First Read: “The authorization vote is going to live — for years and years. That’s what happened with the Iraq authorization vote in 2002. It didn’t hurt Democrats immediately (after all, John Kerry won the Democratic nomination in ’04 after voting for the authorization). But it came back to bite Democrats — most notably Hillary Clinton — in 2007-2008. It’s a reminder that the true consequence of the vote could be in the long term.”

Meanwhile, Greg Sargent notes the “consensus emerging from the media coverage today is that
Congressional passage of authorization for the use of force in Syria has
grown somewhat more likely.”

Wyoming U.S. Senate candidate Liz Cheney (R) said she would not vote to attack Syria if she were in the U.S. Senate, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reports.

Cheney said she could not support military action against Syria because President Obama “has failed to develop a plan for intervention with defined goals” and has taken “an amateurish approach to national security and foreign policy.”

The Obama administration “is considering putting the Pentagon in charge of arming and training moderate rebel forces in Syria, a move that could help expand the effort significantly beyond the limited scope of the current Central Intelligence Agency program,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The move would substantially revamp one of the administration’s most secretive and controversial undertakings in the 2½-year-old civil war.”

David Hawkings points out that “only one of the top five members of the bipartisan congressional hierarchy still sits on the fence about launching a punitive strike against Syria: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.”

“McConnell looks to be taking as much time as he can. He’s weighing his political considerations back home, where an isolationist stance would provide clear short-term benefit, against the pressures of his leadership role at the Capitol, where he’s spent almost three decades as a Republican voice for a hawkish defense posture and an interventionist foreign policy.”

The Washington Post has a nice interactive chart that tracks how many lawmakers favor, oppose or are undecided on authorizing the use of military force against Syria.

A new Pew Research survey finds President Obama “faces an uphill battle in making the case for U.S. military action in Syria. By a 48% to 29% margin, more Americans oppose than support conducting military airstrikes against Syria in response to reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.”

Key findings: “Just 29% of Democrats favor conducting airstrikes against Syria while 48% are opposed. Opinion among independents is similar (29% favor, 50% oppose). Republicans are more divided, with 35% favoring airstrikes and 40% opposed.”

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds 59% oppose U.S. missile strikes in Syria, far more than the 36% who support them.

“President Obama did not write the red line. History wrote the red line decades ago.”

— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by the New York Times, on the need to attack Syria over its use of chemical weapons.

House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor “said they will vote in favor of authorizing President Obama to use military force in Syria, a significant win for the White House, which is seeking to punish the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons on civilians,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Said Boehner: “I’m going to support the president’s call for action. I believe that my colleagues should support this call for action.”

Fareed Zakaria:
“Whatever your views on the larger issues, it’s hard not to conclude
that the administration’s handling of Syria over the last year has been a
case study in how not to do foreign policy.”

Charlie Cook: “Putting aside the substantive policy question of whether we should or
should not punish Syria for its apparent use of chemical weapons with a
surgical and proportionate attack…what if he just changed his mind? Are
president’s allowed to second-guess themselves and change their minds if
they conclude that a previous or tentative decision was made in error?”

“Yes, I saw the classified documents yesterday. They were pretty thin.”

— Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), quoted by The Hill, after a briefing on the Obama administration’s evidence that Syria used chemical weapons against its own people.

Washington Post: “The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.”

“A rejection, a vote against that resolution by Congress, I think would
be catastrophic because it would undermine the credibility of the United
States and the president.”

— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by Roll Call, on the resolution to attack Syria over its use of chemical weapons.

“The stakes of the Syria vote couldn’t be higher for President Obama: If Congress doesn’t back him up, his already troubled second term would be dealt another blow in the twin arenas of domestic and foreign politics,” Politico reports.

“That’s why some Republicans and Democrats think the president risked too much in asking Congress to authorize strikes on Syria that Obama believes are within his power to order unilaterally. And it’s why the White House is going into overdrive this week to try to sway a skeptical Congress into the war column.”

Said one senior House Democrat: “This could be the biggest miscalculation of his presidency.”

Wonk Wire: Obama seeking overly broad mandate on Syria.

“The Obama administration began a full-press campaign on Sunday for Congressional approval of its plan to carry out a punitive strike against the Syrian government,” the New York Times reports.

“The lobbying blitz stretched from Capitol Hill, where the administration held its first classified briefing on Syria open to all lawmakers, to Cairo, where Secretary of State John Kerry reached Arab diplomats by phone in an attempt to rally international support for a firm response to the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that leading lawmakers “dealt bipartisan rejection” to Obama’s “request to strike Syrian military targets, saying the best hope for congressional approval would be to narrow the scope of the resolution.”

Roll Call notes that after a classified briefing “not a single member seemed to think a resolution authorizing force against the war-torn nation could pass at the present time.”

“I think it’s at least 50/50 whether the House will vote down involvement in the Syrian war. I think the Senate will rubber stamp what Obama wants but I think the House will be a much closer vote.”

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), in an interview on Meet the Press.

Secretary of State John Kerry said that “fresh laboratory tests show that Sarin nerve gas was used in an Aug. 21 attack in Syria that killed more than 1,400 people, the first time that U.S. officials have pinpointed what kind of chemical weapon was used,” the Washington Post reports.

“A stroll around the White House grounds with his top adviser on Friday evening changed President Obama’s mind about getting Congress to sign off on a military strike in Syria,” senior White House officials told NBC News.

“Obama had been leaning toward attacking Syria without a congressional vote for the past week… But a growing number of Congressional members were beginning to question the administration’s strategy by the end of the week. And an NBC News poll released Friday morning showed that nearly 80% of Americans agreed that the president should seek approval in advance of taking military action… Officials said Obama also was influenced by Thursday’s lively debate in the House of Commons.”

“Following Obama’s Saturday address, during which he announced he had decided the United States ‘should’ take military action in Syria and also decided to seek Congressional approval, administration officials clarified to The Daily Beast that they can’t rule out the president might act even if Congress fails to authorize the action of using American military force in Syria. Officials declined to speculate whether Congress would vote to authorize military action or not when it comes back to Washington.”

A senior State Department official tells Fox News “the president’s decision to take military action in Syria still stands, and will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes next week to approve the use of such force.”

White House officials told BuzzFeed that Obama “wasn’t giving the legal power to authorize the Syria attacks back to Congress, leaving open at least the possibility that Obama could strike after the Congress decides not to authorize strikes.”