Syrian military ready to use chemical weapons, awaiting Assad order

John Bolton has been saying recently that there is no doubt in his mind that Assad will use chemical weapons if his back is in a corner. And if these reports are correct, I’d say he’s just about in the corner:

NBC NEWS – The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said.

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the “precursor” chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.

Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.

U.S. officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn’t been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn’t issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, “there’s little the outside world can do to stop it.”

Netanyahu issued a statement today on Syria’s chemical weapons:

Together with the international community, we are closely monitoring developments in Syria regarding its stores of chemical weapons. I heard President Obama’s important remarks on this issue and we are of the same mind, that such weapons must not be used and must not reach terrorist elements.”

You better believe this has Israel’s attention. They’ve already had another mortar come across Syria’s border into the Golan Heights. They are literally on the front lines of this and outside of the Syrian people they are in the most danger of anyone from the chemical weapons.


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