“So what else are you talking about?”
Three months later, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “With respect to Syria, we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.” And three months after that, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Obama’s threat of force had made it possible to “cut the deal
that got 100 percent of the declared chemical weapons out of Syria, and people nevertheless have been critical — one day of bombing versus the virtue of getting 100 percent of the chemical weapons out of Syria.”
As late as this January, Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, said on NPR: “We were able to find a solution
that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished.
“It would be awash in chemical weapons, which would fall into the hands of ISIS, Al Nusra or other groups.”
Still, the administration knew all along that it had probably not gotten all of the chemical weapons,
and tried to get Russia to help press Syria, without success.
“If the Syrian government carried out the attack and the agent was sarin, then clearly the 2013 agreement didn’t succeed in its objective of eliminating Bashar’s C. W.,” or chemical weapons, said Robert Einhorn, who was the State Department special adviser for nonproliferation
and arms control under Mr. Obama before the agreement.
I think Obama will never live this down, nor should he.”
Frederic C. Hof, who worked on Syria policy at the State Department under Mr. Obama before leaving
and becoming a sharp critic of the administration, said the agreement remained defensible because it took weapons out of Mr. Assad’s hands.
