If you’re concerned about the talk of chemical weapons being used in the Syrian civil war, this piece by Dan Murphy in the Christian Science Monitor is useful for separating known facts from dangerous speculation. With Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) calling for military intervention, things are ramping up.
“I have made clear that the use of chemical weapons is a game-changer,” Obama said Wednesday during a speech in Israel. “And I won’t make an announcement today about next steps because I think we have to gather the facts.”
We have to gather the facts, but some facts are already known.
Video footage and eyewitness accounts suggest that if a chemical agent was used in a missile attack on Khan al-Aasal that reportedly killed 31 people and wounded more than 100, it was most likely a riot-control agent designed to cause irritation, which is not generally lethal.
“In the end, all I can say with confidence is that whatever the conventional or non-conventional munition was, it was not a CW [Chemical Weapons] agent as defined by the CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention],” says Charles Blair, senior fellow for state and non-state threats at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.
The Assad regime has asked the United Nations to investigate, presumably because they know that no chemical munitions have been used (at least, not by them). Yet, we have our lawmakers jumping the gun.
On Tuesday night, Rep. Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, took to CNN to declare he was mostly convinced that chemical weapons had been used.
“I have a high probability to believe that chemical weapons were used,” he said. “We need that final verification, but given everything we know over the last year and a half, I … would come to the conclusion that they are either positioned for use, and ready to do that, or in fact have been used … we need to step up in the world community to prevent a humanitarian disaster we haven’t seen since Halabja 25 years ago in Iraq, where they killed 30,000 people with chemical weapons.”
Those assertions were not backed up by an offered evidence, nor was the method by which he had determined a “high probability” explained. Wolf Blitzer, the host of the show that Representative Rogers appeared on, did not challenge his assertions or follow up by asking for evidence, moving quickly to ask Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, if she agreed with Rogers. She said she did.
“I agree with the comments that Chairman Rogers has made. We hear all this in a classified session, this is highly classified, we have been advised to be very careful with what we say. I’m told that the White House has been briefed the same thing that we have been briefed. What I said earlier is that the White House has to make some decisions in this. I think the days are becoming more desperate, the regime is more desperate, we know where the chemical weapons are. It’s not a secret that they’re there and I think the probablities are very high that we’re going into some very dark times and the White House has to be prepared.”
So, let’s look at this. Carl Levin is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and John McCain is the former chairman and former ranking member on that committee. Mike Rogers is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Diane Feinstein is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And they are all bullshitting us.
Do you think that maybe that’s a problem?
