I know you built your hopes up Teribus, but it seems like the gas was Sarin. Sorry to disappoint.

Keith, is nerve gas really that much worse than everything else? You are pushing for war on little more than a question of semantics. Assad's dad and uncle between them slaughtered at least 10,000 people, mostly civilians, in 1982. More than 40,000 by some estimates. But his target was the Muslim Brotherhood, so no problem.

Mugabe enforced famine on the Ndebele element of his population, and the West was content that his wife's shopping trips to New York had been curtailed.

The US destroyed communities by the score with defoliants and squirted women and children with nepalm. Did those atrocities just involve the wrong kind of chemicals?

Even within recent weeks we have seen Egypt's army seize power and slaughter thousands of unarmed protesters, and the US will not even call it a coup.

Are the warmongers here seriously arguing that it is the means that matters and not the effect? We may assume that Obama, at least, has broken ranks with them. The Cameron experience has given him at least the possibility of a way out from his hollow and ill-judged red-line bluster.