Simply put, verification will be difficult, and the danger remains that with no attribution expected, assumptions will be acted upon. We enter the realm of the political.
Politicising WMD (again)
The political response to the incident was discernible across the sphere of governments, international organisations, epistemic communities, and civil society. Their claims might usefully be clustered into one of three categories: (1) the hawks, who advocate for use of force, whether through the UN Security Council or unilaterally; (2) the duty bound, who appear to be driven by either a repulsion of chemical weapons in general, or are beholden to positive duties to assist those in harms way in particular; and (3) the sceptics, which canvasses those who have relevant yet specialist expertise in some or other aspect of chemical weapons, and those who are (rightfully or wrongly) sceptical of all claims by government intelligence agencies.
Of the respected and most influential hawks, France expectedly threatened to use force unilaterally if necessary, and the Washington Post editorial board put the case forward in the strongest terms:
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It would be unprecedented for the Assad regime to comply. The United States should be using its own resources to determine, as quickly as possible, whether the opposition's reports of large-scale use of gas against civilians are accurate. If they are, Mr. Obama should deliver on his vow not to tolerate such crimes - by ordering direct U.S. retaliation against the Syrian military forces responsible and by adopting a plan to protect civilians in southern Syria with a no-fly zone.
Unexpectedly, many measured voices such as US Senator Chris Murphy (D) and The Guardian, began to display hawk-ish tendencies too. For example, their editorial board concluded that:
There is next to no doubt that chemical weapons were used in Ghouta in eastern Damascus, and that, unlike previous alleged attacks, they produced mass casualties…. Nor is there much doubt about who committed the atrocity.
Of those responses which I attempt to categorise as being in some way "duty bound", the European Union's co-signed statement and the New York Times' editorial was the most balanced and accurate, although some have been no less strident in mistaking allegations for punishable attribution. For example, within hours of the attacks UNICEF rightfully condemned the incident, before going on to say that:
Children must be protected, and those who fail to protect them will be held accountable. [Emphasis mine]
Likewise, Médecins Sans Frontières issued a carefully worded statement suggesting that according to its sources up to 3600 patients were treated on the day in question and that a further 355 had been confirmed dead. World news media instead reported MSF's statement as confirmation – by way of a staff endorsement – that event unfolded in this way. For example, the BBC for hours reported the story incorrectly, until it was partially retracted and corrected. Similarly, in their haste to break a story, for some time Reuters were stating that chemical weapons had resulted in "thousands killed", as opposed to "thousands affected". Foreign Affairs ran a story about the chemical weapons taboo, but instead tweeted that "Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria, however repugnant", despite evidence of neither claim being confirmed, and neither assertion being made in the linked article.
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The reality is that the US were discussing war plans days before the alleged incident. Indeed, remarks by the Joint Chief of Staff General Dempsey on 19 August put the US strategy in the plainest of terms:
We can destroy the Syrian Air Force… it would not be militarily decisive, but would commit us decisively to the conflict… It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours"
Wither the "expert" opinion?
In such a climate the expert opinions of those who have the requisite knowledge about chemical weapons and their effects are drowned out. As one chemical weapons specialist sees it:
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