After investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, UN Human Rights commission member Carla Del Ponte says that testimony from victims and medical staff indicate that it was rebel forces and not the Syrian government that had used sarin gas.
Said Del Ponte:
“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. This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”
Of course anyone whose brain fired on more than one cylinder should have questioned why the Syrian government would use in such a limited and militarily insignificant way the one weapon it knew would likely bring on a US and NATO Libya-style intervention. It made no sense at all for the Syrian government to use “just a little” sarin — not enough to do more than kill a few people, nothing to alter the course of the war — knowing about “red lines” and a US/Saudi/Qatari/Israeli/Turk bloodlust to invade.
On the other hand, it made all the sense in the world for the insurgents to release some sarin here and there, make some videos of the victims, and email the links to some very willing Israeli generals and McCainian rabid warhawks in the US and their absurd poodles in the UK and France.
(An interesting side note is the use — or misuse — of Secretary of Defense Hagel in pushing this lie. Was he a willing participant in the charade, after his initial blindside by Israeli general Itai Brun’s claim that the Syrian government had used sarin and his subsequent abrupt about face in favor of this position? Did they get him to do a Colin Powell?)
The question is, whence came the chemical weapons? Perhaps the Syrian government was not lying when it asserted at the end of last month that the chemical weapons used by the Syrian rebels originated in Turkey. The Syrian official’s claim was reported in the Western press as an example of mendacity, laughed at by the US administration. But it seems he may well have been telling the truth. After all, the rest of the insurgent weapons are being shipped via Turkey into Syria with the help of the CIA.
What happens to the “red line” when it turns out that US allies were the ones who used the chemical weapons? Does Obama bomb anyway?
