Reassessing Obama’s biggest mistake

THE FORCES of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, struck soon after 2am. Residents of Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, told reporters that they heard a strange noise, as if someone was opening a bottle of Pepsi. A local doctor, fighting back tears, explained that many people had sought shelter underground, but the gas was heavier than air and it pooled in basements and cellars. Had they climbed the stairs instead, they would have lived. More than 1,000 people perished that night. The doctor distributed some 25,000 ampoules of atropine and 7,000 of hydrocortisone to medical teams so they could try to save those who were suffering the effects of nerve agent.Mr Assad fired at Ghouta on August 21st 2013. It was the deadliest day of the Syrian civil war. It , then America’s president, to act on his warning that “a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons being moved around or utilised. That would change my calculus.”