The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday. The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said.
To put this into context, sarin is extraordinarily deadly. One attack by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces against a Kurdish town killed 5000 about 15 years ago.
Meanwhile, Syria is denying that it would ever use chemical weapons against Syrian people. Instead, it is stating that foreign forces have smuggled chemical weapons to be used in Syria as a pretext for international intervention in that country.
What all this means is that we are just days or hours away from a chemical attack by the Assad forces. The two questions now are obvious:
1) Can other countries do something to stop Syria from using chemical weapons?
2) Who will be targeted by the Assad forces?
The answers are not happy ones. First, if the chemicals have already been loaded into the bombs, it would not be enough to destroy the depots where the chemical weapons are stored. After all, planes with chemical bombs could still drop them even if the storage locations were destroyed. There would be a need to shoot down or destroy every Syrian plane that might carry the bombs. There would also be a need to secure each site where the weapons are located in order to make sure that they do not fall into the hands of terror groups.
The targets are also a mystery. Assad is most likely to use the sarin gas on cities that have been the epicenter of the rebellion. Places like Homa could be gassed and tens of thousands wiped out in a day. Assad may also try to pinpoint the gas on concentrations of rebel forces. That could bring the chemical weapons to the suburbs of Damascus and in the area around Aleppo. Alternatively, Assad could try something completely different. He could target Israel in an effort to bring all of the Arabs together in support of him when the Israelis retaliate against Syria. That plan may sound delusional, but sadly not in the context of the Middle East.
What is happening now is the result of poor policy by the United States and the West. President Obama ignored Syria and refused to engage with the rebels. There were various points in the past where a concerted US effort could have ended the fighting with the departure of Assad and the installation of a non-terrorist Sunni government in Syria. Instead, Obama opted to do nothing which has led to this awful day.
Obama kicked the can down the road. Now the can is filled with nerve gas. What an accomplishment!
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