In an emotional plea in favor of a U.S. strike against Syria, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday called for lawmakers to support military action and scheduled the first vote on an authorization resolution for Wednesday — Sept. 11.

“The evidence of the Assad regime ... using outlawed nerve agents against its own citizens is clear and very convincing,” the Nevada Democrat said from the Senate floor.

The procedural vote on the Syria resolution will notably occur on the twelfth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, when more than 3,000 people were killed in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania by Islamic extremists on Sept. 11, 2001. Should it pass, the Senate will likely proceed to a final vote later in the week.

Reid, who declared his support for President Barack Obama’s call for a military strike in August, said he watched video on Monday morning showing the aftermath of the alleged chemical attack in Syria that the administration says justifies the use of force.

“I will never get that out of my mind,” he said. “Boys and girls, some who look like teenagers, retching and spazzing their arms. …These poisons kill the kids first. Their little bodies can’t take this.”

The videos are part of a campaign led by the Obama administration to convince the American public and lawmakers to support U.S. action. On Monday night, Obama is scheduled to appear on several television news programs, and he will deliver a national address from the White House on Tuesday. Meanwhile, surrogates and top-level aides continue to brief members of Congress about the ongoing situation in the region.

In his nearly 20-minute address on the Senate floor, Reid argued that it was the nation’s duty to act, and he invoked the tragedy of the Holocaust and quoted from Dante’s Inferno to help make his case.

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality,” Reid said, adding later: “In World War II, six million Jews and tens of thousands of Gypsies, disabled people, gay people and political dissidents were murdered. Never again? Now we’re faced with that choice again.”

The resolution faces significant opposition from lawmakers in both chambers of Congress who remain unconvinced that the United States should get involved militarily in Syria’s two-year civil war.

Breaking her recent silence on Syria, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on Monday that Russia’s proposal to put Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal under international control could be “an important step” but warned that it cannot be “another excuse for delay or obstruction.”

“The Assad regime’s inhuman use of weapons of mass destruction against men, women and children violates a universal norm at the heart of our global order and therefore it demands a strong response from the international community led by the United States,“ Clinton said.

Clinton, speaking at a White House forum on battling illegal trafficking in wildlife, said she had just come from a meeting with President Barack Obama. Her remarks were her first since Syria's alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on Assad's opposition.

“If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control,” as proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia, she said, “that would be an important step.”

“But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction — and Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account,” she said.

Echoing top Obama aides, Clinton underlined that the discussion over the Russian-backed proposal “only could take place in the context of a credible military threat by the United States to keep pressure on the Syrian government as well as those supporting Syria, like Russia.”

The issue of American military action is a delicate one for the former New York senator, who is widely reckoned to be the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016: Her 2008 bid faltered in part because of her support for the war in Iraq.

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Note: Why bother to issue an opinion this late, Mrs Clinton?

Kerry vows ‘unbelievably small’ strike on Syria

Secretary of State John Kerry, who has implicitly compared Syrian President Bashar Assad to Adolf Hitler, said on Monday that the United States aims to carry out an “unbelievably small” strike at Assad’s forces.

“We will be able to hold Bashar Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war,” Kerry said at a press conference in London with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

“That is exactly what we’re talking about doing — unbelievably small, limited kind of effort,” Kerry said.

And the top U.S. diplomat got his wires crossed on another American military operation, saying that then-President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 strike on Tripoli aimed to “send a message” to Moammar Gadhafi for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. But that attack occurred in 1988.

In making the case for action against Assad, Kerry has repeatedly invoked the specter of pre-World War II appeasement of Hitler. In congressional hearings, Kerry has alluded to the Nuremberg trials of high-ranking Nazis as well as to the tragedy of the St. Louis.

President Barack Obama has launched an unprecedented media campaign to win over skeptical Americans to the cause of striking Syria. Obama was to sit down on Monday for interviews with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and PBS before delivering an address to the nation on Tuesday night.

And Kerry's predecessor, Hillary Clinton, expressed her support for Obama during an appearance at the White House on Monday afternoon, and was expected to do so again Tuesday in a speech in Pennsylvania. Clinton, widely thought to be considering a presidential run in 2016, lost the Democratic nomination to Obama in large part because of her support for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The secretary of state’s remarks came a day after White House chief of staff Denis McDonough took to the Sunday news shows to make the case for war with Syria.

Previewing Obama’s speech to the nation on Tuesday night, McDonough said "what he`ll tell the country is this is targeted, which is targeted, limited, consequential force.”

“He`ll also tell the country what this is not. This is not Iraq. This is not Afghanistan. This is not an extended air campaign like in Libya. This is a targeted effort,” McDonough said.

The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Wednesday on authorizing a military strike, and could proceed to a final vote later in the week.

Kerry’s remarks drew criticism from one prominent Republican member of the House of Representatives. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Kerry’s remarks were part of the administration’s “confusing message” as it tries to convince deeply skeptical lawmakers to vote in favor of giving Obama authorization to use military force against Syria.

The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale — an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.

For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid.

But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.

As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.

Others weren’t as lucky. Tax lien purchasers have foreclosed on nearly 200 houses since 2005 and are now pressing to take 1,200 more, many owned free and clear by families for generations.

Investors also took storefronts, parking lots and vacant land — about 500 properties in all, or an average of one a week. In dozens of cases, the liens were less than $500.

Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home. His debt had snowballed to $4,999 — 37 times the original tax bill. Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies.

“This is destroying lives,” said Christopher Leinberger, a distinguished scholar and research professor of urban real estate at George Washington University.

Officials at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue said that without tax sales, property owners wouldn’t feel compelled to pay their bills.

“The tax sale is the last resort. It’s also the first resort — it’s the only way in the statute to collect debt,” said deputy chief financial officer Stephen Cordi.

But the District, a hotbed for the tax lien industry, has done little to shield its most vulnerable homeowners from unscrupulous operators.

Foreclosures have upended families in some of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. Houses were taken from a housekeeper, a department store clerk, a seamstress and even the estates of dead people. The hardest hit: elderly homeowners, who were often sick or dying when tax lien purchasers seized their houses.

One 65-year-old flower shop owner lost his Northwest Washington home of 40 years after a company from Florida paid his back taxes — $1,025 — and then took the house through foreclosure while he was in hospice, dying of cancer. A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home.

Other cities and states took steps to curb abuses, such as capping the fees, safeguarding houses owned by the elderly or scrapping tax sales altogether and instead collecting the money themselves.

“Where is the justice? They’re taking people’s lives,” said Beverly Smalls, whose elderly aunt lost her home in Northeast Washington. “It’s just not right.”