Kerry: U.S. will respond to ‘moral obscenity’ of Syria massacre

Secretary of State John Kerry left no doubt Monday that the United States believes Syria's Bashar Assad used chemical weapons to slaughter civilians last week and vowed that the United States will respond to that "moral obscenity."

"Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass," he said, in a barb likely meant for Syria and its patron Russia. "What is before us today is real and it is compelling."

Kerry, speaking to reporters at the State Department, described the attack in very personal terms, describing how he had watched the "gut-wrenching" videos of the dead and dying via social media. But he gave no details about when a decision on whether to use force in response to last week's massacre might come — or whether it would.

The secretary of state said the United States government and its allies were reviewing non-public information about the alleged attack and promised "we will provide that information in the days ahead."

"Make no mistake, President (Barack) Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people," Kerry warned. "Nothing today is more serious and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny."

The top U.S. diplomat offered no new public evidence to back up U.S. charges that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in an attack just outside Damascus that anti-Assad fighters claim might have killed more than 1,300.

Instead, he declared that shocking social media videos shared by the opposition had essentially made the world witness to the assault.

After a round of telephone diplomacy on Sunday, Kerry said, "I went back and I watched videos — videos that anybody can watch on social media — I watched them one more gut-wrenching time."

"As a father, I can't get the image out of my head, of a man who held up his dead child, wailing, while chaos swirled around," he said.

"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity," he underlined.

http://news.yahoo.com/kerry--u-s--will-respond-to-%E2%80%98moral-obscenity%E2%80%99-of-syria-massacre--193453624.html