It establishes this narrative of Russian secret chemical weapons program, and now we have an apparent chemical weapon attack in Syria.

It's only a matter of time before someone explicitly links those two together and in some way

blames Russia for what happened in Syria.

Hello, welcome to Media Roots Radio.

This is your host for today, Robbie Martin.

You were just listening to a clip from my interview with Tom Secker, which you're about to hear.

On Friday, April 13th, the U.S., the U.K., and France, announced joint air strikes on Syria

in retaliation for Assad's alleged chemical weapons attack on April 4th.

A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces

to launch precision strikes on targets associated

with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

A combined operation with the armed forces of France and the United Kingdom is now underway.

Tom, being as prescient as he always is, suggested that this alleged chemical weapons incident in Syria that happened on

April 4th would be linked together with the alleged Salisbury poisoning incident that happened on

March 4th. Five days after we recorded that podcast, UK Prime Minister Theresa May implied

during her speech announcing the joint air strikes on Syria

that Salisbury had something to do with the response.

But these strikes are about deterring the barbaric use of chemical weapons in Syria and beyond.

And so to achieve this, there must also be a wider diplomatic effort,

including the full range

of political and economic levers, to strengthen the global norms prohibiting the use of chemical

weapons which have stood for nearly a century.

...