So what happened on March 19th, in an incident of apparent gas use that killed government troops and supporters?
It could be government forces trying to use a primitive gas without using a more complex gas that would obviously be Syrian, in order to discredit rebels (and terrorists).
Could it have been an accident with industrial chemicals? Or a reaction to a conventional weapon? Hard to say, but I'd hate to rule it out.
It could very well be rebels--or more likely the jihadi terrorist element. And this dismissal of that possibility is just wrong:
As unlikely a deliberate use by the Syrian government of a nerve gas might be, especially considering the near certainty of an international reaction, few believe that the opposition has the wherewithal to make even crude chemical weapons. “It’s a question of capabilities,” says Greg Thielmann, a chemical weapons expert at the Washington, D.C. based Arms Control Association. “Even if they had chemicals, where would they get access to a delivery system?” More likely, he says, the mass poisonings were a “side effect of a high explosive device that released a chemical in the vicinity.”
Where would they get delivery systems? Oh please, in Iraq the jihadis used chlorine gas weapons to terrorize Sunni Arabs who joined our side in the Awakening:
I strongly believe this use of chlorine should not be dismissed merely as a new tactic or an emerging trend. Chlorine is a poison gas. It is a poison gas being used on the Iraqi people. Before these attacks, the last time poison gas was used on the Iraqi people was by Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda in Iraq and other related Sunni extremists are employing this weapon against the Sunni population of Al Anbar province, so we have Sunni extremists attacking innocent Sunnis with a poison gas. We assess this escalation of AQI's murder and intimidation campaign as a reaction to the growing anti-AQI resistance that we see in Al Anbar province.
Could we get actual experts on chemical weapons use to comment? I'm no expert. But I can remember events from 6 years ago.
So already we have cases of terrorists using chlorine gas as a weapon. In Iraq, the chlorine was added to explosive bombs to enhance the fear effect of being hit rather than to kill. Speculation that the effects seen are byproducts of a conventional weapon ignore the possibility that Syrian jihadis might have done what Iraq jihadis did--add chlorine to regular explosive weapons.
Indeed, it could be used with simple "delivery systems." In World War I, chlorine gas was used as a weapon with the simple "delivery system" of opening a canister of the gas when the wind was blowing toward the enemy. This isn't rocket science, here.
The terrorists may want to provoke Western intervention on the theory that any Western intervention focused on chemical weapons will harm Assad, even if we try to go after jihadis with simple chemical arms.
I don't know if chemical weapons were used. But I wouldn't rule it out. It isn't that tough to use.
