Syria's Assurances

"Evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government helicopters dropped barrel bombs embedded with cylinders of chlorine gas on three towns in Northern Syria in mid-April 2014."
"The Syrian government is the only party to the conflict with helicopters and other aircraft."
"[Video and photographs of debris suggest] that government forces dropped barrel bombs containing embedded chlorine gas cylinders in attacks from April 11 to 21 on three towns in northwestern Syria."
"The witnesses consistently described the clinical signs and symptoms of exposure to a choking agent, also known as a lung or pulmonary agent, by victims."
"Seven of ten people interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported smelling a distinct odour in the area targeted by the barrel bombs. They remarked that this odour was familiar and similar to that of common household cleaners."
"Half of the people interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported that the explosion of the barrel bombs produced 'yellow smoke' or 'dark yellowish smoke' in addition to the usual smoke from bomb explosions. Such reports of an unusual yellow smoke at the attack site are consistent with the release of chlorine gas from the rupture of industrial compressed gas cylinders."
Human Rights Watch report

Children receive oxygen in a village north of Damascus. Associated Press

 

Under a UN Security Council resolution passed unanimously in September of 2013, the government of Syria agreed it was prepared to purge its 1,100-ton stockpile of chemical weapons by the end of June of 2014. Deadlines have passed within the set time-table for the exportation of the chemical weapons stockpiles meant to be destroyed outside the country. The United States is decidedly unhappy with this turn of events.

President Obama's infamous "red line" warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that somehow got shoved off the track of the oncoming train of chemical weapons attacks resulted in a last-minute withdrawal of American forces set to intervene, when Russian President Vladimir Putin smoothly recalled his American counterpart to the efficacy of diplomatic reasoning over military manoeuvres. Perhaps the Norwegian committee that determines who will receive the next Nobel Peace Prize should consider Mr. Putin?

There can be little doubt that Vladimir Putin may have been bemused, entertained and instructed by his realization that the resolve of this American president dissolved like warm putty in his manipulative hands. Giving him reason enough to believe that he could then convince him that belligerence expressed toward the Islamic Republic of Iran's intention to create its very own cuddly version of atomic bombs represent a nervous figment of the American imagination.

And from the support of such vicious, human-rights-abusing regimes Mr. Putin felt motivated to move on his own account, to gift Russia with a territory it had long regretted having lost on the Black Sea, along with the prospect of the greater Russification of Ukraine, to expand Russian hegemony in reflection of what was lost with the unfortunate dissolution of the Soviet Union. Who is there, after all, now with reality of the pacifistic United States administration to stand in his way?

The inglorious excesses of brutality that took place during the First World War with the use of chemical agents to suffocate combatants created a generation post-war of sufferers, those who managed to survive the ghastly stifling of their lungs, creating life-long legions of men who required medical intervention to allow them to live a little longer. The asphyxiating gases used during the conflict to advantage those using them was considered a grave war crime of immense, unforgivable proportions.

British troops blinded by tear gas during the Battle of Estaires, 1918

Syria and its leader qualifies as a war criminal for that and for many additional reasons. Syrian forces using barrels "embedded with cylinders or chlorine gas" on three towns in the north of the country mid-April, dropping them from helicopters on enclaves where both rebel fighters and civilian populations resided, were only additional atrocities committed by the Shia-Alawite regime against its rebellious Sunni insurgents.

Opposition activists first alerted the world when government helicopters dropped those improvised chemical bombs on the northern village of Kfar Zeita. First introduced by Germany during the First World War, chlorine while not on the list of agents banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention signed by Syria last year, does represent a war crime since military use of any chemical constitutes a violation of that same treaty.

Authorities in Damascus claimed it was insurgents who were responsible for the use of chemical attacks. The reality being that the delivery of such mass weapons of destruction by helicopter could indict only the government forces, in sole command of helicopters. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based in The Hague, overseeing the dismantling of Syria's chemical munitions in collaboration with the United Nations has mounted a new mission to investigate the chlorine gas use.

Screenshot from a video posted to YouTube on April 11, 2014 shows substantial yellow coloration at base of the cloud over Keferzita, Syria, drifting with main cloud, and color intensity appears to quickly dissipate over next 20 seconds.