Not only is chlorine gas allowed under international treaties banning chemical weapons, it is hard to prove that it was used once the yellow clouds float across Syria’s landscape. In 2013, Bashar al-Assad agreed to destroy his reserve of chemical weapons, but the international community left the nation’s reserves of chlorine because the chemical has legitimate industrial purposes, such as purifying water. Since that agreement in 2013, the Syrian government has reportedly used barrel bombs packed with chlorine to attack a group of towns in the northwest of the country 40 times, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The Assad regime uses chlorine possibly because it thinks it can get away with it. The New York Times reports, “But investigators face difficulties. Chlorine dissipates quickly in the atmosphere and does not last in blood or urine, and residue stays in soil for just 48 hours, leaving little time to transport samples across borders.” In March, a gas attack killed seven civilians. And the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said back in September chlorine was used “systematically and repeatedly.” It appears Assad has crossed Barack Obama’s phony “red line” because it was obvious Obama never had any intention of backing it up with action. More…