
AP Photo
Judging by his old "red line" on Syria, the one that was convenient until it wasn't, President Obama's "calculus" with respect to the humanitarian calamity in Syria has changed multiple times already. In August he said this: “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” Then his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta admitted at a Pentagon press conference in September that the United States had lost track of some Syria’s chemical weapons. Now NBC News and Wired magazine have reported that U.S. officials believe that the precursors for sarin gas have been combined and loaded into aerial bombs (albeit not yet onto aircraft), where they await Bashar al-Assad’s personal order for deployment. Panetta, who I hope...
TAGGED: Bashar al-Assad,
chemical weapons,
Middle East,
Syria,
Barack Obama