Syrian "gas rockets" appear homemade and incapable of flying 5-10 miles to target.

[leveymg]

157. I said accurately. The reason that accuracy is important is that the lethal dispersal area is small

for each of these devices under most conditions. In lieu of accuracy, you need a sizable number of these things to kill that number of people. My conclusion is that past a mile or two they tend to fly all over the place, so probably could not be used effectively for mass barrage in the way that was described in the State Department report.

Personally, my suspicion is that they were fired at much closer range than the report indicates, which might implicate others or otherwise draws the report's conclusions into doubt.

I am inclined to accept that some unit or units of the Army chemical corps launched some sort of chemical ordinance that night. It's not clear how much or why they did that or under whose orders or what type of munitions they used. The communications seem to indicate that the Syrian Minister of Defense was not privy to that order, and that he expressed strong objection and ordered the chemical attack to cease.

I think we need to know a lot more before any decision to use punative force can be agreed to by Congress.