For all I know, the Syrian opposition really believes it was gassed. Ask the Chinese whether the United States used biological weapons in the Korean War. All the available evidence suggests that we did not, but Mao and company were convinced we did.
If the Obama administration is going to persuade a reluctant interventionist, such as myself, it is going to need much better evidence than is available so far. Forget all the secondhand accounts and opposition-produced videos. (For the perils of diagnosis by YouTube, see "Schiavo, Terry.") These merely amount to the opposition claiming it has been gassed, with embellishments.
We need hard evidence.
First, we need evidence of an attack by Syrian forces. That evidence could take the form of intercepted communications, satellite images of the Syrian units in position, testimony of captured Syrian forces, video of the attack taking place. (For example, radio intercepts were critical evidence in demonstrating that the massacre at Srebrenica had been carried out by the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army.)
Second, we need physical evidence that demonstrates victims from that attack were exposed to chemical weapons, such as the nerve agent sarin. This is where chain of custody matters a great deal -- we need to know that the physical samples came from victims who were present at a known attack. The more victims from a single attack, the less likely that the exposures are false positives.
A careful review of the physical evidence suggests there is still little to support the notion that the Assad government has used chemical weapons. The physical evidence appears to amount to a pair of blood samples -- described in a letter to Congress as "physiological samples." According to subsequent reporting by the Financial Times, there are only two samples -- provided by the Syrian opposition -- from different victims in different locations. The United Kingdom analyzed one sample at Porton Down; the United States analyzed the other sample, probably at Edgewood. The samples appear to confirm exposure to sarin. There are a lot of techniques that establish exposure to sarin. If you are interested, here are two papers from 2002 and 2008. Note the author with the Porton Down affiliation.
The president has rightly noted that the chain of custody -- essentially all the evidence that would link the sample to a victim of a Syrian attack -- is simply not intact. "We don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them," Obama said.
I would add that we don't even know they were used. What the samples demonstrate is that two individuals were exposed to sarin. How those poor sods were exposed is simply not clear.
There seems to be a persistent view within the Obama administration that exposure amounts to use. One official said: "It would be very, very difficult for the opposition to fake this. Not only would they need the wherewithal to steal it or brew it up themselves. Then they'd need volunteers who would notionally agree to a possibly lethal exposure." Also, did you know the word gullible isn't in the dictionary?
Syria is sitting on stockpiles of nerve agents, some of which may well have been overrun by opposition forces. Yes, sadly, actually one could expose either prisoners or one's own troops to nerve agents. I know, who would do an awful thing like that?
Even without deliberately exposing people to sarin, there are opportunities for inadvertent exposure on the battlefield. It is unclear whether Syria has readied unitary agents (which can remain stable for weeks) or binary agents. But if those munitions are deployed in areas overrun by the Free Syrian Army, exposure is quite possible. In 1991, U.S. troops blew up captured Iraqi munitions at Khamisiyah that turned out to be filled with sarin, exposing them. There were also a number of other instances where coalition forces came awfully close to being exposed inadvertently. There are still conspiracy theorists who insist Saddam used chemical weapons in 1991. (It is a popular explanation for Gulf War Syndrome.)
Looking at the experience in Iraq, it should be clear that two samples with no chain of custody ought not be enough to convince a reluctant interventionist. If, of course, you are already figuring out where to site the pool in the Damascus Green Zone, then be my guest. The rest of us, though, are not there yet.
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