Clearly this was not something the Obama administration was anxious to do, but it appears the evidence is too strong for further equivocation:
Syria has crossed a ‘red line’ with its use of chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin gas, against rebels, the White House said Thursday.
The acknowledgment is the first time President Barack Obama’s administration has definitively said what it has long suspected — that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war.
“The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete,” Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said in a statement released by the White House.
“While the lethality of these attacks make up only a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria, which now stands at more than 90,000 deaths, the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses clear red lines that have existed within the international community for decades,” Rhodes added.
Obama declared the “red line” last August, but has been in no rush to enforce it.
Back in January, the administration downplayed reports that the Syrian regime was using chemical weapons. By April, Defense Secretary Hagel was saying that Assad’s forces had likely used chemical weapons.
And now it’s been confirmed. Of course it’s possible, as some argue, that the intelligence about Syria is just as wrong as it was about WMDs in Iraq. But the difference is that the Bush administration was so eager to invade Iraq that it was willing to believe what turned out to be unreliable evidence. There is no apparent eagerness on Obama’s part to get more involved in Syria.
But it appears that greater involvement is on the way. As you will know if you’ve read my previous posts about Syria, I believe it is long past time.
Update: A good comment by Whigphilosophie der Geschichte.
