The Cable notes that U.S. intercepts of phone exchanges between a "panicked" Syrian official and a "chemical weapons unit" in the wake of the East Ghouta slaughter of about 400 innocents raise "questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on Aug. 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime?"
Assuming the former is true--that it was the reckless work of a lone Syrian officer--and also assuming that such individual recklessness warrants U.S. retaliation, the East Ghouta massacre raises yet another question. In the wake of the My Lai massacre, which took the lives of about 400 Vietnamese innocents and was ordered by one William Calley, a U.S. Army 2nd lieutenant, would the Warsaw Pact have been justified in bombing San Diego's naval base as a retaliatory act?