All war is horrific, but some aspects of war are more horrific than others. The death toll of Syria's civil war was estimated last winter at 470,000, each a singular tragedy. Yet it's often particular weapons, used on particular targets, that cause international condemnation. When the State Department announced on Monday that the United States was suspending efforts to work with Russia on a ceasefire in Syria, the State Department listed in particular the targeting of civilians and aid convoys as the reason for the halt.
Speaking from the podium at the State Department briefing room today, Secretary of State John Kerry lambasted the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for firing rockets containing chemical weapon against a suburb of Damascus. The attack killed between 500 and 1,300 people. (Though the precise make up of the chemical weapons isn't known, Syria is believed to have large stockpiles of toxic mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin.) This is the clearest criticism yet that the Obama administration has leveled at the Assad regime, and it hints at future action the United States might take against Assad. Here are the key points of Kerry's speech:
Defense Distributed's plastic, 3D printed "Liberator" single-shot handgun was here for a moment and then it was gone in more than one sense. For one, the news cycle turned over. Moreover, the State Department came down on Defense Distributed asking it to pull the CAD file for the Liberator off its servers until the lawyers could figure out if putting a free, downloadable CAD file up on the Web violated any arms export regulations. But the Liberator is back and - presumably to Defense Distributed co-founder Cody Wilson's glee - it is evolving.
