Kerry: Arabs Offered to Pay for US Invasion of Syria

Quickly Denies Plans to Invade Syria

As the Obama Administration in general, and Secretary of State John Kerry in particular, attempt to foist a war against Syria on the American public, discussion of the enormous costs are become part of the debate.

Kerry dodged the question of the cost of the attack officials promise would be extremely limited, but did so by revealing that Arab nations have offered to pay the entire cost of a full US ground invasion.

Kerry tried to spin this as proof that the international community is “dedicated” to the war, but then hastily backtracked after he realized that a full-scale ground invasion wasn’t supposed to be on the table.

“That is not in the cards and nobody is talking about it,” Kerry then insisted, saying that everyone is “talking about taking seriously getting this job done.”

The puzzling claim follows Kerry’s statement yesterday that he didn’t want to rule out sending ground troops into Syria, which he insisted then too wasn’t explicitly being considered. The statements suggest that turning this “limited,” do-nothing war into an Iraq-style occupation is not only among the options, but has gone far enough that the administration has had discussions with other nations on paying for it.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.