UN Investigator Claims Evidence Syrian Rebels Used Sarin Gas

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blackascoal

The Force is With Me
The "varying degrees of confidence" the Obama administration has claimed for intelligence reports of chemical weapons use by government forces in Syria may become more varied and less confident if evidence cited by a United Nations investigator is substantiated. Reuters reported from Geneva on Sunday that one member of a UN team looking into human rights violations in Syria's two-year-old civil war said the evidence pointed to use of sarin gas by the rebel forces.

Carla Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general and a member of the UN independent commission of inquiry on Syria, said in a Swiss-Italian television interview that the commission's investigations produced "strong, concrete suspicions" about the origin of the nerve-gas attack.

"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of Sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said. "This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added.

Del Ponte, who served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been use, Reuters reported. The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and human rights violations is separate from the investigation authorized by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon into allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria.

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U.S. troops establishing a safe zone at or near the Syrian border could easily be fired upon by Assad forces, drawing the United States into another civil war in the Arab world. And arming the rebels could easily backfire, since the Syrian opposition is dominated by radical anti-American forces. The leading faction in the coalition fighting the Assad regime is the al-Nusra Front, an Islamic group that fought American forces in Iraq and last month announced its formal union with al-Qaeda in "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant."

U.S. efforts to "tip the scales" in favor of the overthrow of the Assad regime could turn out to be as "successful" as the much heralded "regime change" in Iraq. The nation might well wonder if we can afford more "success" of that kind.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world...-claims-evidence-syrian-rebels-used-sarin-gas
 
Haaretz: Jihadists, not Assad, apparently behind reported chemical attack in Syria
Intelligence reports suggest jihadists among the Syria rebels have technical know-how to produce chemical warheads.

Haaretz now reports that the chemical attack that occurred two days ago at a military checkpoint near Aleppo, Syria was likely the work of Jihadi forces in the opposition.

The explosion claimed the lives of Syrian Armed Forces soldiers who are apparently loyal to Assad, and the Syrian government was quick to demand an international investigation of the incident. These two facts would indicate that Assad's forces were not behind the attack.
In addition, from what has been released of the physical and medical evidence, it seems that some of the injuries were caused by chlorine. While chlorine gas has been used in the past as a weapon, mainly in the First World War, the chemical arsenals of nations developing these weapons have for decades focused mainly on mustard gas and various types of nerve agents, which, had they been used last week, would have caused different symptoms that were not observed.

It appears that the target of the attack was a checkpoint manned by Syrian Armed Forces, which reinforces the theory that rebel forces, probably jihadists known to be operating around Aleppo, were behind it. A report by Britain's Channel Four, based on Syrian military sources, claims that the weapon used in the attack may have been a missile carrying a warhead filled with chlorine mixed into a saline solution. The Syrian source also said that a factory that manufactures chlorine is located nearby.

Furthermore, this attack using an improvised chemical device is similar to those carried out on several occasions in 2007 in the Sunni Triangle area of Iraq. This may indicate that some of the same individuals or al Qaeda-linked groups may have been involved.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...ntly-behind-reported-chemical-attack-in-Syria
 
blackascoal said:
Haaretz: Jihadists, not Assad, apparently behind reported chemical attack in Syria
Intelligence reports suggest jihadists among the Syria rebels have technical know-how to produce chemical warheads.

Haaretz now reports that the chemical attack that occurred two days ago at a military checkpoint near Aleppo, Syria was likely the work of Jihadi forces in the opposition.

The explosion claimed the lives of Syrian Armed Forces soldiers who are apparently loyal to Assad, and the Syrian government was quick to demand an international investigation of the incident. These two facts would indicate that Assad's forces were not behind the attack.
In addition, from what has been released of the physical and medical evidence, it seems that some of the injuries were caused by chlorine. While chlorine gas has been used in the past as a weapon, mainly in the First World War, the chemical arsenals of nations developing these weapons have for decades focused mainly on mustard gas and various types of nerve agents, which, had they been used last week, would have caused different symptoms that were not observed.

It appears that the target of the attack was a checkpoint manned by Syrian Armed Forces, which reinforces the theory that rebel forces, probably jihadists known to be operating around Aleppo, were behind it. A report by Britain's Channel Four, based on Syrian military sources, claims that the weapon used in the attack may have been a missile carrying a warhead filled with chlorine mixed into a saline solution. The Syrian source also said that a factory that manufactures chlorine is located nearby.

Furthermore, this attack using an improvised chemical device is similar to those carried out on several occasions in 2007 in the Sunni Triangle area of Iraq. This may indicate that some of the same individuals or al Qaeda-linked groups may have been involved.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...ntly-behind-reported-chemical-attack-in-Syria
Click to expand...

Just as well America didnt go into Syria guns blazing with John Wayne on a white horse.
 
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