The Dubious WMD Case Against Syrian Government

Source: DATELINE ZERO

Deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said that any military strike on Syria would be a response to chemical weapons–and would “not [intend] to resolve the underlying political crisis within Syria.” Instead, reports the Weekly Standard, “the underlying political crisis within Syria” would be dealt with diplomatically, he said.

Regarding the case being made that Syria has WMDs, U.S. officials told members of Congress there was “no doubt” that chemical weapons were used in Syria last week. According to the Business Insider, Obama’s aides cited “intercepted communications of Syrian officials and evidence of movements by Syria’s military around Damascus before the attack that killed more than 300 people,” while trying to rally congressional support for a military strike against Syria.

The problem in trying to get support is this: To support to the Syrian “rebels” is in fact to support Al Queda. Therefor, Obama’s recent $195 million in aid went to Al Queda, a group we are supposedly at war with already in our “war on terror.”

The picture became even more sinister when The Independent reported that a British company send nerve gas chemicals to Syria … with the government’s knowledge and permission! Even worse, according to a report from Turkish Weekly dated June 6, is the fact that Syrian rebels “were seized on the Turkish-Syrian border with a 2kg cylinder full of nerve gas sarin.”

And then there is a recent video from a purported Syrian Al Queda rebel boasting that the rebels were the ones who used the nerve gas, and further promising “to kill their women and children like Osama Bin Laden said.”

Earlier this year, witness testimony strongly suggested that Syrian rebels used Sarin nerve gas, not Assad’s regime, according to Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

As for the chemical attack in August, according to The Daily Mail, “U.S. officials knew about nerve-gas attack in Syria three days before it” occurred. That attack killed over 1,400 people. Did the U.S. government not warn anyone because they planned to blame those deaths on the Syrian government to justify a military strike in the region? Because it seems clear that the Al Queda “rebels” did it, and not the government.

According to the Guardian, only the the US, UK, France, and Syrian rebels seem convinced that the Syrian government has been using chemical attacks on its own people, and that this justifies military intervention. From that article: “All three governments also state categorically that the rebels did not have the capacity to mount a CW attack on the scale of what occurred on 21 August. All have stated they are relying on classified sources as well as the precedent of earlier, smaller attacks. More detail is clearly needed to convince sceptics, given the experience of the Iraq WMD dossier.”

If the Syrian government did in fact use chemical agents, it wouldn’t make sense. Because, for one thing, the Syrian government is successfully pushing back the insurgency. So why resort to chemical weapons? And another thing, UN inspectors were near by.

Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, told the Jerusalem Post: “Logically, it would make little sense for the Syrian government to employ chemical agents at such a time, particularly given the relatively close proximity of the targeted towns (to the UN team).”

David Blair wrote at The Telegraph: “Mr Assad has been advancing recently, beating back the rebels and recapturing territory. Using chemical weapons might make sense when he is losing, but why launch gas attacks when he is winning anyway?” He added the same comment about the UN inspectors, stating that “it would seem strange for the regime to gas its enemies within 72 hours of letting these experts into the country.”

Read more in the full op-ed at DATELINE ZERO