An AP story this morning quotes multiple U.S.-government officials characterizing the intelligence on the use of chemical weapons in Syria as “not a slam dunk,” which they explain is “a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet’s insistence in 2002 that U.S. intelligence showing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a ‘slam dunk’ — intelligence that turned out to be wrong.” The problems:
A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria includes a few key caveats — including acknowledging that the U.S. intelligence community no longer has the certainty it did six months ago of where the regime’s chemical weapons are stored, nor does it have proof Assad ordered chemical weapons use, according to two intelligence officials and two more U.S. officials.
But one senior U.S. official who read the report said Thursday that despite those caveats, the report assesses with ‘‘high confidence’’ that the Syrian government was responsible for firing a barrage of rockets Aug. 21 that hit suburbs east and west of Damascus, filled with a chemical weapon — echoing the point of view of the administration. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has said the strikes killed 355 people.
The British government has publicly released a legal and intelligence analysis of the strike, and it’s also not a slam dunk. They conclude it’s “highly likely” that the regime launched the attack, but say there is only “a limited but growing body of intelligence which supports the judgement that the regime was responsible for the attacks” (they also note that there is “no credible intelligence or other evidence” that the rebels have such weapons). Legally, it concludes that the British government is justified in intervening in the country without authorization from the U.N. Security Council. The U.S. hasn’t made its position on that question clear, but the State Department did say yesterday that they don’t see any Security Council resolution getting past Russia’s veto (suggesting the U.S. almost definitely won’t wait for U.N. authorization). The White House will release its own report on the relevant intelligence this week, possibly today; Reuters quotes officials as saying it doesn’t contain a “smoking gun” proving that President Assad ordered the attacks.
And the State Department publicly admitted one of these problems at yesterday’s press briefing: When asked by a reporter, “Do you believe that [Assad] ordered this attack?” the department’s spokesman said “I don’t know the answer to that,” and maintained that the question doesn’t really matter, declaring Assad responsible for any use of such weapons by the regime. Asked about the possibility a rogue officer ordered their use, the State representative said, “yes,” it’s still Assad’s responsibility, while calling it a “wildly conjecturous question.”
But it doesn’t quite seem to be, given a Foreign Policy report that the key piece of evidence that the Syrian government intentionally used chemical weapons last week was phone calls the U.S. intercepted between a senior defense official and a chemical-weapons unit — not ordering the attack, but “demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people.” (A report from a German publication suggests that the Israeli government also intercepted talk of the chemical attack among senior Syrian officials that proved the government had launched them, but we don’t know what the discussion was.) An Israeli official told the New York Times this week that it’s “quite likely that there was kind of an operational mistake here,” though he suggested the issue may have just been that the strike was supposed to be more limited than it was. The fact that Assad doesn’t seem to have a reason to risk U.S. intervention — the rebels are gaining in some places but his regime is hardly reeling right now — also makes the idea that the attack last week was not actually ordered by those who run the regime (i.e., it was an accident or a rogue decision) seem plausible.
The State Department made it clear enough that the president doesn’t care either way, and he’s right in terms of practical effects: If we don’t respond to the strike, whether Assad ordered it or not, he’ll know now he can get away with limited use of chemical weapons.
As to physical evidence of the attack’s actually taking place, the U.N. has inspectors in the country now, set to leave on Saturday, and they’ll presumably present their findings to the U.N. Security Council on Sunday or Monday.