No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. And there's no doubt who is responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime.
I haven’t lived in a world where chemical weapons are routinely used, and I would not want to live in such a world.
The 'SAMS' study, titled 'A New Normal: Ongoing Chemical Weapons Attacks in Syria', reveals that the Assad regime merely switched from sarin gas to chlorine gas in its bombardment of civilians areas.
The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason.
We are against any WMD, any weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical or nuclear.
Any use of chemical weapons, by anyone, under any circumstances, is a grave violation of the 1925 Protocol and other relevant rules of customary international law.
The United States, a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, destroyed the last of its stocks of VX and other chemical agents on the Johnston Atoll, 825 miles southwest of Hawaii, in November 2000.
If there are no consequences now for breaking the prohibition on chemical weapons, it will be harder to muster an international consensus to ensure that Hezbollah and other terrorist groups are prevented from acquiring or using these weapons themselves.
My goal is to maintain the international norm on banning chemical weapons. I want that enforcement to be real. I want it to be serious. I want people to understand that gassing innocent people, delivering chemical weapons against children is not something we do. It's prohibited in active wars between countries. We certainly don't do it against kids. And we've got to stand up for that principle.
Somebody in this regime used chemical weapons, whether it was Assad - an order from him, or his brother, or someone else. Who knows? I don't think the evidence is clear. But it is clear that chemical weapons were used.
Under Saddam Hussein, the nation of Iraq possessed and used chemical weapons against both their own Kurdish population and Iranian military forces.
