It’s late Friday afternoon — here are a few things worth reading:

• Betcy Jose asks, with all of the attention on chemical weapons, why does it matter how people die in conflict?
• Sohail Hashmi and I agree we need stronger protection for civilians in conflict, but ignoring the use of chemical weapons is not the way to do it.
• David Petrasek is moderating and contributing to an excellent discussion of R2P and Syria at OpenGlobalRights.
• A go-to source for documents and links on Syria
• Trying to get to the bottom of this.  There is a widening gap in reported regime casualties between the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (27,654 soldiers and 17,874 pro-regime militias) and the Syrian Center for Documentation of Violations (11,447).

And,

• This is not your grandparents’ Cold War:  McCain is going to launch a response to Putin with his own op-ed in Pravda.