We’re Not Prepared to Police Chemical Weapons

We may never get to the bottom of what happened Aug. 21 in Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. The report by United Nations inspectors concluded that rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used against civilians, including children, as well as combatants on a relatively large scale. Circumstantial evidence suggests Syrian government troops fired them, but the lack of proof has given the regime, and its backers in Russia, room to blame rebel forces.

For those of us who have long grappled with chemical weapons, the uncertainties present a familiar frustration. To this day, the world doesn’t know the full story of what happened in Halabja, Iraq, where the Saddam Hussein regime in 1988 killed uncounted thousands of Iraqi Kurds using unknown chemical weapons, or in Srebrenica, where allegations arose in 1995 that Bosniak survivors fleeing the city came under a chemical attack by Bosnian Serb forces.