Have you ever seen a body without a head, or vice-versa?

[Maedhros]

62. What strikes me as incredibly unrealistic

is the notion that we can wave some kind of magical cruise-missile wand and make atrocities disappear.

The idea is that if we fail to launch 100+ cruise missiles on Syria then we are guaranteeing that thousands of chemical weapon victims will result. How can one reach that conclusion? Assuming that more attacks are imminent, we might be able to prevent them by sending in troops and capturing the stockpiles. Maybe. Trying to take out the stockpiles with missile strikes runs a huge risk of resulting in a horrific disaster.

Military intervention in Syria is going to result in a LOT of civilian casualties:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/middleeast/us-syria-intervention-would-be-risky-pentagon-officials-say.html?pagewanted=all

Defense and intelligence officials say that Syria’s integrated air defenses — a combination of thousands of surface-to-air missiles, radars and antiaircraft guns — are not only more advanced than those in Libya, they are also arrayed in densely populated areas on the country’s western border, meaning that even with precision bombing, civilians nearby would probably be killed.

“There would be some severe collateral damage going after those areas,” Mr. Panetta said last week.

And if we decapitate the Assad regime, Syria will descend into chaos. What happens to the chemical weapons stockpiles, considered the largest in the world? Might they fall into the hands of the insurgents? What will they do with them?

“I’m not saying it’s a fait accompli that if they’re left unsecured, automatically someone can grab them and use them,” General Mattis said. “They may end up frying themselves. But I think that it’s going to take an international effort when Assad falls, and he will fall, in order to secure these weapons.”

Some kind of "limited strike" will let the U.S. Military puff up its chest and do a little touchdown dance, but it has the capacity to make things much worse.