McClatchy rounds up some of the more troubling aspects of the case the Obama administration is trying to make for an attack on Syria:
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration’s public case for attacking Syria is riddled with inconsistencies and hinges mainly on circumstantial evidence, undermining U.S. efforts this week to build support at home and abroad for a punitive strike against Bashar Assad’s regime.
The case Secretary of State John Kerry laid out last Friday contained claims that were disputed by the United Nations, inconsistent in some details with British and French intelligence reports or lacking sufficient transparency for international chemical weapons experts to accept at face value.
Here are some of the more troubling points:
The Obama administration dismissed the value of a U.N. inspection team’s work by saying that the investigators arrived too late for the findings to be credible and wouldn’t provide any information the United State didn’t already have
In fact, UN inspections have found similar evidence even years after the fact in other cases. When you hear John Kerry talking about how the US has evidence that the chemical nerve agent sarin was used, remember that he's talking about evidence that the US has collected independently from the UN inspections teams, and that how it was gotten hold of can't be discussed because it's classified. The UN inspectors, on the other hand, collect samples in a transparent manner, using a transparent chain of custody, and send them to multiple independent labs in various countries for analysis.
I don't know about you, but I'll find the UN conclusions much more convincing than secret US ones that I have to take on faith instead of on the basis of impartial science. But it's almost as if the administration is trying to pre-discredit the UN findings in case their findings are different from US claims.
Will the UN inspectors be allowed to conclude their work before the onslaught of propaganda hardens public conclusions in favor of an attack? I would hope the answer is yes, but probably it is no.
Another point of dispute is the death toll from the alleged attacks on Aug. 21. Neither Kerry’s remarks nor the unclassified version of the U.S. intelligence he referenced explained how the U.S. reached a tally of 1,429, including 426 children. The only attribution was “a preliminary government assessment.”
The French intelligence report only says it can confirm 281 fatalities, and Médecins Sans Frontières put out a press release today stating that its personnel were not directly present at those Syrian clinics and that intelligence reports supposedly based on their information was not valid, and that they were in no position to confirm anything but that there had been mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent, but they could not say that it was from a chemical weapons attack or who was responsible.
Not that 281 civilian deaths are acceptable, but it is a major discrepancy that needs to be cleared up to build their case.
Another eyebrow-raising administration claim was that U.S. intelligence had “collected streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence” that showed the regime preparing for an attack three days before the event. The U.S. assessment says regime personnel were in an area known to be used to “mix chemical weapons, including sarin,” and that regime forces prepared for the Aug. 21 attack by putting on gas masks.
Members of the Syrian opposition are incredulous and outraged that if the US knew three days beforehand that the attack was going to occur they didn't warn anyone. So much for moralizing arguments about having to bomb Assad's forces out of concern about massacres of civilian populations.
I'd add a few more points that really need to be satisfactorily addressed before they can build anything like a - dare I say it? - slam dunk case.
If this is really a line-in-the-sand global norm being defended, why isn't every prominent member of the global community signing on?
What right does a country that used white phosphorus a mere decade ago against enemy combatants and whatever civilians got in the way in Fallujah have to be drawing "red lines" for other countries on the use of chemical weapons?
Will the persons who ordered and used chemical weapons in Syria be the ones to actually suffer the effects of the drones or cruise missiles, or will it be different people entirely who pay the price with their lives and their property?
How are the supplies of chemical weapons and the troops trained to use them in Syria going to be targeted when reports on the ground say they're moving into schools and universities and among the civilian population?
How can international law be upheld by breaking international law and initiating military action against a sovereign country without authorization by the UN Security Council?
I have plenty more questions and concerns about the administration's claims, but that will do for a start.