U.S. officials say Syria has begun moving parts of its vast arsenal of chemical weapons out of storage facilities. Read the "alarming" details below, although before that, we’d like to quickly point out the following:

• Syria’s “undeclared stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried U.S. officials.” Which begs the question, what if anything have U.S. officials been doing to address this concern, other than worrying?

• “American officials are divided on the meaning of the latest moves by members of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.” As American officials often are, as a result of inadequate information, insufficient Intel, fickle U.S. foreign policy (and administrations) and uninformed public opinion. So why in the world would a country like, say, Israel, who happens to be in the direct line of fire, stake its survival on U.S. assessments regarding anything, much less nukes?

• “Evidence that the chemical weapons are coming into play could escalate the conflict in Syria... This could set the precedent of WMD being used under our watch," said one U.S. official. Well, news flash (anonymous) U.S. official: WMD was already used "under our watch." Remember, for example, the 1988 Halabja massacre, i.e., Saadam Hussein’s chemical-weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan?

• “Damascus has one of the largest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the Middle East.” And chances are this stockpile was augmented by the stuff in those truck convoys seen (in satellite photos) during the early days of the Iraq war, heading out from Iraq in the middle of the night to Damascus. [And please, we've heard enough "Slam Dunk"; "Bush Lied" slogans to last a lifetime, but what we haven't heard is what was in those truck convoys.]

• “Syria never signed the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, the arms-control agreement that outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of such weapons.” So? What if Syria had signed that agreement? Arms control agreements are good for law-abiding regimes, and dictatorships/rogue regimes ain't law-abiding.

So U.S. officials are "alarmed" now? Just think how alarmed they'll be once Syria's bud, Iran, has nukes and the means with which to deliver them.