Obama REFUSES to rule out striking Syria without approval of Congress as it's revealed he faces a huge loss in House vote

Obama has said he has the authority to act on his own, but a national security aide said Friday morning that he has no 'intention' to do so

Congressional staffers told MailOnline that if the less-Obama-friendly House splits along the same lines as the Senate, Obama's proposal will fail

Obama annoucned he will address the nation next week to make his case to a reluctant public

The G-20 summit in Russia adjourned without reaching any conclusion about how to handle Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons

Vladimir Putin, one of Assad's last remaining allies, said he and Obama disagree on whether outside forces should intervene in Syria's civil war



Sen. John McCain warns: 'There would be an impeachment of the president' if Obama sends ground troops into Syria

Obama's deputy national security adviser concedes that 'we don't expect to have Russian cooperation'



Obama won't say whether he will bomb Syria if Congress withholds its support, but a national security aide says it's not his 'intention' to do so. He said he would do his best to sell his Syria plan to the American people on Tuesday, but acknowledged that his arguments might fall flat

President Obama today refused to rule out attacking Syria without the backing of Congress, as new polls show he faces a crushing defeat in any vote in the House of Representatives.



An ABC News reporter at the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, tried to pin him down and get a 'direct response' to the question of what he will do if his gamble seeking congressional approval fails.

'I'm not going to engage in parlor games now ... about whether or not it's going to pass,' he said.

'You're not getting a direct response.'



But while he acknowledged knowing his Syria gambit with Congress was 'going to be a heavy lift' all along, the president insisted that he didn't 'put this before Congress just as a political ploy or as symbolism.'

'I put it before Congress because I could not honestly claim that the threat posed by Assad's use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians and women and children posed an imminent, direct threat to the United States.'



Obama also announced that he will make his case on Syria to the American people again on Tuesday in a national address.

His comments in St. Petersburg were his final statement at the economic summit, which adjourned without reaching any conclusions about how world leaders should deal with an increasingly hostile and self-destructive Syria.



Obama's speech on Tuesday will make a final pitch to the American people, whom he hopes will begin supporting his plan to cripple Syria's access to its chemical weapons stockpiles.



'It's conceivable at the end of the day I don't persuade a majority of the American people that it's the right thing to do,' Obama conceded Friday. 'And then each member of Congress is going to have to decide.'



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Putin and Obama butted heads over Syria during the G-20 economic summit. Russia's arms contracts with Syria's Bashar al-Assad have made the two nations allies, even as Assad allegedly uses chemical weapons against his own people in a bloody civil war

Obama is headed for a showdown with Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, where a war-powers resolution appears -- as Capitol Hill staffers concede -- 'dead in the water'

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that it would be 'counter-productive' to destabilize the Middle East with U.S. strikes on Syria|

Say 'cheese': Russia's President Vladimir Putin, center front, stands with G-20 leaders during a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia on Friday, where Syria's civil war became the hot topic of conversation

Polls show that few Americans agree that it's in America's national interest to get involved in a civil war that has already left 100,000 people dead and turned another 2 million into refugees.

Obama's continued lobbying came as staffers to Republican and Democratic congressmen told MailOnline they believed the vote in the House was, so far, 'dead in the water.'

But a senior aide today added to the confusion over Obama's strategy.



White House deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken, told National Public Radio on Friday morning that although Obama has the power to act on his own, he has no plan to pull the trigger if he loses a Capitol Hill vote.

It is 'neither his desire nor his intention to use that authority, absent Congress backing him,' Blinken said.

G-20 leaders arriving for a 'family picture' include heads of state and economic ministers from Italy, Brunei, France, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, Kazakhstan, the European Commission and the United Nations

Elections have consequences: Obama's staff at the G-20 conference served him coffee in paper cups emblazoned with the presidential seal

Even as public opinion tilts dramatically against him, Obama said in Russia that America has acted militarily in unpopular ways in the past when it was 'the right thing to do.'

How Obama could be the first president to wage a war that Congress hasn't backed

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole authority to declare war, and there is no precedent for a U.S. president unleashing American military might after Congress refuses to endorse it.

But few occupants of the White House have bothered to seek the legislative branch's permission in advance for the entirety of what they were doing with U.S. armed forces. President Truman engaged U.S. forces in a conflict in South Korea without Congress by arguing that it was a 'police action' authorized by the United Nations. That produced more than 54,000 American casualties. Lyndon Johnson used the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a narrowly drawn permission slip for responses to a handful of minor naval skirmishes, to justify the entire Vietnam War. George W. Bush premised the first Gulf War on weapons of mass destruction that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was supposed to have possessed. Congress ultimately grew wearier of funding that was as evidence of the weapons failed again and again to materialize. When Ronald Reagan sent U.S. Marines into Grenada in 1983, the rationale he gave Congress was that armed conflicts in the island nation were jeopardizing the safety of American medical students. Bill Clinton sent U.S. forces into Somalia in 1992 with a non-combat humanitarian mission. By 1994 the country's civil war had grown to encompass areas where American troops were stationed, and they were all withdrawn. Congress had a chance to authorize a military mission, but the House and Senate fought over competing versions of a resolution and it never made it to Clinton's desk.

Clinton's 1999 air strikes against Serbia were justified at the time with a somewhat dubious claim that he was participating in a NATO mission to save the lives of ethnic cleansing victims in Kosovo. Just two years ago, Barack Obama leveraged a resulution from the United Nations – not Congress – to back his decision to order bombing raids of Libya. On a few occasions, members of Congress have given their assent after a president has boxed them in by taking action on his own. In 1846, for instance, President James Polk sent troops to the Mexican border without consulting Congress, in order to muscle Mexico into selling Texas to the U.S. Congress later authorized a declaration of war, but only after a small contingent of Mexican army regulars crossed the U.S. border and massacred American troops who went to investigate.



He cited coming to Great Britain's defense in World War II, and attacking Kosovo during the Clinton administration.

If Obama has already decided to leave the final decision on Syria to Congress, his Tuesday address may be a foregone conclusion.

Senior staffers to Republican and Democratic members of Congress told MailOnline that while the president's war powers resolution may pass in the Senate, it's hopelessly lost – 'big time, end of story,' said one – in the House of Representatives.

Senate leaders formally filed the resolution with the chamber's clerk on Friday, signaling that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to put it to a vote, perhaps as soon as Monday.



Three Republican aides put the number of Republicans who will support the president at somewhere between 45 and 55, out of the 233 GOP members.



One, a senior staffer to a Foreign Affairs Committee member, speculated that the measure won't even make it out of the committee for a vote of the full House.

'It's by no means a done deal,' the aide said. 'If a quarter of the 25 "R"s [Republicans] go for it and the same proportion of "D"s [Democrats] bail on Obama as we saw in the Senate committee, it's going to fail.'

'And if it does get to the floor, and the same numbers hold, the thing goes down by – let's say – a 235-200 margin.'

With 435 voting House members, a minimum of 218 'yes' votes are required to pass any legislation.

A Senate vote on a war powers resolution – one that's likely to pass – is expected before then, setting up a showdown between the White House and Republican leaders on the other side of the U.S. capitol.

But before the Senate can act, two of its members have proposed softening Congress' position toward Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, both Democrats, are circulating an alternative resolution calling on Assad to sign a chemical-weapons ban within 45 days in order to avoid a military strike.

'This will go down as one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in U.S. history,' predicted a staffer to another House Foreign Affairs Committee member. 'Support is dwindling every day, and phone calls into our Hill and district offices are running about 100-to-1 against taking military action of any kind.'

The move by Manchin and Heitkamp may be seen as a political escape-hatch for the president if Americans' sentiments toward a unilateral strike against Assad turn uglier.

A congressional aide to a Democratic member of the Foreign Affairs committee said that many of the president's usual supporters are wavering.

'When the CBC [the Congressional Black Caucus] is your only solid base, and even they won't go out and sell the idea for you, you're in real trouble,' the aide said.

Cock of the walk: Putin holds most of the cards in this international diplomatic showdown, and used his position as host of the G-20 to muscle Obama. 'We stuck to our guns' on Syria, the Russian president told reporters.

Obama said he might involve America in Syria's civil war despite a flood of public opinion against him, citing other times where the U.S. acted in unpopular conflicts because it was 'the right thing to do'

Democratic senators Joe Manchin (L) and Heidi Heitkamp (R) are floating a proposal that would give Assad 45 days to swear off of chemical weapons. The idea would also give Obama a face-saving exit



But Obama said he and his staff plan to 'systematically' speak with every single member of Congress in the coming days, with an eye toward convincing them that going after Assad's chemical weapons will be a 'limited' military operation that won't involve U.S. ground troops.

However, MailOnline has reported that a little-known Defense Department assessment from early 2012 determined that 75,000 American troops would be required to secure the chemical weapons themselves, and the facilities where they are made.

Republican Sen. John McCain said Thursday night following a town hall meeting in Phoenix, Arizona that Obama could face impeachment if he decides to send ground troops into Syria.

“The fact is Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people,' McCain told KFYI radio . The conflict is spreading … The Russians are all in, the Iranians are all in, and it’s an unfair fight.'

'And no one wants American boots on the ground. Nor will there be American boots on the ground because there would be an impeachment of the president if they did that.'

The G-20 meeting, typically a gathering devoted to business and economic issues, turned to discussion of international military intervention to stop Syria's civil war

McCain also slammed Obama for his handling of the Syrian crisis.



'The president has bungled this beyond belief, announced that he's going to strike and then say, "No, I'm going to the American Congress." I can’t believe how badly he's mishandled this issue,' said the exasperated senator.

French president Francois Hollande told reporters that France and some other nations attended the summit 'wanting as large a coalition as possible' to take action against Syria, but didn't say if any more countries had pledged their support.

'To do nothing would mean impunity' for Assad, Hollande said. 'We must take our responsibility' and act.

Conflict continues to rage in Syria, as men were pictured fleeing flames caused by a bombing in Syria's Idlib province

Devastation: A video obtained from the Shaam News Network showed the bomb's destructive aftermath

The video, authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, showed smoke rising from bombardments and clashes between Free Syrian army fighters and government forces in the town of Binnish

Obama's aides traveling with him in Russia have been careful to keep expectations low

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, told reporters that Obama is hoping to secure the approval of his peers, and not necessarily their pledges of military assistance.

'We don't expect every country here to agree with that position,' Rhodes said Friday outside the summit, adding that 'we don't expect to have Russian cooperation.'



Russia had warned earlier on Friday that missile or bomb attacks on chemical-weapons storage sites could release toxic chemicals and ultimately allow the chemical agents to fall into terrorists' hands.

'This is a step toward proliferation of chemical weapons not only across the Syrian territory but beyond its borders,' read a statement from the Russian government.

War and Peace: President Barack Obama was greeted by women in aristocratic dress at a party Thursday night whose theme of decadence clashed with the G-20 summit's key topics of poverty and war Civil: The dinner table of the G20 summit at Peterhof Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where the G20 summit took place

Obama surprised journalists assembled for the G-20 by announcing that he had held an unscheduled but 'candid and constructive' meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government is one of Assad's last remaining strong allies.

The discussion, Putin said, was 'substantial,' with the men agreeing Syria's civil war could only be resolved politically.

But on the question of whether the Washington should engage Damascus militarily, the two leaders couldn't be further apart.

'I don't agree with his arguments and he doesn't agree with mine,' Putin said Friday, 'but we are listening to them and trying to analyze them.'

The State Department on Friday ordered nonessential U.S. diplomats to leave Lebanon, a nation that borders Syria. The travel warning included instructions for those staffers to leave Beirut, and urged private American citizens to leave the country.



