am horrified [at] what Bashar al-Assad has done to his own people,” Tom Udall, a Democrat, said in explaining his vote, but added that “I still believe this proposal is the wrong course of action for the United States and its military. I am voting no because this policy moves the United States toward greater involvement in the Syrian civil war and an increasing regional conflict.”
—Image courtesy of Shutterstock