Captain Radar,
Pinpoint pupils for nerve agent, indeed yes. But those casualties had been treated with atropine, which has the opposite effect. I was once treated with atropine and the effect is fully dilated pupils, complete inability if the eye to accommodate to bright light or to focus. And the effects of atropine poisoning can last a very long time, depending on dosage.
There is another important feature of sarin, once manufactured, it has a very short shelf life. It is easy to store as two component chemicals, which can be mixed to create sarin ready for use. That involves either deliberately mixing sarin and loading it into a weapon or using a binary weapon which does the mixing when used - e.g. a shell that mixes the two components when fired.
Does Syria own binary CW?
If not, this probably wasn't someone taking an existing weapon out of long term storage - there is no arsenal of sarin shells left over from the Cold War.
Last edited by Courtney Mil; 27th Apr 2013 at 10:10.