Smoke rises after shelling on Al Turkman mountains in the Latakia province, western Syria, yesterday.
WASHINGTON: US intelligence agencies believe Syria’s government has likely used chemical weapons on a small scale, the White House said yesterday, but added that President Barack Obama needed “credible and corroborated” facts before acting on that assessment.
The surprise disclosure triggered immediate calls for US action by members of Congress who advocate deeper American involvement in Syria’s bitter civil war.
The White House said the US intelligence community assessed with varying degrees of confidence that the chemical agent sarin was used by forces allied with President Bashar
Al Assad. But it noted that “the chain of custody is not clear.”
While Obama has declared that Syrian use of chemical weapons would be a game-changer, his administration made clear it would move carefully — mindful of the lessons of the start of the Iraq war 10 years ago.
Then, the George W Bush administration used faulty intelligence to justify invading Iraq in pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that turned out not to exist.
“Given the stakes involved and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient — only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making,” Miguel Rodriguez, White House director of the office of legislative affairs, said in a letter to lawmakers.
One senior US defence official told reporters, “We have seen very bad movies before,” where intelligence was perceived to have driven policy decisions that later, in the cold light of day, were proven wrong.”
The term “varying degrees of confidence” used to describe the assessment usually suggests debate within the intelligence community about the conclusion, the defence official noted.
The White House said the evaluation that Syria probably used chemical weapons was based in part on physiological samples, but a White House official declined to say what kind of evidence it had, such as soil samples or blood or hair from victims.
The scale of the sarin use appeared limited, with one US intelligence official noting that nobody was “seeing any mass casualties” from any Syrian chemical weapons use.
The United States has so far resisted being dragged militarily into Syria’s conflict, providing only non-lethal aid to rebels trying to overthrow Assad, given concerns that weapons end up in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked opposition fighters.
But acknowledgement of the US intelligence assessment appeared to move the United States closer to some sort of action, military or otherwise.
REUTERS
