A Times editorial about American policy toward Syria following the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against the opposition says, "Mr. Obama should only act if he has compelling documentation that the sarin gas was used in an attack by Syrian forces and was not the result of an accident or fertilizer."
Fertilizer?
The Times offers no further explanation, so readers are left to puzzle out for themselves the source of the possible confusion, or imagine potential scenarios. Was Bashar al-Assad so worried that the rebels might be hungry that he lobbed shells containing fertilizer at them so that their crops would flourish? Were the chemical weapons — sorry, "fertilizer" — distributed to the rebels by the Assad regime along with copies of the latest Burpee seed catalog, bags of potting soil, and leather gardening gloves?