Obama risks embarrassing loss in Congress

McClatchy reports:

President Barack Obama is taking a risk by asking Congress to approve airstrikes against Syria.

The potential payoff is that he’ll win the kind of vote that signals broad popular support, giving him a stronger hand in facing Syrian President Bashar Assad and perhaps other dictators later in such regimes as Iran.

But there are military and political risks in the process.

Militarily, a desperate Assad could use the time while Obama waits for a Congressional debate to launch another chemical weapon attack, either in his own country or elsewhere in the Middle East, turning a civil war into a regional conflict.