The FactsIn her NPR interview, Rice acknowledged that the Syrian civil war was the administration’s biggest disappointment but she pointed to the removal of chemical weapons from Syria as an achievement. President Barack Obama scrubbed a planned attack on Syrian facilities — which planners believed would have left two-thirds of Syria’s chemical weapons intact — in exchange for a diplomatic solution that was to result in the removal of all chemical weapons. “The Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own people is a heinous act that violates the long-standing global norm against the production and use of chemical weapons,” said Adam J. Szubin, acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. Ultimately, Syria declared more than 1,300 tons of those materials and they was removed through the efforts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). When Obama contemplated attacking Syria, a major problem with his plan was that most of the chemical weapons would not have been destroyed.

Source: Washington Post April 10, 2017 06:56 UTC