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.
For the second day in a row, the Israeli government is reported to have bombed Syria -- this time near Damascus -- according to reporting by the Washington Post.
As the Washington Post -- itself deeply in the ideological pockets of the left-neocons -- concludes, this is Israel's response to American skepticism over its lurid tales, without evidence, of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government:
Over at the American Conservative, Phil Giraldi alerts us to the US administration's plans for the "day after" in Syria, if US assistance to the Syrian insurgents finds them victorious over the Syrian government. According to Giraldi's analysis, a strategy of sorts is falling into place whereby whatever US-selected puppet ends up at least in title ruling Syria if the government is defeated will see CIA drones as a kind of leadership protection operation. This is more or less in place in Afghanistan and Iraq, Giraldi writes, and is to be expanded. US drones will silently patrol from the Mediterranean to Pakistan, seeking out those who have been identified by the US to be a threat. It is a recipe for an unsustainable and dystopian future, and, as the author points out, the plan is based on shortcoming and fallacy. Here is Giraldi:
Drones for “Regime Protection”
By Philip Giraldi
Media reports of CIA preparations to use drones to target al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria, should the post-Assad situation warrant such an intervention, are only party correct. The plan to use drones under certain circumstances is in reality part of the much larger CIA program in Iraq that parallels the program being set up in Afghanistan.
