The United States, Britain and France have supplied the United Nations with a trove of evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that U.S. officials say proves that Syrian troops used the nerve agent sarin on the battlefield. But the nature of the physical evidence — as well as the secrecy over how it was collected and analyzed — has opened the administration to criticism by independent experts, who say there is no reliable way to assess its authenticity… Jean Pascal Zanders, who until recently was a research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, said he has scoured the Internet for photographs, video and news reports documenting alleged nerve agent attacks in Syria. What he has seen has made him a skeptic.

Few of the photographs, Zanders said, have borne the trademark symptoms of a chemical weapons attack.

Let’s do a quick check-list against Iraq? Hateful dictator? Check. Sectarian civil divisions now in full-out civil war? Check. Middle Eastern Muslim country? Check. Saudis and Jordanians on board? Check. Massive emotional and moral appeal for getting rid of a dictator? Check. No idea who the opposition really is? Check.

Seriously, how can anyone – anyone – back getting involved in such a war only a decade after the worst foreign policy catastrophe since Vietnam? Especially all those, like Bill Clinton and John McCain, who were wrong about Iraq having assured us they were so very, very right.