Obama faces scepticism in Congress over plans to attack Syria

The first week of US President Barack Obama's bid to build political unity on Syria by bringing in Congress ended in near disarray, with top cabinet officers and Pentagon officials providing murky or even contradictory responses to inquiries from frustrated lawmakers and reporters.

The high-drama hearings, stakeouts, speeches and briefings about the US military response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons last month raised more questions than they answered. All the clamour on Capitol Hill, at the White House and beyond left Americans uncertain about the costs, consequences and extent of a risky intervention that is still in the works.

Analysts and lawmakers across the political spectrum were openly sceptical that Obama and his aides could make good on their repeated pledges that a US strike would be of limited scope and short duration, likely delivered by Tomahawk cruise missiles and with no American troops in Syria.

"It's very difficult to hold the line at this kind of halfway position the president has proposed," said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department adviser under Obama who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"This is a very important step down a slippery slope, and it's unlikely to be the last step."

Despite Secretary of State John Kerry's assurances to Congress during two days of testimony that "the president is not asking you to go to war", a bipartisan consensus emerged that once the bombs start flying, all bets are off - especially in a country such as Syria, torn by two years of civil strife and, more broadly, in a region as volatile as the Middle East.

While Obama won a compromised victory with narrow passage of a war resolution by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senators from his own party defected.