Sarin my ass. they're LYING to us again.

[DRoseDARs]

143. Your attempt at a gotcha post there is too cute by half, but you need to think deeper than the skin.

If the rebels had somehow managed to secure chemical weapons then you're damn well right we'd need to go in. The rebels aren't a single mass but independent groups all picking at the Assad regime, each with their own cause. Some of these groups are genuinely fighting to free the Syrians from Assad's rule. Other groups are fighting in order to bring their even worse fundamentalist Islamic rule to the people.

For any of these groups to have gotten their hands on chemical weapons shows one of two things: Either Assad's forces have lost control of their stockpiles and the current ownership is unknown, or the weapons were procured by outside means either through blackmarket purchasing or a 3rd party supplied them, leaving both ownership AND supplier unknown. In the scenario you built, it would be more likely that the fundamentalists had utilized the weapons (regardless of HOW they got them) to curry favor and get weapons. That would mean we would have to step in and stop them, plus either secure the rest of the weapons because they'd turn right back around and share their weapons with some other fundamentalist group or go after whomever supplied them the perennial movie plot had finally come true: Someone out there is frickin' selling WMDs to terrorists. In either case, doing nothing is not an option. Those weapons, in the hands of non-state actors, WILL be used in a future attempted terrorist attack.

We cannot allow WMDs to be used by any group in this conflict. We can't let Assad use them on his people, we can't allow the weapons to fall into unknown rebel hands as they'd likely end up on the blackmarket. Pres. Obama had stated publicly before that the locations of Assad's weapons would be physically secured if it looked like they'd fall into uncertain custody. The risks of them being controlled by unknown forces are too high.

As I said, this is a mess regardless of what we do or don't. But if WMDs have been used, regardless by whom, to do nothing is dangerous. If they have been used by rebels and we do nothing, those weapons will come back someday to haunt the West and scores will die as a result.