chemical weapons

The report is from last year.

The U.S. must bring hellish consequences on the dictator of Damascus.

The U.N. ambassador slams Putin’s regime and Iran for abetting Bashar al-Assad.

Michael Anton, the spokesman for the National Security Council and an important intellectual force in the Trump administration, is leaving the White House. Eliana Johnson of Politico first reported Anton’s departure on Sunday, on the eve of John Bolton’s first day as national security adviser.…

Horrific images from the aftermath of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria are once again circulating online. The scene of this gassing is the eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Both the location and the timing of this apparent war crime are symbolically important. And while the immediate…

Russia, Iran, and North Korea all play a role in the Syrian regime's chemical attacks on its own people.

On his website, John Laurits (a self-identified communist based in Oregon) claimed that there is “no evidence” that Russia was involved in the poisoning of former Russian spy and double agent, Sergei Skripal.

This week, the State Department released an annual report on compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The most notable findings in the report, which covers Russia, Iran, and Syria, not surprisingly relate to Syria. The report states unequivocally that the "United States assesses that…

In the aftermath of the chemical weapons attacks in Idlib province and the subsequent response of cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase authorized by President Trump, both National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have asserted that the Syrian government has…

It must have seemed like a problem from hell: When Samantha Power served as Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, she tirelessly highlighted the depredations of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, publicizing his various barbarities—his indiscriminate killing of civilians, his use of…

The Russian government has been spreading "disinformation" about last week's chemical-weapons attack, according to senior White House officials.

During the Bush administration, the popular protest refrain was “Bush lied, people died." It's true that a major justification for the Iraq war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of so-called weapons of mass destruction, a catch-all phrase for biological and chemical weapons, as well as…

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster delivered remarks in Florida today to give some background on the strikes against Syria Thursday. He made one curious comment that raises a lot of troubling questions:

According to a recent headline from Reuters, "U.S. intelligence agencies suspect Assad did not turn over all chemical weapons stockpile." The evidence of the recent chemical attack in Syria makes that declaration little more than stating the obvious. However, back in January in an in interview with…

Florida senator Marco Rubio told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday that he was heartened by President Donald Trump's changing tone on Syria.

The Iran government tried to obtain nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons technology from German companies, according to a new report from the Jerusalem Post. Here's Benjamin Weinthal, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, reporting from Berlin for the Post:

According to CNN:

French soldiers near the Belgian village of Langemark, in what was to become known as the “Ypres Salient,” did not know what to make of the green, earth-hugging cloud that came rolling toward them from the German trench line. Earlier, the enemy artillery had ceased, and things had gone quiet for a…

In the wake of President Obama’s speech yesterday at the U.N. General Assembly, there were reports of another chemical weapons attack near Damascus launched by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. If true, Assad is just drawing the logical conclusion from the president’s speech and the administration’s…

In London Thursday for a meeting with the foreign ministers of the nations of the London 11, the "Friends of Syria," Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that “raw data that suggests there may have been” chlorine-based chemical weapons used by the Assad regime in Syria:

Foreign Policy reports:

Forty years ago this fall, the United States shipped more than 20,000 tons of tanks, artillery, weapons, and supplies to Israel to ensure its victory over two of the Soviet Union’s Arab clients, Syria and Egypt. Those airlifts showed the Arabs that despite their numerical superiority, they had no…

It now seems to be the general consensus that President Obama’s Syria policy is a contradictory mess. But that’s only how it appears on the surface. Probe a bit deeper and it’s very seriously deranged.

It now seems to be the general consensus that President Obama’s Syria policy is a contradictory mess. But that’s only how it appears on the surface. Probe a bit deeper and it’s very seriously deranged.

Did President Obama just save Bashar al-Assad? Gary Schmitt writes:

The New York Post imagines the first draft of Vladimir Putin's New York Times op-ed:

Near the end of his speech to the nation on Syria, President Obama quoted Franklin Roosevelt:  “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideas and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”

Maybe Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss the idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control last week on the sidelines of the G20 conference. Putin sure doesn’t care that Obama’s taking credit for the proposal, or that the administration is posturing like a Mob…

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, allowed on NPR this morning that American action in Syria might not be legal:

"It's a pity they can’t both lose.” So Henry Kissinger famously said about Iran and Iraq during their long and ugly war in the 1980s. Having squandered the many opportunities created by the uprising in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and with the Syrian opposition increasingly…

President Obama said that the U.S. talk of military action in Syria is bypassing the "hocus pocus" of the U.N.:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the deliberation in congress over President Obama's proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force against Syria.

The timing was probably not a coincidence, falling as it did on two anniversaries. August 18, 2011, was when President Obama first demanded Syrian president Bashar al-Assad step aside, and August 20 last year was when Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus.” It was…

Barack Obama's former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, says the president has a "responsibility" to act in Syria.

In this episode of THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on his recent trip to Israel and the U.S. stance on Syria.

John Kerry says that America's coming response to Syria is about preventing future use of weapons of mass destruction:

The White House just released this document, titled "U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s  Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013": 

In an interview with PBS, President Obama says no decision has yet been made on Syria:

Secretary of State Kerry used estimably strong language Monday in a speech on events in Syria:

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes released the following statement on Syrian use of chemical weapons, resulting in 100-150 deaths: 

In his April 30 White House press conference, President Obama explained that there’s evidence chemical weapons have been used in Syria, but “we don’t know how they were used, when they were used, and who used them. We don’t have a chain of custody.”

Today's New York Times carries a story about the President's "red line" on the Syrian use of chemical weapons: how that line appeared and how it disappeared.

President Barack Obama got ahead of himself and his advisers when he said that Syria using chemical weapons would cross a "red line," the New York Times reports. 

CNN reports this evening that there have been Israeli airstrikes on Syria:

The Washington Free Beacon has put together this video, showing President Obama's shifting rhetoric on Syria:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the new revelations about the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on the mess in Syria and his piece "Why Obama Won't Move Against Assad." Hosted by Michael Graham.

On Friday, President Barack Obama left Israel, after spending a couple days with the leaders of America's closest ally in the region.

House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers said this morning on CBS that "it is abundantly clear that that red line has been crossed." Watch here.

Last week, we learned of a secret State Department assessment that forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had recently used chemical weapons. The State Department cable, signed by the U.S. consul in Istanbul and based on interviews with doctors, defectors from the Syrian Army, and…