QUESTION: In the event that a strike is decided upon and you take out certain, let’s say, runways or military facilities and so on, it would be just a punishment or would it be a la Desert Fox back in 1998 in Iraq? Or would it be something that is sustained to basically – like Libya, to overthrow the regime?
MR KIRBY: Said, you’re well ahead of any decisions, at least that have been made to date here, on the U.S. side. I can’t even begin to entertain that question. We still believe a diplomatic approach is the best one. Yes, inside the government, we continue to have conversations about options. Not all of those options, as I’ve said, revolve around diplomacy. It would be irresponsible for us not to think about other tools available to us to change the situation on the ground in Syria.
But we’ve also said that military options, whether they’re a no-fly zones, a safe zone, whatever you want to call them, they bear risk. They expend resources. And they’re certainly, just by dint of the fact that they’re military, are going to not de-escalate the tension, not going to bring down the violence necessarily. That doesn’t mean they’re off the table. It just means that, in consideration of them, we have to factor all of that in. But your question gets well, well ahead of where we are right now, and I couldn’t possibly answer it.