Officials are claiming secret evidence that Syria did not declare the entirety of its chemical weapons program’s capabilities, and are complaining that at the end of the disarmament program Syria still retains the technological and practical capability to manufacture such arms.
Some officials claimed the secret evidence had been provided to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) months ago, but there is no indication that it went anywhere or led to any findings.
Likewise, the technological capability to mix chemicals is a fairly trivial one for any industrialized state, and there had never been any supposition that dismantling the chemical arms factories meant Syria as a whole would forget how chemistry works.
Thus while scary the latest allegations don’t amount to much, if anything, and seem primarily to be a continuation of Western efforts to oppose the OPCW ending its chemical disarmament program just because the chemical weapons as such are gone. Western officials have suggested they’d prefer to leave the OPCW there more or less permanently.
Vocal members of the Press corpse at State Dept briefings still think Assad-did-Ghouta, tend to believe the chlorine was his thang, and the killing-his-own-people bit (vs. the reality of foreign funded & armed terrorism) resonates with them … It's the kind of naivete that, left unchecked, could turn everyone on Israel's/Yinon's/PNAC's/Clark's hitlist into Iraq. Then you're next! –ask yourself: is your kitchen dual-use-free? Aint Isopropyl a component of Sarin? Now just why didn't you pay the idiot tax on 70% ethanol instead? Whatcha got in your pockets? Very soon, if not already, we'll be at 3 SWAT raids per week… …especially when those morons switch sides again, finally noticing that 'terrorists' do do chemical strikes now.
Looks like the FedGov is going dust off the Morgenthau Plan and apply it to Syria.