Natalie Gonnella
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As violence continues to escalate in Syria, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham today reiterated his calls for the US to take a greater stand against President Bashar Assad, including the potential use of military force.
Discussing the Assad government's "wholesale slaughter" against the Syrian people with CBS's Bob Schieffer, Graham urged the administration to take a bold approach to the situation, similar to recent action in Libya:
I think we need to turn our attention strongly to Syria with the regional cooperation like we have in Libya...Turkey is being overrun by Syrian refugees to put on table at the United Nations in an international way aid to the Syrian people. Humanitarian disasters are bound, what we did in Libya to protect the people against a rogue regime. If it made sense to protect the Libyan people against Qaddafi, and it did because they were going to get slaughtered if we hadn’t sent NATO in when he was on the outskirts of Benghazi. The question for the world is have we gotten to that point in Syria? And I think we may not be there yet but we’re getting very close. So if you really care about protecting the Syrian people from slaughter, now is the time to let Assad know that all options are on the table.
Graham continued that:
It has gotten to the point where Qaddafi’s behavior and Assad’s behavior are indistinguishable. The reason we went in to Libya is to protect the Libyan people from wholesale slaughter when they protested Qaddafi started killing them in the streets. He took his army, turned them on his own people. That’s exactly what’s happening in Syria. If we could have a power change, a regime change in Syria that breaks Syria from Iran, the world would be a much better place but it’s going to take regional and international cooperation to get there. But if you really care about the Syrian people, preventing them from being slaughtered, you need to put on the table all options including a model like we have in Libya.
Since March, over 1,400 people have reportedly been killed as a result of the regime's brutal crackdown against anti-government protests. Earlier today Syrian troops continued their attack on the northwestern city of Jisr al-Shughour, their latest attempt at reasserting Assad's authority.
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