I think it is now clear that the cause of the deaths and illnesses was chemical weapons, but Akenaton's idea that it may have involved the unintentional hit of a cache of such weapons hidden by the rebel forces seems plausible to me. Indeed, I have heard it said that a strike on a stockpile of such weapons might release, rather than destroy, the chemical agents. I also see that it important that the U.S. remember the moral of Aesop's fable about the boy who cried "wolf". We should remember that the Maine was blown up from the inside out and that the Lusitania was carrying weapons. More recently, there is the Gulf of Tonkin and the hunt in Iraq for nuclear weapons (none found), which turned in to the hunt for any sort of weapon of mass destruction (none found), which turned in to the hunt for biological weapons (none found), which turned in to a hunt for a deck of cards.