When President Obama drew a "red line" that threatened the Syrian government with U.S. military action if Bashar Assad's forces used poison gas – and then withdrew it – the move was justified by a Russian guarantee that the Russians would take possession of Syria's entire gas inventory.

Only a five-year-old would have believed the Russians.  As it turns out, no matter how much of Syria's stockpile of poison gas the Russians removed, they apparently made sure that there were plenty of weapons left to use on innocent people.

The U.N. is reporting that the Syrian government has used poison gas to attack civilians at least 27 times.  In six other attacks, experts have been unable to identify which side used the banned weapon.

Reuters:

A government warplane dropped sarin on the town in Idlib province, killing more than 80 civilians, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said, in the most conclusive findings to date from investigations into chemical weapons attacks during the conflict.

The Commission also said U.S. air strikes on a mosque in the village of Al-Jina in rural Aleppo in March that killed 38 people, including children, failed to take precautions in violation of international law.

The weapons used on Khan Sheikhoun were previously identified as containing sarin, an odourless nerve a gent. But that conclusion, reached by a fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), did not say who was responsible.

"Government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition-held areas. In the gravest incident, the Syrian air force used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, killing dozens, the majority of whom were women and children," the U.N. report said, declaring the attack a war crime.

In their 14th report since 2011, U.N. investigators said they had in all documented 33 chemical weapons attacks to date.

Twenty seven were by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, including seven between March 1 to July 7. Perpetrators had not been identified yet in six early attacks, they said.

The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. It said its strikes in Khan Sheikhoun hit a weapons depot belonging to rebel forces, a claim dismissed by the U.N. investigators.

That attack led U.S. President Donald Trump to launch the first U.S. air strikes on a Syrian air base.

A separate joint inquiry by the U.N. and OPCW aims to report by October on who was to blame for Khan Sheikhoun.

The U.N. investigators interviewed 43 witnesses, victims, and first responders linked to the attack. Satellite imagery, photos of bomb remnants and early warning reports were used.

Most of the dead from these attacks are directly on the head of Barack Obama.  His apologists can try to wiggle away from Obama's culpability, but the fact of the matter is that Obama made the decision not to take out Syria's chemical weapons supply and then made a ridiculous deal with Syria's ally Russia to have the stockpile removed. 

The Obama administration "guaranteed" in 2013 that "100%" of Syria's chemical weapons were removed by Russia.  Following that guarantee, Syria's military dropped chlorine bombs on civilians.  Obama claimed that chlorine was not a chemical weapon.  (Millions of World War I soldiers would disagree).  While it's true that chlorine has multiple industrial uses, the same cannot be said of sarin gas, used in several attacks over the last few years.

This U.N. report exposes the hollowness and cynicism of the Obama administration in its dealings with Russia and the American people.  Many of us did not believe Obama when he assured us that the deal with Russia would end the threat of chemical weapons being used on Syrian civilians.  But the media – ignoring the unprecedented withdrawal of a red line, which severely damaged U.S. credibility – played along with the fiction, and thousands of Syrian civilians died.