Obama: US Unsure Who Used Chemical Weapons in Syria

Claims 'Evidence' of Usage, But Stumped on Who, How, or When

President Obama claims that the US now has “evidence” of chemical weapons use inside Syria, but is missing some very key pieces of the puzzle, such as when they were used, how they were used, and most importantly who even used them.

Insisting that the Pentagon planners had given him an array of “options” militarily, Obama conceded that the US really can’t confirm that the Assad government actually used the chemical weapons and that they couldn’t really do anything until they figure that part out.

Intelligence sources last month were saying that the largest such “attack” was almost certainly launched by the rebels, noting that it targeted Syrian troops and used a more primitive type of agent than the Syrian arsenal is believed to consist of.

At the time US officials weren’t even willing to concede that an attack happened at all. Now that they have decided to affirm the incident, apparently a result of an Israeli general insisting it happened, they are still left with a giant gaping hole in the story: why would the Syrian military launch a chemical weapon at its own troops?

The Syrian government was so confident of this being the rebels that they were the first to call for a UN investigation, and it only stalled because instead of conducting an investigation the UN sought a mandate to probe the entire chemical weapons arsenal and everything else in the entire nation. Iran appears equally comfortable that this wasn’t their ally’s doing, insisting any chemical weapons use is a “red line.”

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.