Obama Says He Feels Responsible For The Situation In Syria

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President Obama said he feels responsible for what's happening in Syria and other situations around the world.

"There are places around the world where horrible things are happening and because of my office, because I'm president of the United States, I feel responsible," Obama said at his year-end press conference on Friday. "I ask myself every single day, is there something I could do that would save lives and make a difference and spare some child who doesn't deserve to suffer."

Obama also had harsh words for the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, and accused them of slaughtering civilians.

"We have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging and starving innocent civilians, Obama said. "Responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone: the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran. The blood for these atrocities are on their hands."

He said the Assad regime "cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy."

Obama said that the bloody civil conflict in Syria was "one of the hardest issues I've faced as president."

He said his biggest priority was to get tens of thousands of innocent civilians trapped in Eastern Aleppo out. He suggested that a short-term solution would be for Russia to be "willing to find some arrangement, perhaps in coordination with Turkey, whereby those people can be safe."

"Unfortunately we are not there yet because right now we have Russians and Assad claiming that basically all the innocent civilians who were trapped in Aleppo are out when international organizations, humanitarian organizations who know better and who are on the ground, have said unequivocally that there are still tens of thousands who are trapped and prepared to leave under pretty much any conditions," Obama said. "And so right now our biggest priority is to continue to put pressure wherever we can to try to get them out.

Obama called for an international observer force to oversee the situation and for an orderly evacuation and full access to humanitarian aid for those trapped in Eastern Aleppo.

He blamed Russia for repeatedly blocking the UN Security Council on these issues. He said the Syrian regime and its allies wanted to "obfuscate the truth."

"The world should not be fooled and the world will not forget," Obama said.

LINK: Obama Warns Russia That “We Can Do Stuff To You”

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