The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials, NBC News reported Wednesday, December 5. As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers. U.S. officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn’t been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn’t issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, “there’s little the outside world can do to stop it.”