Obama: I Didn't Set a Red Line

“I didn’t set a red line,” Obama said. “The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent, and passed a treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated, in a piece of legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act, that some of the horrendous things happening on the ground there need to be answered for.”
“So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what’s happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn’t something I just kind of made up. I didn’t pluck it out of thin air. There’s a reason for it.”

And the people in Syria and the Assad regime should know that the President means what he says when he set that red line. And keep in mind; he is the one who laid down that marker. He’s the one who directed that we provide this information to the public. And he’s the one who directed that we do everything we can to further investigate this information so that we can establish in credible, corroborated, factual basis what exactly took place.