Rajan Menon writes: What’s striking about the debate over President Obama’s plan for a punitive strike against Syrian President Bashar Assad is the extent to which it centers on countries other than Syria. There’s a reason for this. A concept that has had a long, significant though subtle influence on U.S. foreign policy is at work again: credibility.

The foundational assumption — certainly the subtext — of many arguments for hitting Assad is that America’s reputation is on the line. It’s said that many bad things will happen if Obama folds: Various friends and allies will doubt America’s pledges to protect them; adversaries (Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and others), smelling weakness, will act with impunity.

“Credibility” has great power in national security debates. It conveys strategic sagacity by using historical analogies. (Neville Chamberlain at Munich is a staple.) It warns of consequences that transcend specific nations or issues. It points to the “big picture” and to complex interconnections. It invokes the United States’ unique responsibilities for maintaining global order.

In reality, the credibility gambit often combines sleight of hand with lazy thinking (historical parallels tend to be asserted, not demonstrated) and is a variation on the discredited domino theory. This becomes apparent if one examines how it is being deployed in the debate on Syria.

Obama made a bad decision by publicly, and needlessly, warning a brutal strongman that the United States would resort to military force were he to use chemical weapons. With the White House having announced that Assad had done just that, Obama appears tangled in his own red lines.

But he should not make another mistake now just because he made one earlier. Yet that’s what those who invoke credibility in effect recommend because they don’t explain convincingly why it’s important for him to prove his resolve in this instance. They present credibility as an end in itself, not as a means to achieve a desired outcome, which is what it is.

The concept often serves as an all-purpose rationale. The result is that it can permit the past to dictate the future and give choice and prudence, the essentials of sound statecraft, short shrift. [Continue reading…]

As Americans hear seemingly endless debate about Syria — debate that mostly involves political analysts and reporters based in Washington — there is probably an increasing amount of Syria-fatigue setting in. Haven’t we already heard more than enough?

The reality, though, is that there is a world of difference between hearing people talking about Syria and knowing that much about what’s going on there.

August 21 has been marked as the day everything changed, but how many Americans are aware that since 1,400 people died on that day, another 1,400 Syrians have subsequently been killed?

These were the deaths that few in the Western media see any reason to mention.

64 deaths yesterday, 87 on Thursday, 72 on Wednesday, 66 on Monday, 107 on Sunday, 118 on Saturday, and on and on — the daily deaths in dozens that have become the signature of Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The Los Angeles Times reports: In July 2012, senior U.S. intelligence officials drove to the Capitol to secretly brief top lawmakers on the first indications that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against its own people.

The classified reports about a small-scale attack weren’t definitive, according to U.S. officials who were privy to them. It was still a month before President Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and “change his calculus” about taking action in Syria.

But it was the beginning of a stream of intelligence documenting what U.S. officials say was a yearlong escalation in the use of the banned weapons by the government of President Bashar Assad, a far more extensive record of the incidents than previously known. The Obama administration did not publicly acknowledge the attacks for months, and declared in April that it believed Syria had used chemical weapons.

Obama is struggling to build support now for a punitive strike after an attack Aug. 21 that it says killed 1,429 people. With many of its members deeply skeptical, Congress is expected to begin voting next week on whether to authorize military action.

Administration officials say the evidence for previous chemical attacks wasn’t as compelling, and critics acknowledge it would have been even harder to make the case for a military response to more limited use of the banned weapons. But some current and former officials say the slow response by the White House raises questions about whether earlier, clearer warnings by Obama — and perhaps limited actions such as providing sophisticated weapons to Syrian rebels — could have deterred last month’s attack in Damascus suburbs. [Continue reading…]

M.J. Rosenberg writes: AIPAC is taking an incredible risk by making an unprecedented full court press to pass the bomb Syria resolution.

Never in its history has it gone all out to achieve passage or defeat for anything not directly related to Israel. And, because Congress is snugly in its pocket on Israel issues, it rarely needs to fight.

AIPAC’s last big battle was in 1991 when it tried to get extra aid to support Soviet Jewish refugees in Israel. President George H. W. Bush said the extra aid (in the form of loan guarantees) would only be provided if Israel froze West Bank settlement construction. Prime Minister Shamir said no and Bush said: no extra aid for you.

AIPAC descended on the Hill as they now are over Syria, leading Bush to publicly say “I am one lonely little guy” up against “some powerful political forces” made up of “a thousand lobbyists on the Hill.” [Continue reading…]

Gareth Smyth writes: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 79, has been written off more than most. But the former president and head of the expediency council remains an astute operator, and my guess is that he has chosen his ground carefully in calling for a reappraisal of Iran’s unblinking support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

In saying Assad’s forces were responsible for using chemicals weapons in Damascus in an attack on 21 August, Rafsanjani has surely judged this a good issue for the first serious clash between pragmatists and more “hardline” forces since Hassan Rouhani, a Rafsanjani ally, took over as president a month ago.

While a clash was inevitable sooner or later – and while Rouhani still has the aura of June’s overwhelming election victory – it has arrived quickly, and reflects how delicate a time it is in the Middle East as the United States ponders its first direct military involvement in the Syrian war.

The public argument within Iran’s political class reflects a wider disagreement in Tehran over regional policy and the prospect of talks with Washington about the nuclear programme. There are many in Tehran who would love to undermine Rouhani’s calls for dialogue as means of reaching a compromise over the nuclear programme and reducing region-wide tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims being brought to boiling point by violent chaos in Syria.

Whatever Iran’s longstanding alliance with Assad and whatever the imperatives of maintaining logistical support to Hezbollah, Iran has a strong public policy of opposition to chemical weapons. The deaths of 20,000 Iranian soldiers and the continuing suffering of around 100,000 Iranians from the use of chemicals by Iraq during the 1980-88 war are well known in the country. They are often highlighted on state television.

And while Iran’s link to Assad remains strategic, the conflict is clearly worsening relations with Sunni Arab states. Shia are deeply aware – it is intrinsic to the origins of the faith – of their minority status. Takiyya, the doctrine that holds that beliefs can be disguised in certain circumstances in order to protect the faithful from danger, came about because the Shia cannot win any all-out conflict.

The calculation of the pragmatists is surely that the longer the Syria war lasts, the greater the prospect that the fall of Assad. This would at the very least leave Tehran facing a new regime in Damascus, from which it and Hezbollah are deeply alienated, or perhaps a mess with little of a regime to speak of. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: President Obama’s position on Syria — punish President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons without seeking to force him from power — has been called “half-pregnant” by critics at home and abroad who prefer a more decisive American intervention to end Syria’s civil war.

But Mr. Obama’s limited strike proposal has one crucial foreign ally: Israel.

Israeli officials have consistently made the case that enforcing Mr. Obama’s narrow “red line” on Syria is essential to halting the nuclear ambitions of Israel’s archenemy, Iran. More quietly, Israelis have increasingly argued that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome.

For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

“This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. “Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”

The synergy between the Israeli and American positions, while not explicitly articulated by the leaders of either country, could be a critical source of support as Mr. Obama seeks Congressional approval for surgical strikes in Syria. Some Republicans have pushed him to intervene more assertively to tip the balance in the Syrian conflict, while other politicians from both parties are loath to involve the United States in another Middle Eastern conflict on any terms.

But Israel’s national security concerns have broad, bipartisan support in Washington, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobby in Washington, weighed in Tuesday in support of Mr. Obama’s approach. The group’s statement said nothing, however, about the preferred outcome of the civil war, instead saying that America must “send a forceful message” to Iran and Hezbollah and “take a firm stand that the world’s most dangerous regimes cannot obtain and use the most dangerous weapons.” [Continue reading…]

The Los Angeles Times reports: Syrian rebel forces say they are planning a nationwide offensive in conjunction with anticipated U.S. strikes against the forces of President Bashar Assad, seeking to use U.S. military might to force a decisive shift in the country’s long civil war.

Rebel commanders disagree on the level of coordination they expect with the U.S. and its allies, and made it clear they hope the United States will do more than launch the limited strikes President Obama has proposed to deter Assad from using chemical weapons. The rebels have been disappointed by America’s reluctance to get involved more deeply in the conflict.

The issue is now before Congress. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed an amended resolution Wednesday approving military action to change the battlefield momentum in Syria away from the government. But many members of Congress, particularly in the House, have expressed deep skepticism about military involvement.

If the U.S. strikes, rebels said Thursday, they will be ready to take advantage — particularly around Damascus, the capital, where they say insurgents are infiltrating in preparation to attack.

“We are ready once the first rocket is launched,” said Col. Qassim Saad Eddine, spokesman for the Supreme Military Council, which oversees the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. “We will attack the military sites, not just in one province, but all over Syria.” [Continue reading…]

Sune Engel Rasmussen writes: As opponents of a strike against Syria scramble to find alternative avenues for a peaceful solution, there is one murky diplomatic route, rarely mentioned, which now seems more necessary than ever to explore: talking to Iran.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Iran’s support for Bashar al-Assad is neither unconditional nor everlasting. Despite having assisted the Assad regime from the beginning of the conflict with weapons and personnel, the war in Syria has not strengthened Iran, which likely wants to get out of the Syrian quagmire as soon as possible — if it can do so with some influence in Syria intact.

First of all, the war has created a regional image problem for the clerics in Tehran. Since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has strived to be a beacon for the downtrodden people of the Muslim world and a standard-bearer against what it sees as oppression by America in the region. Assad’s carnage against fellow Muslims makes Iran look really bad on the Arab street, where Iran tried hard to make the Arab Spring look like a logical extension of its own revolution.

Iran’s support for Assad is also financially costly and strains an economy already suffering under sanctions, inflation, and widespread mismanagement. This is partly why Iran wouldn’t be able to afford a proportionate response to a U.S. attack on Syria. As Meir Javedanfar has argued, Iran wouldn’t want to risk the loss of hard-to-replace anti-aircraft systems and fighter aircrafts, or to expose its nuclear facilities to attacks from Israel.

Lastly, propping up Assad after his alleged use of chemical weapons against his own people is causing rifts in the Iranian leadership. On Sunday, Iran’s éminence grise – and presidential ally – Hashemi Rafsanjani reportedly blamed the Syrian government for the chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1,400 in a Damascus suburb. The government since denied the remarks, but regardless, the episode exposed a very real dissent within the establishment. [Continue reading…]

Politico reports: The powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC is planning to launch a major lobbying campaign to push wayward lawmakers to back the resolution authorizing U.S. strikes against Syria, sources said Thursday.

Officials say that some 250 Jewish leaders and AIPAC activists will storm the halls on Capitol Hill beginning next week to persuade lawmakers that Congress must adopt the resolution or risk emboldening Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon. They are expected to lobby virtually every member of Congress, arguing that “barbarism” by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated, and that failing to act would “send a message” to Tehran that the U.S. won’t stand up to hostile countries’ efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, according to a source with the group.

“History tells us that ambiguity [in U.S. actions] invites aggression,” said the AIPAC source who asked not to be named. The source added the group will now be engaged in a “major mobilization” over the issue.

Despite the group’s political muscle, it often doesn’t get involved in congressional fights over authorizing military action, and it had been mum about intervening in Syria as recently as last week.

But the stepped-up involvement comes at a welcome time for the White House, which is struggling to muster the votes in both chambers for a resolution that would give President Barack Obama the authority to engage in ‘limited’ military action” in Syria for 60 days, with one 30-day extension possible. The hawkish group also has ties to many Republicans, including ones who have been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of U.S.-Israeli affairs. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The United States declared on Thursday that it has given up trying to work with the U.N. Security Council on Syria, accusing Russia of holding the council hostage and allowing Moscow’s allies in Syria to deploy poison gas against innocent children.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s remarks left no doubt that Washington would not seek U.N. approval for a military strike on Syria in response to an August 21 chemical attack near Damascus. She said a draft resolution Britain submitted to the five permanent council members last week calling for a response to that attack was effectively dead.

“I was present in the meeting where the UK laid down the resolution, and everything in that meeting, in word and in body language, suggests that that resolution has no prospect of being adopted, by Russia in particular,” Power told reporters.

“Our considered view, after months of efforts on chemical weapons and after 2-1/2 years of efforts on Geneva (peace talks), the humanitarian situation is that there is no viable path forward in this Security Council,” she said.

Elizabeth O’Bagy writes: With the U.S. poised to attack Syria, debate is raging over what that attack should look like, and what, if anything, the U.S. is capable of accomplishing. Those questions can’t be answered without taking a very close look at the situation in Syria from ground level.

Since few journalists are reporting from inside the country, our understanding of the civil war is not only inadequate, but often dangerously inaccurate. Anyone who reads the paper or watches the news has been led to believe that a once peaceful, pro-democracy opposition has transformed over the past two years into a mob of violent extremists dominated by al Qaeda; that the forces of President Bashar Assad not only have the upper hand on the battlefield, but may be the only thing holding the country together; and that nowhere do U.S. interests align in Syria—not with the regime and not with the rebels. The word from many American politicians is that the best U.S. policy is to stay out. As Sarah Palin put it: “Let Allah sort it out.”

In the past year, I have made numerous trips to Syria, traveling throughout the northern provinces of Latakia, Idlib and Aleppo. I have spent hundreds of hours with Syrian opposition groups ranging from Free Syrian Army affiliates to the Ahrar al-Sham Brigade.

The conventional wisdom holds that the extremist elements are completely mixed in with the more moderate rebel groups. This isn’t the case. Moderates and extremists wield control over distinct territory. Although these areas are often close to one another, checkpoints demarcate control. On my last trip into Syria earlier this month, we traveled freely through parts of Aleppo controlled by the Free Syrian Army, following roads that kept us at safe distance from the checkpoints marked by the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq. Please see the nearby map for more detail.

Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al Qaeda die-hards. The jihadists pouring into Syria from countries like Iraq and Lebanon are not flocking to the front lines. Instead they are concentrating their efforts on consolidating control in the northern, rebel-held areas of the country.

Groups like Jabhat al Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate, are all too happy to take credit for successes on the battlefield, and are quick to lay claim to opposition victories on social media. This has often led to the impression that these are spearheading the fight against the Syrian government. They are not.

These groups care less about defeating Assad than they do about establishing and holding their Islamic emirate in the north of the country. Many Jabhat al Nusra fighters left in the middle of ongoing rebel operations in Homs, Hama and Idlib to head for Raqqa province once the provincial capital fell in March 2013. During the battle for Qusayr in late May, Jabhat al Nusra units were noticeably absent. In early June, rebel reinforcements rallied to take the town of Talbiseh, north of Homs city, while Jabhat al Nusra fighters preferred to stay in the liberated areas to fill the vacuum that the Free Syrian Army affiliates had left behind.

Moderate opposition forces—a collection of groups known as the Free Syrian Army—continue to lead the fight against the Syrian regime. While traveling with some of these Free Syrian Army battalions, I’ve watched them defend Alawi and Christian villages from government forces and extremist groups. They’ve demonstrated a willingness to submit to civilian authority, working closely with local administrative councils. And they have struggled to ensure that their fight against Assad will pave the way for a flourishing civil society. One local council I visited in a part of Aleppo controlled by the Free Syrian Army was holding weekly forums in which citizens were able to speak freely, and have their concerns addressed directly by local authorities.

Moderate opposition groups make up the majority of actual fighting forces, and they have recently been empowered by the influx of arms and money from Saudi Arabia and other allied countries, such as Jordan and France. This is especially true in the south, where weapons provided by the Saudis have made a significant difference on the battlefield, and have helped fuel a number of recent rebel advances in Damascus.

Thanks to geographic separation from extremist strongholds and reliable support networks in the south, even outdated arms sent by the Saudis, like Croatian rocket-launchers and recoilless rifles, have allowed moderate rebel groups to make significant inroads into areas that had previously been easily defended by the regime, and to withstand the pressure of government forces in the capital. In recent months, the opposition has achieved major victories in Aleppo, Idlib, Deraa and Damascus—nearly reaching the heart of the capital—despite the regime’s consolidation in Homs province.

At this stage in the conflict, barring a major bombing campaign by the U.S., sophisticated weaponry, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapon systems, may be the opposition’s best chance at sustaining its fight against Assad. This is something only foreign governments, not jihadists, can offer. Right now, Saudi sources that are providing the rebels critical support tell me that they haven’t sent more effective weaponry because the U.S. has explicitly asked them not to.

There is no denying that groups like Jabhat al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham have gained a foothold in the north of Syria, and that they have come to dominate local authorities there, including by imposing Shariah law. Such developments are more the result of al Qaeda affiliates having better resources than an indicator of local support. Where they have won over the local population, they have done so through the distribution of humanitarian aid.

Yet Syrians have pushed back against the hard-line measures imposed on them by some of these extremists groups. While I was last in northern Syria in early August, I witnessed nearly daily protests by thousands of citizens against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham in areas of Aleppo.

Where does this leave the U.S. as the White House contemplates a possible strike? The Obama administration has emphasized that regime change is not its goal. But a punitive measure undertaken just to send a message would likely produce more harm than good. If the Syrian government is not significantly degraded, a U.S. strike could very well bolster Assad’s position and highlight American weakness, paving the way for continued atrocities. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The Chinese intervention came as G20 leaders gathered in St Petersburg on Thursday for a summit likely to be dominated by Syria. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is now expected to allow the issue on the agenda for dinner, reflecting the reality that the fate of the world economy is inextricably intertwined with the risk of a Middle East conflagration.

The Chinese deputy finance minister, Zhu Guangyao, told a pre-G20 briefing: “Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on oil prices – it will cause a hike in the oil price.”

The UN special envoy on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, is also rushing to the summit to update G20 leaders on the state of stalled peace talks.

It also emerged that the pope has written to Putin, reportedly saying military action would be a futile pursuit.

In a sign of tensions ahead of the summit, Putin called the US secretary of state a liar for claiming al-Qaida did not have a significant presence in Syria. He also warned that US bombing of Syria could lead to highly dangerous attacks on Syrian nuclear reactors.

EU leaders have expressed their concern at the pace of the drive to war. The president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, said consensus in the international community was needed on Syria and argued efforts should be focused on a political solution.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European council, said: “No military solution to the Syrian conflict.”

Italy’s prime minister, Enrico Letta, also claimed the summit was the “last opportunity” for negotiated and political solutions to Syria’s civil war.

Letta urged Putin to “avoid” a final break with Washington over Syria, adding that concern over Syria had hit “maximum” levels.

In contrast, the French foreign minister said: “The position of France is to punish and negotiate.”

“We are convinced that if there is no punishment for Mr Assad, there will be no negotiation,” Laurent Fabius told France 2 television before travelling to the summit. “Punishment will allow negotiation, but obviously it will be difficult.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Bashar al-Assad’s former defense minister has reached Istanbul after a defection that betrays cracks in the president’s support among his own Alawite sect, opposition and diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

Dismissing a cursory Syrian state television denial of the first Reuters report that General Ali Habib had been spirited across the Turkish frontier this week, opposition figures said Habib was likely to keep a low profile after evading house arrest and reaching Turkey with the aid of Western agents.

One prominent opposition figure also spoke of speculation that Habib, who is in his 70s and apparently broke with Assad after a crackdown on protesters in 2011, might be lined up by U.S. and Russian officials for a role in transitional arrangements to negotiate an end to the civil war.

“My information, based on a trusted Western source, is that he is in Istanbul,” veteran dissident Kamal al-Labwani, now based in Paris, told Reuters on Thursday. “Habib exited with Western intelligence involvement, so do not expect public statements by security operatives on his whereabouts.”

The New York Times reports: A new study of images apparently from the Syrian attack last month concludes that the rockets delivering toxic sarin gas to neighborhoods around Damascus held up to 50 times more nerve agent than previously estimated, a conclusion that could solve the mystery of why there were so many more victims than in previous chemical attacks.

The study, by leading weapons experts, also strongly suggests that the mass of toxic material could have come only from a large stockpile. American, British and French officials have charged that only the Syrian government and not the rebels was in position to make such large quantities of deadly toxins.

Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress, in hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, that the United States believes the Syrian military was responsible for the attack, and in classified briefings officials have pointed to Unit 450, which controls Syrian chemical weapons.

The new study was conducted by Richard M. Lloyd, an expert in warhead design, and Theodore A. Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They based their investigation on scores of online videos and photographs posted since the Aug. 21 attack sent thousands of sick and dying Syrians to hospitals in the Damascus suburbs.

In interviews and reports, the two weapons specialists said their analysis of rocket parts and wreckage posted online suggested that the warheads carried toxic payloads of about 50 liters (13 gallons), not the one or two liters (up to half a gallon) of nerve agent that some weapons experts had previously estimated.

“It’s a clever design,” Dr. Postol said of the munitions in an interview. “It’s clever not only in how it was implemented but in the effectiveness of its dispersal. It accounts for the large number of causalities.”

Shortly after the attack, some analysts said they doubted if the identified rockets could have carried enough nerve agent to have caused the mass casualties. Mr. Lloyd and Dr. Postol say their analysis explains how the misidentification of a central rocket part resulted in the excessively small payload estimates.

In an interview, Mr. Lloyd said the manufacture of the rockets, if not the deadly nerve agent, appeared to be within the capabilities of both the Syrian government and the rebels.

But Stephen Johnson, a former British Army chemical warfare expert who is now a forensic expert at Cranfield University, at Shrivenham, said if the estimate of a 50-liter payload was correct, only the Syrian government could have achieved such a large volume of production.

“That’s a fairly substantial amount to produce yourself and beyond the opposition in its wildest dreams,” he said. Suggestions that the Syrian rebels seized or secretly obtained such amounts, Mr. Johnson added, lacked credibility. “It’s more supportive of the argument that it was the government,” he said. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The latest tests from Porton Down will strengthen the consensus that the nerve agent sarin was used in the deadly attack in eastern Damascus in August.

Scientists at the lab found signs of sarin in soil taken from the site of the attack, and also on clothing from a person caught up in the atrocity that the US says killed more than 1,400 people.

The UK government will not say what signatures of sarin the scientists have found, but the details are important. The specific chemicals that tests reveal are often the only solid proof that a nerve agent has been used, and what kind of chemical was unleashed.

Tests on soil and clothing will rarely pick up sarin itself, because the agent breaks down swiftly when it meets water, which could be moisture in the air or sweat from the victim. More likely they will detect traces of sarin’s breakdown products, but these must be interpreted with care.

Beyond finding intact sarin, the most convincing smoking gun for the nerve agent is a compound called isopropyl methylphosphonic acid (IMPA). This is the chemical that sarin degrades into first of all and it can come from nothing else. Among chemical weapons experts, a positive test for IMPA is generally regarded as proof of sarin.

But tests can struggle to pick up IMPA in samples much older than a week or so, because it too breaks down into other substances. One is a related compound, called methylphosphonic acid (MPA), but this is not solid proof for sarin: other agents also degrade into MPA, such as VX, soman and cylcosarin. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy runs the headline: “Russia says it’s compiled 100-page report blaming Syrian rebels for a chemical weapons attack”. Generally speaking, I think McClatchy does a commendable job in refusing to parrot whatever might be the official line coming out of Washington. In this case, however, I think they let their readers down by using a misleading headline.

A lot of people glean their news from reading nothing more than headlines and in this case will likely have missed the indefinite article — a chemical attack — and assumed the Russian report refers to the chemical attack in Damascus on August 21.

Evidence that opposition forces had used sarin in Aleppo would be significant, so given that Russia’s foreign ministry asserts that it produced a detailed 100-page “scientific and technical document”, why have they not made the report public and why are they publicizing its existence weeks after they delivered it to the UN? And given that Russia remains a loyal ally of the Assad regime, how are we to trust the objectivity of a report based on evidence collected by Russian technicians which was then examined in Russian laboratories?

McClatchy reports: Russia says it has compiled a 100-page report detailing what it says is evidence that Syrian rebels, not forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, were behind a deadly sarin gas attack in an Aleppo suburb earlier this year.

In a statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website late Wednesday. Russia said the report had been delivered to the United Nations in July and includes detailed scientific analysis of samples that Russian technicians collected at the site of the alleged attack, Khan al Asal.

Russia said its investigation of the March 19 incident was conducted under strict protocols established by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international agency that governs adherence to treaties prohibiting the use of chemical weapons. It said samples that Russian technicians had collected had been sent to OPCW-certified laboratories in Russia.

The report itself was not released. But the statement drew a pointed comparison between what it said was the scientific detail of the report and the far shorter intelligence summaries that the United States, Britain and France have released to justify their assertion that the Syrian government launched chemical weapons against Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The longest of those summaries, by the French, ran nine pages. Each relies primarily on circumstantial evidence to make its case, and they disagree with one another on some details, including the number of people who died in the attack.

The Russian statement warned the United States and its allies not to conduct a military strike against Syria until the United Nations had completed a similarly detailed scientific study into the Aug. 21 attack. It warned that what it called the current “hysteria” about a possible military strike in the West was similar to the false claims and poor intelligence that preceded the United States invasion of Iraq. [Continue reading…]

Glenn Kessler reports: One of the administration’s main arguments for attacking Syria is because the government crossed an important line by using chemical weapons against its own people.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a strong supporter of military strikes, echoed that argument on Tuesday. She noted that as far back as 1925, nearly 40 nations had joined together to ban the first use of chemical weapons when the Geneva Protocol was signed. (Her mention of 170 countries appears to refer to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which seeks to prohibit the production of chemical weapons and mandates their destruction; Syria has refused to sign the treaty, though 189 other countries have signed it.)

Such treaties generally do not have mechanisms for enforcement. As far as we know, no nation has ever attacked another to punish it for the use of chemical weapons, so Obama’s request is unprecedented.

Indeed, Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman’s agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria’s pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism. (The Fact Checker, when serving as The Washington Post’s diplomatic correspondent, learned of this secret arrangement from Middle Eastern and Western diplomats, but it was never officially confirmed.) These are the sorts of trade-offs that happen often in diplomacy. After all, Israel’s nuclear stockpile has never been officially acknowledged, and Syria in the 1980s and 1990s was often supportive of U.S. interests in the region, even nearly reaching a peace deal with Israel.

But there is an even more striking instance of the United States ignoring use of the chemical weapons that killed tens of thousands of people — during the grinding Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. As documented in 2002 by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, the Reagan administration knew full well it was selling materials to Iraq that was being used for the manufacture of chemical weapons, and that Iraq was using such weapons, but U.S. officials were more concerned about whether Iran would win rather than how Iraq might eke out a victory. Dobbs noted that Iraq’s chemical weapons’ use was “hardly a secret, with the Iraqi military issuing this warning in February 1984: ”The invaders should know that for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide.” [Continue reading…]

Just in case anyone doubts that Bashar al-Assad has genocidal intentions much like those of Saddam Hussein, in an interview this week he made it clear that the only way he thinks he can deal with his opponents is “to annihilate them.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said there is no longer hope for a political solution to the conflict in Syria and that the only way to deal with the rebels challenging his leadership “is to annihilate them.”

In an interview with Le Figaro, a French newspaper, Assad claimed that rebel forces had been almost entirely infiltrated by al-Qaeda.

“We are fighting terrorists,” he said. “80-90% of those we are fighting belong to al-Qaeda. They are not interested in reform or in politics. The only way to deal with them is to annihilate them.”