On September 10, 2013, the Obama Administration had three senior officials testify before the House Committee on Armed Services and float their idea of attacking Syria.
With today’s renewed calls coming from the General Staff and the usual Senate and cable TV bombasts for the use of ever more missiles and bombs, a review of the rationale put forward a year ago, and some of the questions raised then, can help inform the current debate. What follows is all [except brackets] from transcripts of the Congressional Record.

FROM THE STATEMENT OF SEC. OF STATE JOHN KERRY TO THE COMMITTEE: … The instant reaction of a lot of Americans …is, “Whoa, we don’t want to go war again, we don’t want to go to Iraq, we don’t want to go to Afghanistan. We have seen how those turned out.” I get it. … But … There will be no American boots on the ground. Let me repeat, no American boots will be on the ground. What we are talking about is a targeted, limited…
We have a huge national interest in containing all weapons of mass destruction ... None of us are … asking for a long-term military … solution to what is happening … But … [i]n a world of terrorists and extremists, we would choose to ignore those risks at our peril …

FROM THE STATEMENT OF SEC. OF DEFENSE CHUCK HAGEL TO THE COMMITTEE: I also wholeheartedly support … the use of force … and we cannot allow terrorist groups in authoritarian regimes to mistakenly believe that they can [hurt]… US troops or America’s friends and partners in regions without severe consequences. … [O]ur military objectives …would be … targeted, consequential, and limited ... We will not send America’s sons and daughters to fight another country’s civil war. We are not contemplating any kind of open-ended intervention or an operation involving American ground troops.

FROM THE STATEMENT OF GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: The President has made the determination that it is in our national interest to respond … with limited military force …

Some Questions from Committee Members & the Witnesses’ Responses:

HON. WALTER JONES, R-NC: General, … innocent people will be killed … that is a given in war … Is that an assumption that I can assume would be correct?”
GEN. DEMPSEY: You can make that assumption because war is an imperfect science, to be sure. …
SEC. HAGEL: We will be back here revisiting this issue at some point. [T]he next time …it may well be about direct American casualties and the potential security of this country. … There is no “operation perfect.” I can’t guarantee anything.
HON. LORETTA SANCHEZ, D-CA.: Secretary Kerry…. [M]any in the administration have placed great emphasis on the moral and the legal dimensions of the issue. I believe you called the attack on civilians “a moral obscenity” ….
Would you please define the circumstances in which you believe deliberate targeting of civilians will lead to an American intervention? Why not in every case? … Is the administration committing itself to military action in every case … where civilians are deliberately targeted in internal conflict…?
[D]o you agree enforcement of … international law of war must comply with the …UN Charter….? Because that Charter ? which is a duly ratified Treaty of the United States ? prohibits use of armed force against other nations except with a UN Security Council resolution, or where imminent national self-defense warrants military action. … No one … has argued that the US is under imminent threat. So can military action be legally justified under the UN Charter? And is enforcement of … international law our responsibility even when we are not threatened and when the UN refuses to authorize force ? even when it goes against our own law? And do you support vigilante action for other nations to enforce international law, or just us?
SEC. KERRY: I think that there is no hard and fast rule, but there are legal justifications under certain circumstances with respect to international treaties ….
CONG. SANCHEZ: Secretary Kerry, don’t you believe … that the UN Charter takes more into account…?
SEC. KERRY: … I regret that the circumstances we find ourselves in are such that the three principal mechanisms for UN justification don’t ideally fit this situation.

-- John LaForge for Nukewatch, nuclear watchdog and environmental action group in Wisc.