[QUOTE=Gack]
Some congressmen who have had the ‘classified’ briefing have come away unimpressed.
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Can we get a list of these ‘unimpressed’ congressmen? Did they, perhaps, have a(R) in front of their names? 
I don’t remember the names or parties. Not important IMO.
So, just an unsubstantiated assertion by you then. Got it.
Oh God, this is hysterically funny. You’ve “just” found out that a bunch of congressmen were “unimpressed” but you actually can’t remember their names or political parties.
On top of that, you claimed it wasn’t “relevant”.
Since you seem to have a fascination with Jewish conspiracy theories perhaps you can recall whether they were Jewish or gentile.
Failing that, perhaps you can remember if they were male or female.
I mean c’mon, forgetting the names and political parties of politicians you just learned about is bad enough, but your memory can’t be so unreliable you can’t remember their gender.
I’m laying down a marker. IMHO the preponderance of the evidence at the present time indicates that the Syrians are responsible for the gas attack; whether it was Assad or one of his nuttier generals is a separate matter. The Saudi angle simply has not been credibly fleshed out, and the preponderance of the evidence does not indicate an Israeli false flag. Among other reasons, the latter would be rather risky and rather pointless: why not wait for Assad’s team to do something ill-advised?
Back in 2002 there were serious holes in the Niger Yellowcake story. There’s nothing like that in this instance. Also, in contrast with the Bushes, Obama has shown no eagerness to look for pretexts to bomb Syria. Quite the contrary, Republican congressman were criticizing Obama for not being warlike enough over the past year, though now of course they say the opposite. I predict most modern conservatives will remain blissfully unperturbed by these 180 degree flip-flops.
You need to evaluate the sourcing: you need to ID the clowns and those who don’t have a habit of shaping intelligence around policy.
It’s also worth noting that former Iranian President Rafsanjani, who is in far better position than anyone here or any of the sources who’ve accused the rebels of being behind it has indicated that he thinks the Assad government was responsible.
Similarly, the scholar Juan Cole, who’s hardly a neocon and has spoken vigorously against intervention, has said repeatedly that the idea that the rebels did this is “preposterous”.
None of that is meant to defend the US bombing Syria which, at this point, would be highly unlikely to improve the situation.
There are however reasonable indications that the anti-Assad forces have experimented with using chemical weapons a number of times before. Although on a smaller scale. And there’s the matter of the Syrian Al-Nusra Islamists arrested in Turley with 2kg of Sarin gas (Turkey finds Sarin Gas in Homes of suspected Syrian Islamists). Are you going to bomb both sides?
In any case, I don’t think the US main interest is Syria or chemical weapons. It’s Iran and nuclear weapons and a worry that they’ll lose credibility to threaten Iran if they don’t act on their threats on Syria. But one of the likelier outcomes of a US bombing campaign against Syria will be Russia upping its arms export to Iran, perhaps even delivering the S-300 which had previously been mothballed – making a possible future attack against Iran much more risky. So if you insist on bombing Syria, you probably should bomb the shit out of Iran at the same time too.
Also if the USA bombs Syria then it takes ownership of the civil war, and anything from thereon will be – with some legitimacy – blamed on the USA. If the bombing campaign is going to be as itsi bitsy tiny as Kerry has said, then you might as well also prepare for a second intervention, because nothing will be resolved.
Thus far we have seen no direct evidence that the Syrians are guilty. We have a report of direct evidence, an intercepted communication, but the source of that evidence is MOSSAD, notorious for shaping intelligence around policy. Further, if you watch the G. Porter vid linked above, you’ll see that MOSSAD routinely does not provide the ‘evidence’ but rather a report of the evidence, so we will never see this evidence.
We also have a report that the US has direct evidence, satellite ‘detections’ of rocket launches and trajectories or impacts from Assad held areas into the attacked areas at the time of the attack. This is direct evidence and if it exists we should see it along with the chain of command for the agency that obtained it.
The rest is circumstantial on conjecture. The qui bono (who benefits) argument clearly implicates the rebels. There is other possible circumstantial evidence that IMO implicates Assad, namely the extent of the attack, but the extent is not yet verified. I believe the UN report will provide evidence of the extent of the attack.
I have seen a vid of a US prof inspecting a vid of a rocket that impacted in the area (reportedly) and its advanced design indicated to him that the rocket came from the Syrian side. He also noted that it had the capability of carrying a lot of gas, 10 times more than he would have expected (I should have saved the link). I expect we’ll hear a lot more about this in the UN report. Does it differentiate Assad vs. rebels? I don’t know.
Here is the thing, we don’t have any direct evidence, and there is insufficient information to be certain who launched the attack. The US claims to have direct evidence and we should see it. Until that time I think you have to live with the uncertainty of not knowing.
Cite?
(Also, it’s not “MOSSAD”, it’s “The Mossad”. Hebrew for “The Institute”, short for “The Institute for Intelligence and Special Duties”. Pet peeve of mine).
“My name is Aharon Sherf,” he said. "I am the head of the Academy. Welcome to the Mossad. Its full name is Ha Mossad, le Modiyn ve le Tafkidim Mayuhadim [the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations]. Our motto is: ‘By way of deception, thou shalt do war.’
Proverbs 24:6. A better translation would be “tricks”, “stratagems” or “cunning” rather than “deception”.
Anyway, that’s the job of every intelligence agency and military force in the world - to outsmart its enemies. What proof do you have that the Mossad is especially infamous for deceiving the public?
Why is it important that you should say “The Mossad” when “Mossad” already has a “the”? Then you have a double “the” like when you say “the hoi polloi.”
Anyway here is Putin in The NY Times: A Plea for Caution From Russia
Sorry - my mistake. I meant that “Mossad” is “Institute”; “Hamossad” is “The Institute”.
[QUOTE=Rune]
Anyway here is Putin in The NY Times: A Plea for Caution From Russia
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Sort of a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ moment for him there, considering Chechnya and Georgia.
Since Snowden flew to Moscow, Putin really seems to have got his sense of humour sorted.
He’s reminding me of when Castro offered to sent observers to the Florida vote-riging debacle - sorry handing chad issue.
Florida should have taken him on his word. Democracies are never worse off for tyrannies looking them over the shoulders, and who knows, Castro might even had gotten an idea or two.
The Saudi theory has been blown out of the water. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad at the New Republic:
[QUOTE=Muhammad Idrees Ahmad ]
…an obscure website called Mint Press which published an article claiming that Syrian rebels had accidentally set off a canister of Sarin supplied to them by the Saudis. The idea that an accident in one place would cause over a thousand deaths in 12 separate locations—with none affected in areas in between—somehow did not strike this intelligence veteran as implausible. But to its credit, Mint Press has since added a disclaimer: “Some information in this article could not be independently verified."
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On the other side we have the reports of the intelligence agencies of the US, Britain and Germany as well as the reporting of Human Rights Watch.
I wouldn’t lay 20:1 odds on this. But the preponderance of the evidence doesn’t suggest that the rebels released magic gas that leaped over some neighborhoods and engulfed others.
OTOH - I haven’t seen those maps. And the author over-states his case methinks: Syria's Chemical Weapons: Assad Not to Blame, Say Truthers | The New Republic
But there is a shortage of reliable reports indicating the gassing was done by anybody other than Assad’s team. And a plethora of wackos such as WMD and infowars suggesting that it was anybody else, with flimsy evidence.
tbh, I have thought it most likely to have been an accident - probably by one of the opposition groups - all along. But you can’t argue it any more than you can blame Assad or anyone.
I assume this is the map you mean …
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/30/text-of-u-s-assessment-on-syrias-use-of-chemical-weapons/
and if it accurate it is completely inconsistent with an accidental release of gas. And the widespread nature of the attack indicates a coordinated attack to do some real damage, not a false flag.
But, is there any connection with the map and reality? Who knows. I think the UN report will tell us. Also I think the UN casualty figures should be accurate to the extent that they rely on hospital data.
OTOH, the rebels are shown launching gas canisters in this vid,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WrCzPk3_4
so if the vid is legit it can’t be argued that they do not have that capability.
And we have seen no ‘intelligence’ data from anyone, we have a report of satellite ‘detections’ from the US, and filtered accounts of an intercepted communication from the Mossad.
It could indicate almost anything. If, as you state, the map is “accurate”.
How about … say, the cannister is on a moving vehicle … you and everyone else would have thought of that - once aware of as leak trying to move it, or not aware of a leak at all. Right, of course you have taken that into consideration for your “coordinated attack”.