Grandson of Galway ex-pats pulls Obama back from brink of Syrian strike

The grandson of Connemara parents is credited with playing a key role in pulling US President Barack Obama back from the brink of launching a massive US military strike on war-torn Syria over the weekend.

Denis McDonough, the White House Chief of Staff whose grandparents came from Connemara, reportedly had a major influence on President Obama’s approach to the crisis which would have pushed the world to the brink of disaster.

NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd reported that, while the President felt he had enough evidence to justify military action, ‘Obama changed his mind as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough’.

Under a headline that reads: “The White House walk-and-talk that changed Obama’s mind on Syria”, Todd reports on a lengthy conversation between the President and his Chief of Staff in the White House grounds last Saturday during which they discussed the situation in Syria. 

President Obama apparently believed that the United States had enough information to confirm that the Syrian Government used chemicals and nerve gas in an attack that killed over 1400 people last week.

And it appeared in Washington that President Obama favoured military action by the United States and was on a path towards ordering strikes against Syria – a power which the President has. 

According to the NBC News report “Obama had been leaning toward attacking Syria without a congressional vote for the past week, White House officials said. Obama was convinced he had the evidence to back up a strike and as a result dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to make a passionate case for U.S. action.

“But only hours after Kerry called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “a thug and a murderer” and accused his regime of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, Obama changed his mind as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the officials said”.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.