This morning, I listened as NPR gave John McCain more air time to call for some type of intervention in the Syrian mess. Lindsay Graham has been screeching for more capability for someone over there to have better capacity to kill one another. Even Mitt Romney has gotten into the act to call President Obama weak over his handling of Syria. In the meantime, we have a press running all over the place certain that chemical weapons have been used in Syria, when that is far from certain:
A careful review of the physical evidence suggests there is still little to support the notion that the Assad government has used chemical weapons. The physical evidence appears to amount to a pair of blood samples — described in a letter to Congress as “physiological samples.” According to subsequent reporting by the Financial Times, there are only two samples — provided by the Syrian opposition — from different victims in different locations. The United Kingdom analyzed one sample at Porton Down; the United States analyzed the other sample, probably at Edgewood. The samples appear to confirm exposure to sarin. There are a lot of techniques that establish exposure to sarin. If you are interested, here are two papers from 2002 and 2008. Note the author with the Porton Down affiliation.
The president has rightly noted that the chain of custody — essentially all the evidence that would link the sample to a victim of a Syrian attack — is simply not intact. “We don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them,” Obama said.
(To put this in perpective — pretend you live next door to a gas station. And you are getting the smell and sheen of gas in the water coming out of your tap. You would need WAY more than two samples to claim that the gas station is contaminating your well. You would need to document how the samples were taken, who handled those samples, how those samples were analyzed with some confidence samples to ensure that the analytical equipment is working correctly. And here we have the GOP wanting to intervene based on way less evidence.)
And so far, the American people aren’t buying this sabre-rattling:
Sixty-two percent of the public say the United States has no responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria between government forces and antigovernment groups, while just one-quarter disagree. Likewise, 56 percent say North Korea is a threat that can be contained for now without military action, just 15 percent say the situation requires immediate American action and 21 percent say the North is not a threat at all.
What do you think? Should the US do any intervention in Syria?