The elasticity of President Obama’s ‘Red Line’ on Syria seems to be being stretched to breaking point following this week’s chemical weapons attack by Bashar Assad in a Damascus suburb, Ghouta, where up to 1,200 people, including many women and children may have died. What we all have seen on our screens is not an episode from ‘Wag the Dog’ as Assad and his chief cheer leader Putin would have us believe. In fact this is likely to have been the worst chemical attack on civilians since Saddam Hussein gassed up to 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in Halabja 25 years ago.
Fortuitously the UN has a team of chemical weapons inspectors on the ground 15 minutes away from yesterday’s attack. So if President Assad has nothing to hide why are he and Putin thru the auspices of the UN Security Council blocking this team of experts from visiting the site? Time is critical as many nerve agents such as sarin only linger in the body for a relatively short period of time.
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