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and the target status, i mean, reports are sketchy at this point, but it does appear to be somewhat different. it s not just the transfer of weapons to hezbollah, which has been the pattern in previous strikes, but potentially degrading the capacity to deliver chemical weapons, targeting missiles. and so that s you know, that s the difference, and i think a much greater escalation than anything we ve seen in the past. and that point interests me because speaking as a layman here, my understanding has been we have all this talk about red lines, and we ll get into that with how the u.s. and how president obama have used that term. my understanding has been the red line the u.s. has been drawing has basically involved chemical weapons, and the red line that israel has been drawing has basically involved, like you say, the use of weapons, the use of syria as a conduit. now we re getting these reports saying this is israel. this is munitions. and i m trying to sort of square that. w ....
Chemical weapons. there are big questions still about chain of custody, perhaps command and control and how decision-making is being made within the syrian military. so i think we re not perhaps at a point where we can draw far-reaching conclusions. and of course, there are the los of other red lines that have been crossed. war crimes, crimes against humanity, usage of chemical weapons is a very important international norm, and it needs to be protected. but i don t think we should see this an isolation as the linchpin that should shift u.s. policy and u.s. strategy. although we should say so more recently now when you have the senior the suspicions now that chemical weapons have been used, the president sort of clarified, maybe even moved the goalposts a little bit, i think this was a week or two ago where he said now it s the systematic the systematic use of chemical weapons on civilian populations. so he s sort of qualifying it. and the feeling i m getting listening to this is ....
They re slightly different, and we re not going to wait. we re going to act now. we re going to ensure these weapons and the delivery systems do not come anywhere near what we consider to be a serious threat to ourselves. you mentioned and we ve teased this a couple times now obama s statement on the red line. and this came about a year ago. i do want to play it just for context. this is when obama originally sort of issued the red-line statement last august. we cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people. we have been very clear to the assad regime but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. that would change my calculus. that would change my equation. and so now we re in this situation where in the last few weeks we have reports of senior u.s. officials saying that they suspect chemical weapons in some ....
Not to be drawn into it at almost any cost. but it s worse because he said we don t know weather and we don t know where. does it matter when and where they were used if they ve been used? they ve been used. and then the last one, by who? the regime delivering chemical weapons is not something that you can just, like, you re sprinkling sort of frosting on a cake. it s a complicated, delicate process. it requires very high certain type of technology, and only the regime has it. to even ask the question of who used it this is where it gets interesting. i think and very complicated because you re right, at a certain level, we can document all sorts of horrible things, all sorts of atrocities that have played out over the two years. look at just a few days ago. but i think the question becomes, when we start saying the natural human instinct is to do something, but there can also i think there s a com l compelling that doing something could make it worse. it s hard to seein ....
Lessor the same. the trajectory of the conflict on so many different levels is getting so bad. if the dead pools continue at this rate, we ll reach the 100,000 mark in syria. that s roughly the number killed in bosnia in 2 1/2 years of fighting. that s also the second anniversary in august of president obama saying that assad has to step aside, right? so to continue what we re doing now, it s important to know what was used, right? it s important to go up that chain. but then we have to look at, well, what is the investigative structure here? it s the united nations. the investigation to come and look at the site is being blocked by the assad regime. even the scope of that investigation can only investigate one site. after they go to that one site, they re not allowed to assess who used the weapons. how is that going to help us solve this problem? so i think the united states needs to look at how else can they go about trying to solve this problem, find out what ....