Administration now says 'very little doubt' Assad used chemical weapons on Syrian civilians A top Obama administration official says there is "very little doubt" the Syrian government last week used a chemical weapon on civilians, killing at least 100 people. The official said Sunday that U.S. intelligence officials made the assessment based on "the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured and witness accounts." The official said the White House also thinks Syrian President Bashar Assad and his forces are denying United Nations investigators immediate access to the site of the reported chemical weapons attack Wednesday in the Damascus suburbs to give the evidence time to degrade. The Syrian government reportedly said Sunday it will allow U.N. inspectors to visit the site. However, U.S. officials think any evidence of an attack has already been too degraded. The administration statement follows a meeting Saturday between President Obama and his National Security Council that concluded with the White House saying the administration was still "gathering facts." The official spoke Sunday on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he thinks the president, with congressional backing, will respond soon with military action. "I think we will respond in a surgical way," Corker said, ..." something that gets their attention, that causes them to understand that we are not going to put up with this kind of activity." The reports of thousands killed or stricken by chemical weapons last week is the latest allegation about such tactics in the Middle East country's roughly 2-year-long civil war. Obama said last year that the use of chemical weapons by Assad would "cross a red line." In addition to the president holding the meeting Saturday, he spoke with British Prime Minister David Cameron. The White House meeting was attended by at least 15 members of the president's security council, including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, but it was unclear who was in the Oval Office. However, U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy has already sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.