A large number of videos, photos and graphic descriptions of chemical-weapon attacks on civilians have been coming out of Syria over the past day, and it is clear they have made an impact not just on those observing the violence from afar but also on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who cited them in a statement about the attack on Monday. Said Kerry:
Last night, after speaking with foreign ministers from around the world about the gravity of this situation, I went back and I watched the videos — the videos that anybody can watch in the social media, and I watched them one more gut-wrenching time. It is really hard to express in words the the human suffering that they lay out before us.
As a father, I can’t get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child, wailing while chaos swirled around him, the images of entire families dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound, bodies contorting in spasms, human suffering that we can never ignore or forget. Anyone who could claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Petteri Sulonen
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