One solution mentioned in the house of commons during the debate was arming the rebels with chemical weapons as a deterrent against the Assad regime. I kid you not....
I don't think Israel will allow an enemy guerrilla army from being armed with chemical weapons.
The real issue here is that Russia has vowed to protecting the Assad regime. This conflict is ultimately a proxy war.
The real question I have is why Russia is protecting Assad? Is it just a question of support what in their eyes is the lesser of two evils or is it a case of RDF?
Bonkers.
The suggestion was also mentioned by someone else too. Can't remember what the timestamp was.
And as always, we'll never learn the truth in time.
> Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.
This means: it's not impossible that rebels have access to some chemical weapon.
The US gov keeps repeating "we have evidence that it has happened" but a) they have never shown it, and most of all: b) they don't say "we have evidence that shows it was Assad".
What happened on August 21 is an entirely different matter: it involved a large-scale rocket barrage on a dozen locations in discontinuous rebel-held neighborhoods which gassed entire city blocks; the gas persisted long enough afterwards to kill people such as journalists who responded to the reports. Hundreds of Youtube videos of the fairly characteristic aftermath exist, with the bodycount presently at about 1500. The areas gassed were threateningly close to the core of Damascus. This much cannot be reasonably contested.
The US government reports that it was listening in on the phone calls from one military commander to another and heard comments indicating regime involvement. They are also claiming to have identified using aerial imagery the area the rockets were fired from, the preparation three days before, and the actual firing of the rockets:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nearly...
I just don't understand why they could not let the UN check what they call "evidence".
Also logic dictates it's very unlikely that the Syrian government, which is winning the war, will launch Sarin Gas in a Damascus neighbourhood (which is the capital, and thus where Al-Assad and this relatives live), leaving the US and its allies with an excuse to strike. Also Washington didn't want UN inspectors to stay longer to investigate, and it's doing everything possible to strike before UN inspectors can reach any conclusion. Without talking about Kerry proclaming US government has "proofs" but unwilling to show these proofs to anyone... Sorry, this is a "déjà vu".
Besides, witnesses and a AP reporter say it was the rebels who performed the attack. http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-sau...