Susan Rice, Obama colleagues take heat for past claims on Syria chemical weapons purge

Susan Rice and other former Obama administration officials are taking heat for past claims that their 2013 Syria agreement successfully led to the Assad regime purging its entire chemical weapons stockpile — in the wake of this week’s alleged sarin gas attack.

On Thursday, President Trump launched a targeted strike at a Syrian airfield in response to what he called a barbaric chemical attack on innocent civilians at the hand of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council,” Trump said.

Video footage from the chemical attack scene immediately raised credibility problems for claims made by members of the Obama administration that the prior agreement had rid the war-torn country of chemical agents.

During an interview this past January with National Public Radio, former National Security Adviser Rice touted the “success” in Syria, in striking a deal with Russia’s help that resulted in the prior administration dropping the threat of military action.

“We were able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished,” she boasted. “We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

Rice isn’t the only Obama-era official who made self-congratulatory statements about removing chemical weapons from Syria.

In July 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to discuss the September 2013 deal that resulted in Russia agreeing to help confiscate and then destroy Syria’s stockpile.

“We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out,” Kerry claimed.

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