Reuters reports: Syrian warplanes bombed rebel suburbs of Damascus on Tuesday for the first time in three weeks, in an offensive that opposition activists said showed President Bashar al-Assad no longer feared attack by the United States.

Not seen in action around the capital since before August 21, when hundreds of people were killed in a poison gas attack that Western powers blame on Assad, government jets mounted attacks on three areas, some in support of assaults on the ground.

As world leaders discussed a Russian proposal to confiscate Syria’s chemical weapons and avert U.S. and French action, some of the heaviest fighting was in Barzeh, just north of central Damascus, where residents and opposition activists said air strikes and tank fire supported thrusts by pro-Assad militia.

The Syrian state news agency said troops “inflicted casualties on terrorists” in Barzeh and neighboring Qaboun.

“Even if the Russian initiative fails, the regime has at least bought itself time,” opposition activist Salah Mohammad said. “It seems to be calculating that no strike is coming soon.”

Mohammad said jets had staged three air raids on Barzeh on Tuesday while tanks on the heights of Qasioun mountain and in the government-held city center shelled the area in support of attacks by shabbiha militiamen pushing in to Barzeh from Ish al-Warwar, a district dominated by Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

“The fighting is heavy on that front,” Mohammed said. “The streets are narrow and tanks cannot be deployed.”

A woman living in Damascus said she could see shells hitting Barzeh, apparently fired from Qasioun. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals, she said: “Since chemical weapons are a red line, it seems the world has decided it is OK for Assad to destroy Damascus with conventional weapons.” [Continue reading…]

The summary of a newly released Human Rights Watch report says: This report details two alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria on the opposition-controlled Damascus suburbs of Eastern and Western Ghouta, located 16 kilometers apart, on the morning of August 21, 2013. The attacks killed hundreds of civilians, including large numbers of children. Human Rights Watch analyzed witness accounts of the rocket attacks, information on the likely source of the attacks, the physical remnants of the weapon systems used, and the medical symptoms exhibited by the victims of the attack as documented by medical staff.

Our investigation finds that the August 21 attacks were likely chemical weapons attacks using a surface-to-surface rocket system of approximately 330mm in diameter—likely Syrian-produced—and a Soviet-era 140mm surface-to-surface rocket system to deliver a nerve agent. Evidence suggests the agent was most likely Sarin or a similar weapons-grade nerve agent. Three local doctors told Human Rights Watch that victims of the attacks showed symptoms which are consistent with exposure to nerve gas, including suffocation; constricted, irregular, and infrequent breathing; involuntary muscle spasms; nausea; frothing at the mouth; fluid coming out of noses and eyes; convulsing; dizziness; blurred vision; and red and irritated eyes, and pin-point pupils.

The evidence concerning the type of rockets and launchers used in these attacks strongly suggests that these are weapon systems known and documented to be only in the possession of, and used by, Syrian government armed forces. Human Rights Watch and arms experts monitoring the use of weaponry in Syria have not documented Syrian opposition forces to be in the possession of the 140mm and 330mm rockets used in the attack, or their associated launchers.

The Syrian government has denied its responsibility for the attack, and has blamed opposition groups, but has presented no evidence to back up its claims. Based on the available evidence, Human Rights Watch finds that Syrian government forces were almost certainly responsible for the August 21 attacks, and that a weapons-grade nerve agent was delivered during the attack using specially designed rocket delivery systems. The scale and coordinated nature of the two attacks; against opposition-held areas; the presence of government-controlled potential launching sites within range of the targets; the pattern of other recent alleged chemical weapon attacks against opposition-held areas using the same 330mm rocket delivery system; and the documented possession of the 140mm and 330mm rocket systems able to deliver chemical weapons in the government arsenal—all point towards Syrian government responsibility for the attacks.

Human Rights Watch has investigated alternative claims that opposition forces themselves were responsible for the August 21 attacks, and has found such claims lacking in credibility and inconsistent with the evidence found at the scene. Claims that the August 21 deaths were caused by an accidental explosion by opposition forces mishandling chemical weapons in their possession are inconsistent with large numbers of deaths at two locations 16 kilometers apart, and documentation of rocket attacks on the sites that morning, as evidenced by witness accounts, the damage visible on the rockets themselves, and their impact craters.

The New York Times reports: Spread far and wide across Syria, the chemical weapons complex of the fractured state includes factories, bunkers, storage depots and thousands of munitions, all of which would have to be inspected and secured under a diplomatic initiative that President Obama says he is willing to explore.

But monitoring and securing unconventional weapons have proved challenging in places like Iraq, North Korea and Iran — even in peacetime. Syria is bound up in the third year of a bloody civil war, with many of the facilities squarely in battlefields.

“I’m very concerned about the fine print,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. “It’s a gargantuan task for the inspectors to mothball production, install padlocks, inventory the bulk agent as well as the munitions. Then a lot of it has to be destroyed — in a war zone.”

“What I’m saying is, ‘Beware of this deal,’ ” Dr. Smithson added. “It’s deceptively attractive.”

As difficult as it may be to reach a diplomatic solution to head off a United States strike on Syria, the details of enforcement are themselves complex and uncertain, people with experience monitoring weapons facilities said.

Syria would first have to provide specifics about all aspects of its chemical weapons program. But even that step would require negotiation to determine exactly what should be declared and whether certain systems would be covered, because many delivery systems for chemical weapons — including artillery, mortars and multiple-rocket launchers — can also fire conventional weapons.

Then, experts said, large numbers of foreign troops would almost certainly be needed to safeguard inspectors working in the midst of the civil war.

“We’re talking boots on the ground,” said one former United Nations weapons inspector from Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works in the field on contracts and did not want to hurt his chances of future employment. “We’re not talking about just putting someone at the gate. You have to have layers of security.”

Destruction and deactivation of those weapons could then take years. [Continue reading…]

Foreign Policy: Even before President Barack Obama put his plans to strike the Syrian regime on hold, he was losing the battle of public opinion about military intervention. Part of the credit, no doubt, goes to a successful media blitz by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its supporters. In an interview aired on Monday night, Assad himself advanced his government’s case to Charlie Rose, saying that the United States had not presented “a single shred of evidence” proving the Syrian military had used chemical weapons.

Assad has always been able to skillfully parry Western journalists’ criticisms of his regime — and, at times, it has won him positive international coverage. Before the uprising, the U.S. media often described the Assad family as Westernized leaders who were trying to bring their country into the 21st century. The most infamous example was Vogue‘s profile of Asma al-Assad, which described Syria’s first lady as “a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind … [with] a killer IQ.” But even experts in the field went along: Middle East historian David Lesch wrote a biography of Bashar describing the president as a modernizer, before changing his mind during the uprising.

The carnage over the past two and a half years put an end to much of this praise — but now pro-Assad media outlets have found a new way to influence the American debate. Assad supporters’ claims have repeatedly been republished unquestioningly by right-wing commentators in the United States, who share their hostility toward both Sunni Islamists and the Obama administration. It’s a strange alliance between American conservatives and a regime that was one of America’s first designated state sponsors of terror, and continues to work closely with Iran and Hezbollah.

“There is evidence — mounting evidence — that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. “But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!”

Limbaugh’s cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. “How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?” Bodansky asked.

Bodansky is an ally of Bashar’s uncle, Rifaat al-Assad — he pushed him as a potential leader of Syria in 2005. Rifaat is the black sheep of the Assad family: He spearheaded the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but then was forced into exile after he tried to seize power from his brother, President Hafez al-Assad, in 1983. Despite his ouster, however, Rifaat is just as hostile to a Sunni Islamist takeover as other members of the Assad family — a position Bodansky appears to share. Ending Alawite rule in Syria, Bodansky wrote on another pro-Assad website, “will cause cataclysmic upheaval throughout the greater Middle East.” [Continue reading…]

The Wall Street Journal reports: Syria said it would cease production of chemical weapons and disclose the locations of its stockpiles to the United Nations, Russia and others, as Damascus seized on a possible diplomatic route to avert international military action.

The statement by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem represented the first direct admission by the Syrian government that it possesses chemical weapons. Mr. Moallem said Syria aimed to sign the international convention banning chemical weapons.

The offer came as Syria’s ally Russia clashed with France over a possible U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at forcing Syria to hand over its stockpiles, following what the U.S. and France said was the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons in an attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21.

Syria has denied a role in the attack, blaming opposition rebels in the country’s 2½-year old civil war.

President Barack Obama has mounted a campaign at home and abroad for support for military action to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for the attacks.

That campaign, and U.S. congressional debate over supporting military action, have been sidetracked by a Russian proposal that led to Syria’s unexpected offer.

Mr. Obama has agreed to explore the possibility of a Syrian chemical-weapons handover, the White House said, even as he continued to seek support for a U.S. military strike from a reluctant Congress.

Mr. Obama traveled to the Capitol to meet with Senate Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday, ahead of a prime-time speech to make his case to the American public. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel again testified on Capitol Hill to press the case for military action.

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Tuesday that it would be “exceedingly difficult” for Syria to meet the international community’s conditions for giving up its chemical weapons and avoiding a threatened U.S. military strike.

But a new international debate also took shape over a possible U.N. resolution.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France’s proposal would invoke Chapter 7, a clause that allows member states to use all possible means, including military action, to enforce a U.N. resolution.

Mr. Fabius said the resolution would call for consequences if the regime of Mr. Assad fails to comply with the proposed program, adding that “all options remain on the table.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry rejected the French proposal because of the Chapter 7 reference, as well as the suggestion that the resolution would blame the Syrian government for deploying chemical weapons. [Continue reading…]

George Monbiot writes: You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They’ve defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.

Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.

Through this tyrannical dispensation – created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless – the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice. [Continue reading…]

Note: Israel is by far the wealthiest country bordering Syria yet it hasn’t accepted any refugees. Some people may counter that Syrians wouldn’t want to seek refuge in the Jewish state. But Israel wouldn’t need to accommodate refugees inside Israel in order to accept them. Refugee camps could be created in the Golan Heights, which is to say, inside Israeli-occupied Syria.

Scott Lucas writes: Unresolved questions are flying over Russia’s proposal that Syria to give up chemical weapons stocks, in exchange for the US lifting its threat of airstrikes. Did Moscow seize upon a blunder by US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday morning to make the proposal? Or did Russia and the Obama Administration work behind the scenes to come to an acceptable compromise?

In either case, the immediate outcome is that the Russians have gotten President Obama off the political hook.

Twenty-four hours ago, Obama was facing domestic and international humiliation, piled upon his indecision and mis-steps since the Assad regime’s August 21 chemical weapons attacks.

In the week following the attacks, the US President fumbled over whether the US would carry out a “limited” military response to the mass killing. Then on August 30, when US Secretary of State John Kerry finally put Washington on the verge of action with a tough speech, Obama abruptly changed course. The President believed a strike was necessary, but rather than taking the decision himself, he would put the issue to Congress.

For the sake of his domestic position, Obama had given the Assad regime a window of at least two weeks to resume a mass offensive against insurgent positions. But even the move on the home front was on the verge of backfiring last weekend: polling of Congressional representatives indicated there would be an embarrassing rejection of Obama’s proposal for limited intervention.

Other developments had hindered Obama. The British Parliament’s rejection of immediate action undermined a “coalition” for the airstrikes, and the President’s military has waged an internal but well-publicized battle against any intervention.

Still, the headline after Congress’s verdict looked set to be that the Commander-in-Chief had failed to Command.

And then on Monday, Russia offered salvation — whether as part of a smart, back-channel plan with the Americans or as an opportunistic gambit.

Moscow’s seizure of the political high ground, offering “peace” through Syria’s relinquishing of chemical weapons and the deferral of US airstrikes, meant that Obama could step back from the Congressional cliff. As the President told national television on Monday night that he supported the Russian plan in principle, the Senate postponed its vote, set for Wednesday. That in turn delays a decision by the House of Representatives, the more likely of the two chambers to reject intervention.

Of course, none of this — so far — offers a practical answer as to how Syria’s chemical weapons will be secured and handed over. Such a process is likely to take many weeks, and it can only be achieved if there is a cease-fire on the ground, a far-from-likely prospect. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reporting on comments made today by Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem:

Mr. Moallem said later in a statement that his government welcomed the Russian proposal [to put Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons under international control and ultimately destroy them], Russia’s Interfax News Agency reported, in what appeared to be the first acknowledgment by the Syrian government that it even possesses chemical weapons. The Syrian government historically has neither confirmed nor denied possessing such weapons.

The New York Times, July 23, 2012:

Syrian officials warned Monday that they would deploy chemical weapons against any foreign intervention, a threat that appeared intended to ward off an attack by Western nations while also offering what officials in Washington called the most “direct confirmation” ever that Syria possesses a stockpile of unconventional armaments.

The warning came out of Damascus, veiled behind an assurance that the Syrian leadership would never use such weapons against its own citizens, describing chemical arms as outside the bounds of the kind of guerrilla warfare being fought internally.

“Any stock of W.M.D. or unconventional weapons that the Syrian Army possesses will never, never be used against the Syrian people or civilians during this crisis, under any circumstances,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, said at a news conference shown live on Syrian state television, using the initials for weapons of mass destruction. “These weapons are made to be used strictly and only in the event of external aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Mr. Makdissi said that any such weapons were carefully monitored by the Syrian Army, and that ultimately their use would be decided by generals.

NBC News reports: With Obama set to address the nation Tuesday night to advocate U.S. intervention against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, just 24 percent of Americans believe military action in response to Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons is in the United States’ interest.

CBS News: In an interview Monday, President Obama responded to a surprising late proposal that could head off a military strike against Syria. The Syrians agreed to a Russian proposal to put their chemical weapons under international control and destroy them.

I talked to President Obama about that, and about a threat Syrian dictator Bashar Assad made during an interview with Charlie Rose.

SCOTT PELLEY: Can you accept the Russian/Syrian proposal?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we don’t know the details of it yet. But I think that it is a potentially positive development. I don’t think that we would’ve gotten to the point where they even put something out there publicly, had it not been — and if it doesn’t continue to be a credible — military threat from the United States and those who support Syria’s responses to what happened inside of Syria. But, you know, my central goal throughout this process has not been to embroil ourselves in a civil war in Syria.

I have shown great restraint, I think, over the last two years, despite the heartbreak that’s happened there. But what I have said is that the ban on chemical weapon use is something that is of U.S. national interest. It protects our troops, so that they don’t have to wear gas masks whenever they’re in theater, the weapons by definition are indiscriminate and don’t differentiate between somebody in uniform and a child.

Which is to say, they are unlike America’s smart weapons systems which have supernatural powers of discrimination and target the guilty while protecting the innocent.

Whoever heard of an American bomb killing innocent people? Unless of course they happened to be attending a wedding or engaged in some other kind of suspicious behavior.

No doubt a 2 per cent accuracy rate in differentiating between civilians and suspected terrorists leaves room for improvement, but having set the benchmark for indiscriminate killing in Hiroshima, the United States has been making huge strides ever since.

The 15,000 lb Daisy Cutter that has been replaced by the 22,000 lb Mother of All Bombs. The blast from the later produces a shock wave that can kill people up to 1.7 miles away and obliterates everything up to a 1,000 yards. Maybe that’s a bit indiscriminate.

Perhaps Obama can stand on more solid ground if he avoids suggesting that one weapons system is significantly more discriminating than another.

The indiscriminate nature of the violence used by the Assad regime has had less to do with differences between conventional and unconventional weapons, and much more to do with the fact that these weapons are being used to destroy whole cities in Syria and cause a quarter of the population to flee their homes.

The use of chemical weapons last month certainly had catastrophic results, but let’s keep in mind the big picture: Syria is a country with a government whose actions have resulted in more than 6 million people becoming homeless.

The New York Times reports: As the diplomatic pace quickened around Russia’s plan for Syria to relinquish control of its chemical weapons, France said on Tuesday it would propose a United Nations Security Council resolution enshrining the idea while Moscow said it was working with the authorities in Damascus on a “workable, precise and concrete plan” to carry the proposal forward.

“We are hoping to present this plan in the near future,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said. “We will be ready to work through this plan and improve it with the participation of the U.N. general secretary, with chemical weapons control organizations and with the members of the Security Council.”

The Russian blueprint also won backing from China, which has resisted Western calls for military action against Syria but said on Tuesday that it supported Moscow’s avowed effort to avert an American strike following last month’s poison gas attacks outside Damascus.

Hours before President Obama planned to deliver a major national address on the Syrian crisis, the rapid-fire developments elicited skepticism from many regional and international players who questioned the motives behind the Russian gambit and questioned whether Moscow’s plan would enable the Syrian authorities to buy time. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Any deal with Syria to hand over its chemical weapons in the middle of a chaotic civil war would be difficult for inspectors to enforce and destroying them would likely take years, U.S. officials and experts caution.

Syria’s strongest backer, Russia, proposed on Monday that Damascus save itself from a U.S. military strike over its alleged use of chemical weapons by putting its stockpiles under international control.

The proposal was welcomed by Syria and seized upon by the secretary-general of the United Nations. U.S. President Barack Obama said the offer was a potential breakthrough but had to be handled with skepticism.

Syria has never signed a global treaty banning the storage of chemical weapons and is believed to have large stocks of sarin, mustard gas and VX nerve agents. The actual use of chemical weapons is banned by a 1925 treaty to which Damascus is a signatory.

Accounting for Syria’s chemical arms cache – believed to be spread over dozens of locations – would be difficult, as would be shielding arms inspectors from violence.

“This is a nice idea but tough to achieve,” said one U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity.

“You’re in the middle of a brutal civil war where the Syrian regime is massacring its own people. Does anyone think they’re going to suddenly stop the killing to allow inspectors to secure and destroy all the chemical weapons?” the official said.

Amy Smithson, an expert on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, said a lack of hard data on Syria’s chemical weapons inventory would complicate verification. [Continue reading…]

The Times of Israel reports: Details of a deal to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control are highly murky, Knesset foreign affairs chief Avigdor Liberman said Tuesday, warning that the plan could potentially serve the interests of the Assad regime.

Speaking to Israel Radio, the head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said Syrian President Bashar “Assad is winning time and lots of it,” as a result of the Russian plan. Comparing the situation to that of Iran’s nuclear program, he noted that the Syrian leader could use the initiative to “buy time” and stall any real international involvement, military or other.

Liberman, a former foreign minister, warned that Israel was determined not to be dragged into the conflict but would not shy away from retaliating if the country was attacked, no matter who the aggressor may be.

The New York Times reports: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, plans to dispatch 300 of its members to Capitol Hill on Tuesday as part of a broad campaign to press Congress to back President Obama’s proposed strike on Syria, the group said Monday.

The push by the group, known as Aipac, which included asking its supporters to call members of Congress, came as Israeli newspapers reported Monday that President Obama urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get personally involved in lobbying Congress. The reports said that Mr. Netanyahu had called several members himself.

But while those reports could not be confirmed, the intense push by Aipac and other Jewish and pro-Israel groups put Israel in a bind, after a week of trying to stay on the sidelines of the debate. Mr. Netanyahu’s government strongly supports an American strike to punish President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for his apparent use of chemical weapons, and as a warning to his Iranian patrons. But Israelis are deeply worried about being blamed by a wary American public for another military gambit in the Middle East, or of losing their broad bipartisan support if they land on the wrong side of the vote.

“It is a major dilemma, what Israel should do on the Hill,” a senior Israeli official said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a dictate from Mr. Netanyahu not to discuss the Syria situation publicly. “We don’t want to be identified with pressing for a strike. This is not for us — we don’t want anybody to think this is for us,” the official said. “But if the president asks us for assistance, who are we to refuse?”

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, declined to discuss the prime minister’s conversations with Mr. Obama, or to say whether Mr. Netanyahu had indeed called members of Congress, as reported by the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The Israeli official who spoke anonymously pointed to a Facebook post last week by Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, agreeing with President Obama’s argument for attacking Syria, as having given the green light for Aipac to spring into action.

But if Aipac, as an American organization, has a role to play in Washington debates, several Israeli analysts said that any direct involvement by Israeli officials was problematic.

“Israel as Israel should stay away from this campaign,” said Zvi Rafiah, a longtime Israeli diplomat and consultant on American politics. “We should not be the one that pushes the American people to do or not do anything they want or don’t want.”

The Guardian reports: President Bashar al-Assad did not personally order last month’s chemical weapons attack near Damascus that has triggered calls for US military intervention, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders to use chemical weapons against regime opponents in recent months, a German newspaper has reported, citing unidentified, high-level national security sources.

The intelligence findings were based on phone calls intercepted by a German surveillance ship operated by the BND, the German intelligence service, and deployed off the Syrian coast, Bild am Sonntag said. The intercepted communications suggested Assad, who is accused of war crimes by the west, including foreign secretary William Hague, was not himself involved in last month’s attack or in other instances when government forces have allegedly used chemical weapons.

Assad sought to exonerate himself from the August attack in which hundreds died. “There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people,” he said in an interview with CBS.

But the intercepts tended to add weight to the claims of the Obama administration and Britain and France that elements of the Assad regime, and not renegade rebel groups, were responsible for the attack in the suburb of Ghouta, Bild said. [Continue reading…]

This report lends weight to the implications in a report published on August 27 which raised questions about culpability for the chemical massacre:

Last Monday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they’re certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime — and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days.

But the intercept raises questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on August 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime? “It’s unclear where control lies,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. “Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?”

While some opponents of a military strike on Syria have been distracted by far-fetched theories about rebels being responsible for the chemical attack and by simplistic comparisons with the run up to the war in Iraq, there is a comparison with Iraq that might be much more pertinent.

Bush and Blair misled Americans and Britons by claiming to have much stronger intelligence than they actually possessed. Obama and Kerry may be guilty of doing almost the opposite, which is to say, limiting the amount of intelligence they reveal because it undercuts their rationale for attacking the Assad regime.

Administration officials have persistently dodged the question about whether they believe Assad ordered the chemical attack. They argue that irrespective of whether he issued the command, as the leader of his armed forces, he must be held responsible for their actions.

That argument is reasonable up to a point. That is, it is reasonable if Bashar al-Assad is indeed in control of his own forces.

But what if multiple intelligence sources provide evidence that that is not the case? What if the Obama administration has reason to believe that the chemical attack was conducted not only without Assad’s direct authorization but also, as the Bild report claims, in contradiction with his stated wishes? Why now hold Assad personally responsible?

There are several possible explanations. Firstly, the message that chemical attacks will be punished does not actually need to be directed at anyone specifically but applies to all Syrians who might be involved in such attacks in the future. Arguably, that’s a legitimate reason for not caring whether Assad himself ordered the attack.

A second explanation, however, would be political, and that is that the administration does not want to reinforce the perception that Assad’s hold on power is weak. If that is indeed part of the administration’s thinking, then it is withholding the release of important intelligence for wholly illegitimate reasons. It could in this scenario reasonably be accused of propping up the Assad regime.

Even in its public statements, the administration is already close to having assumed this position. Forgotten are the days when Obama was saying that Assad must go. The administration’s official position now is that it does not support either side in Syria’s civil war. John Kerry: “We make it crystal clear now in every statement that we have made, this action has nothing to do with engaging directly in Syria’s civil war on one side or the other.”

Gary Younge writes: ‘I created Transjordan,” Winston Churchill once boasted, “with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon in Cairo.” Take a look at what remains of Jordan 90 years later and you can see how. Straight borders drawn with a ruler carve indifferent frontiers through a complex region with the kind of callous colonial hubris that displayed scant regard for linguistic, ethnic or religious affiliation.

Much of the contemporary turmoil in the Middle East owes its origins to foreign powers drawing lines in the sand that were both arbitrary and consequential and guided more by their imperial standing than the interests of the region. The “red line” that president Barack Obama has set out as the trigger for US military intervention in Syria is no different.

He drew it unilaterally in August 2012 in response to a question about “whether [he envisioned] using US military” in Syria. “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

On 21 August there was a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus believed to have been carried out by the Syrian government. That changed both Obama’s calculus and his memory. “I didn’t set a red line,” he claimed last week. I didn’t draw it, he insisted, everybody did. “The world set a red line”.

This was news to the world, which, over the weekend, sought to distance itself from his line, as the US president doubled-down on his double-speak.

“My credibility is not on the line,” he argued. “The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility is on the line …. The US recognises that if the international community fails to maintain certain norms, standards, laws, governing how countries interact and how people are treated, that over time this world becomes less safe.”

The alleged urgency to bomb Syria at this moment is being driven almost entirely by the White House’s desire to assert both American power and moral authority as defined by a self-imposed ultimatum. It is to this beat that the drums of war are pounding. But thus far few are marching. The American public is against it by wide margins. As a result it is not clear that Congress, whose approval he has sought, will back him. The justification and the objectives for bombing keep changing and are unconvincing. He has written a rhetorical cheque his polity may not cash and the public is reluctant to honour. On Tuesday night he’ll make his case to a sceptical nation from the White House.

Before addressing why people are right to be sceptical, it is necessary to attend to some straw men lest they are crushed in the stampede to war. The use of chemical weapons is abhorrent and the Syrian regime is brutal (whether it used chemical weapons in this case or not). With more than 100,000 dead in the civil war, diplomatic efforts have clearly not been successful thus far. Those who claim the principles of human solidarity and internationalism should not sit idly by while the killing continues. Nobody can claim, with any integrity, that they have a plan that will stem the bloodshed.

But the insistence that a durable and effective solution to this crisis lies at the end of an American cruise missile beggars belief. It is borne from the circular sophistry that has guided most recent “humanitarian interventions”: (1) Something must be done now; (2) Bombing is something; (3) Therefore we must bomb. [Continue reading…]

The Globe and Mail reports: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States is considering only an “unbelievably, small, limited” strike on Syria as punishment for allegedly using chemical weapons and he insisted military action will not end that country’s civil war.

“We’re not going to war,” Mr. Kerry told reporters Monday after meeting with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in London. “We will be able to hold [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort, in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing; an unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.” [Continue reading…]

DEVELOPING: Russia will push Syria to put its chemical weapons under international control then destroy them, Russian Foreign Minister said

— ABC World News (@ABCWorldNews) September 9, 2013

Reuters reports: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avoid a military strike by turning over all his chemical weapons within a week but immediately made clear he was sure that would never happen.

When asked by a reporter whether there was anything Assad’s government could do or offer to stop any attack, Kerry said:

“Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it) but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.”

It did not appear that Kerry was making a serious offer to the Syrian government, which the United States accuses of using chemical weapons in an August 21 attack.