Wow! The new slur against the anti-war faction on DU is "peace purists"

[neverforget]

248. You do know we're not going to hit the chemical weapons themselves, right?

We're going to hit the delivery systems: artillery and aircraft. Of course in order to do that, you need to take out the air defense systems if we are going to use aircraft to hit these targets. After these strikes are over, Assad is still going to possess chemical weapons.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/26/20198664-us-military-options-in-syria-a-briefing?lite

The best American option would probably be to go after the mechanisms Syria uses to deploy its chemical weapons — delivery systems and command-and-control structures.
Even then, Assad knows better than to put chemical weapons stockpiles and delivery systems in the middle of nowhere. He probably has positioned them in strategically tricky places, like close to schools and towns.
That way, an enemy strike would run the risk of harming huge numbers of Syrian civilians, even children, and acts as a deterrent for enemies of the Syrian government.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/27/syria-crisis-military-options-nick-houghton

Nobody in Washington or London is prepared to countenance "boots on the ground", and an air war against Assad's well-equipped jet fighters and anti-aircraft defences is equally unappealing. So strategists have been looking at ways of hitting a limited number of regime targets over a short period with precision missiles and laser-guided bombs.

The hope is that these attacks would deter Assad from using chemical weapons and make it more difficult for him to launch them if he wanted to.

The US is reported to be considering a two-day campaign, according to the Washington Post – a timescale that chimes with British hopes that any attacks would be seen as warning shots rather than the first steps in a broader campaign.