Reuters reports: Days after a suspected poison gas attack killed hundreds of people in crop-growing suburbs, residents of the Syrian capital say they are afraid their food and water supplies may be contaminated.

Western countries believe President Bashar al-Assad’s forces carried out the worst chemical weapons attack since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in 1988. Syria’s government denies any role in the deaths and blames rebels.

Whoever is to blame, grandmother Hana said her three daughters were now fretting about what to feed their children.

“They keep calling me throughout the day, and they are frantic. They ask: ‘Mum, what about the watermelon? Does it absorb the chemicals? What about the milk?’ I try to calm them down, but I’m very worried myself. What if it takes years for any effects to show up in the children?” she said.

The poison gas hit the Ghouta area, where acres upon acres of agricultural land supply the capital of 3 million people with fresh vegetables, meat and dairy.

“I hope God will protect us. Because I would really rather plant my own tomatoes and vegetables, but how will they grow in my third floor apartment? I don’t even have a balcony,” said Um Hassan, another grandmother.

She it was the first time she was seriously worried about food contamination since the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Iraq made Syrians fear contamination of imported food.

The Syrian authorities have yet to respond with any clarity about whether people need to take special precautions to protect themselves from possible contamination.

It is not yet clear what poison or mixture of poisons were responsible for the killings.

Sarin, which the United States and France believe was used in previous, smaller incidents in Syria, mixes with water. People can be exposed to it by touching or drinking contaminated water, according to the website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People can also be exposed by eating contaminated food.

“Do we have to keep our windows closed? How long does the poison stay in the air? I hear different things from people,” said 40-year-old man who works as a physical therapist and lives less than a 15-minute drive from one attack.

“Do we have to worry now about leaving the city? Are we considered contagious?” he said.

AFP reports: French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday there was “no doubt” the Damascus regime was behind a suspected chemical weapons attack near the capital last week.

“The indications are totally convergent on the scale of the massacre and the overwhelming responsibility of the regime… As far as we are concerned, there is no doubt concerning the substance of the facts and their origin,” Fabius told a Jerusalem press conference.

Asked about the Syrian regime’s decision on Sunday to grant UN inspectors permission to inspect the sites of the suspected chemical strikes, Fabius replied that “this request was already made several days ago”.

“The site has been bombed since,” he said.

The Los Angeles Times reports: The Syrian government agreed Sunday to allow United Nations inspectors to visit the sites of suspected chemical-weapon attacks outside Damascus, the official Syrian news agency said.

Syrian officials and the U.N. “have agreed to a mutual understanding that enters into force immediately allowing the U.N. inspection team to investigate” the sites of the recent alleged attacks, the state media outlet said in a statement.

The reported accord comes as U.S. officials were said to be preparing for a possible military strike on Syria in retaliation for the government’s alleged use of chemical weapons. President Obama met with his top security advisers this weekend about the Syria crisis.

A 20-member contingent of U.N. inspectors is already on the ground in Damascus, but the team’s official mandate was limited to looking into three previous allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria. Sunday’s agreement would seem to open the way for the experts to visit several areas near the capital where chemical weapons allegedly struck last week.

Just to be clear: the headline sums up Edward Luttwak’s views — not mine. What’s interesting is the extent to which his views seem to overlap with sentiments that prevail among opponents of war. Syria’s got nothing to do with us. We shouldn’t be involved in any way whatsoever. Search for some articulation of a desirable outcome to the conflict other than a peace that no one expects to materialize, and nothing can be found. Should we be concerned about the victims of chemical attacks? Only in as much as that their deaths not be used as a pretext for military intervention.

There’s a strange symmetry in the callousness that unites proponents and opponents of war along with the cold realism of someone like Luttwak who sees continued stalemate in Syria as being most desirable. What unites each of these positions is that none questions the preeminence of American interests. What might serve American interests can be disputed, but that those interests should be served goes without saying.

Another perspective starts from a different premise which is that in relation to Syria, the interests of Syrians are preeminent. It might well be the case that the United States lacks the knowledge, resources, and political leverage required for it to exercise a constructive role in ending the war in Syria, but there’s a big difference between saying we lack the capacity to help and saying, our sole responsibility is to take care of ourselves.

Here is Luttwak’s ugly dose of “realism”:

On Wednesday, reports surfaced of a mass chemical-weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs that human rights activists claim killed hundreds of civilians, bringing Syria’s continuing civil war back onto the White House’s foreign policy radar, even as the crisis in Egypt worsens.

But the Obama administration should resist the temptation to intervene more forcefully in Syria’s civil war. A victory by either side would be equally undesirable for the United States.

At this point, a prolonged stalemate is the only outcome that would not be damaging to American interests.

Indeed, it would be disastrous if President Bashar al-Assad’s regime were to emerge victorious after fully suppressing the rebellion and restoring its control over the entire country. Iranian money, weapons and operatives and Hezbollah troops have become key factors in the fighting, and Mr. Assad’s triumph would dramatically affirm the power and prestige of Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, its Lebanon-based proxy — posing a direct threat both to the Sunni Arab states and to Israel.

But a rebel victory would also be extremely dangerous for the United States and for many of its allies in Europe and the Middle East. That’s because extremist groups, some identified with Al Qaeda, have become the most effective fighting force in Syria. If those rebel groups manage to win, they would almost certainly try to form a government hostile to the United States. Moreover, Israel could not expect tranquillity on its northern border if the jihadis were to triumph in Syria.

Things looked far less gloomy when the rebellion began two years ago. At the time, it seemed that Syrian society as a whole had emerged from the grip of fear to demand an end to Mr. Assad’s dictatorship. Back then, it was realistic to hope that moderates of one sort or another would replace the Assad regime, because they make up a large share of the population. It was also reasonable to expect that the fighting would not last long, because neighboring Turkey, a much larger country with a powerful army and a long border with Syria, would exert its power to end the war.

As soon as the violence began in Syria in mid-2011, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, loudly demanded that it end. But instead of being intimidated into surrender, Mr. Assad’s spokesmen publicly ridiculed Mr. Erdogan, while his armed forces proceeded to shoot down a Turkish fighter jet, before repeatedly firing artillery rounds into Turkish territory and setting off lethal car bombs at a Turkish border crossing. To everyone’s surprise, there was no significant retaliation. The reason is that Turkey has large and restless minority populations that don’t trust their own government, which itself does not trust its own army. The result has been paralysis instead of power, leaving Mr. Erdogan an impotent spectator of the civil war on his doorstep.

Consequently, instead of a Turkey-based and Turkish-supervised rebellion that the United States could have supported with weapons, intelligence and advice, Syria is plagued by anarchic violence.

The war is now being waged by petty warlords and dangerous extremists of every sort: Taliban-style Salafist fanatics who beat and kill even devout Sunnis because they fail to ape their alien ways; Sunni extremists who have been murdering innocent Alawites and Christians merely because of their religion; and jihadis from Iraq and all over the world who have advertised their intention to turn Syria into a base for global jihad aimed at Europe and the United States.

Given this depressing state of affairs, a decisive outcome for either side would be unacceptable for the United States. An Iranian-backed restoration of the Assad regime would increase Iran’s power and status across the entire Middle East, while a victory by the extremist-dominated rebels would inaugurate another wave of Al Qaeda terrorism.

There is only one outcome that the United States can possibly favor: an indefinite draw.

By tying down Mr. Assad’s army and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies in a war against Al Qaeda-aligned extremist fighters, four of Washington’s enemies will be engaged in war among themselves and prevented from attacking Americans or America’s allies.

That this is now the best option is unfortunate, indeed tragic, but favoring it is not a cruel imposition on the people of Syria, because a great majority of them are facing exactly the same predicament.

Non-Sunni Syrians can expect only social exclusion or even outright massacre if the rebels win, while the nonfundamentalist Sunni majority would face renewed political oppression if Mr. Assad wins. And if the rebels win, moderate Sunnis would be politically marginalized under fundamentalist rulers, who would also impose draconian prohibitions.

Maintaining a stalemate should be America’s objective. And the only possible method for achieving this is to arm the rebels when it seems that Mr. Assad’s forces are ascendant and to stop supplying the rebels if they actually seem to be winning.

This strategy actually approximates the Obama administration’s policy so far. Those who condemn the president’s prudent restraint as cynical passivity must come clean with the only possible alternative: a full-scale American invasion to defeat both Mr. Assad and the extremists fighting against his regime.

That could lead to a Syria under American occupation. And very few Americans today are likely to support another costly military adventure in the Middle East.

A decisive move in any direction would endanger America; at this stage, stalemate is the only viable policy option left.

Médecins Sans Frontières: Three hospitals in Syria’s Damascus governorate that are supported by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have reported to MSF that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21, 2013. Of those patients, 355 reportedly died.

Since 2012, MSF has built a strong and reliable collaboration with medical networks, hospitals and medical points in the Damascus governorate, and has been providing them with drugs, medical equipment and technical support. Due to significant security risks, MSF staff members have not been able to access the facilities.

“Medical staff working in these facilities provided detailed information to MSF doctors regarding large numbers of patients arriving with symptoms including convulsions, excess saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress,” said Dr. Bart Janssens, MSF director of operations.

Patients were treated using MSF-supplied atropine, a drug used to treat neurotoxic symptoms. MSF is now trying to replenish the facilities’ empty stocks and provide additional medical supplies and guidance.

“MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack,” said Dr. Janssens. “However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events—characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers—strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent. This would constitute a violation of international humanitarian law, which absolutely prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria’s government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed, a Reuters/Ipsos poll says.

About 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria’s civil war, while just 9 percent thought President Barack Obama should act.

More Americans would back intervention if it is established that chemical weapons have been used, but even that support has dipped in recent days – just as Syria’s civil war has escalated and the images of hundreds of civilians allegedly killed by chemicals appeared on television screens and the Internet.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken August 19-23, found that 25 percent of Americans would support U.S. intervention if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces used chemicals to attack civilians, while 46 percent would oppose it. That represented a decline in backing for U.S. action since August 13, when Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls found that 30.2 percent of Americans supported intervention in Syria if chemicals had been used, while 41.6 percent did not.

Taken together, the polls suggest that so far, the growing crisis in Syria, and the emotionally wrenching pictures from an alleged chemical attack in a Damascus suburb this week, may actually be hardening many Americans’ resolve not to get involved in another conflict in the Middle East.

One detail in the following report that I regard as suspect is that a U.S.-led training operation for FSA rebels would involve Israelis. I don’t think the Israelis would want to be involved and I don’t think the U.S. or Jordanians would welcome their presence. Why provide fodder for the Assad regime and those outside Syria who only too gladly swallow the propaganda that Syria is being threatened by a Zionist conspiracy?

If, as the report suggests, Assad’s use of chemical weapons came as a result of his pledge to use them only in response to “external aggression,” then there would be some strategic logic in what he did. He basically called Obama’s bluff, showing that when Syria lays down a red line it backs it up.

IB Times reports: A West-backed rebel military operation to topple Syrian president Bashar al-Assad under the supervision of Jordanian, Israeli and American forces has already begun according to French newspaper Le Figaro. [See Google translation below.]

Citing unnamed military sources, the daily reported that the first troops trained by Washington and Amman officials were deployed in mid-August in the Deraa region.

A 300-strong group of Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters crossed the border with Syria on 17 August, and were joined by another group two days later.

“According to military sources, the Americans, who don’t want to put troops on Syrian soil or arm rebels who are in part controlled by radical Islamists, have quietly trained a bunch of handpicked FSA fighters in training camps set up at the Jordanian-Syrian border,” the paper said.

Le Figaro believes the pressure mounted by the specially-trained FSA fighters prompted Assad to launch an alleged attack on the rebels on Wednesday, using toxic gas. In July, the Syrian president said in a public speech that the regime would never use those weapons “except for external aggression”. [Continue reading…]

Google translation of French report appearing in Le Figaro: According to our information, the regime’s opponents, supervised by Jordanian, Israeli and American commandos moving towards Damascus since mid-August. This attack could explain the possible use of the Syrian president to chemical weapons.

While it is too early to rule out categorically the argument put forward by Damascus and Moscow, who blame the massacre on the Syrian opposition, it is already possible to provide answers to a troubling question. What benefit would have Assad to launch an unconventional attack at the precise moment when he had to allow UN inspectors – after being stranded for several months – to investigate the use of chemical weapons?

Operational logic first. According to information obtained by Le Figaro, the first trained in guerrilla warfare by the Americans in Jordan Syrian troops reportedly entered into action since mid-August in southern Syria, in the region of Deraa. A first group of 300 men, probably supported by Israeli and Jordanian commandos, as well as men of the CIA, had crossed the border on August 17. A second would have joined the 19. According to military sources, the Americans, who do not want to put troops on the Syrian soil or arming rebels in part controlled by radical Islamists form quietly for several months in a training camp set up at the border Jordanian- Syrian fighters ASL, the Free Syrian Army, handpicked.

Sense of impunity

As for the summer, their protection have begun to shake Syrian battalions in the south, approaching the capital. “Their thrust would now feel into the Ghouta, where formations of ASL were already at work, but really can make a difference on the outskirts of Damascus fortress,” says David Rigoulet-Roze, a researcher at the French Institute for Strategic Analysis (IFAS).

According to this expert on the region, the idea proposed by Washington would be the possible establishment of a buffer zone from the south of Syria, or even a no-fly zone, which would cause opponents safely until the balance of power changes. This is the reason why the United States has deployed Patriot batteries and F16 in late June Jordan.

Military recent pressure against al-Ghouta threatens the capital Damascus, the heart of the Syrian regime. In July, the spokesman of President al-Assad had publicly stated that the scheme would not use chemical weapons in Syria “except in case of external aggression.” The intrusion of foreign agents in the south, for example …

The other reason, if the army has actually committed a massacre in Damascus chemical is more diplomatic. Since August, 2012, when Barack Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that, once crossed, could trigger a military intervention, thirteen smaller chemical attack have been identified without causing American reaction. Admittedly, the evidence is difficult to obtain, since Damascus routinely blocks the work of UN investigators. The sense of impunity felt by the Syrian regime is reinforced by the Russian protection afforded to the Security Council of the UN. Barack Obama, when he arrived at the White House, the Kremlin had proposed a “reset” of relations, not to break the link with Moscow. U.S. Chief of Staff, Martin Dempsey, the principal military adviser, justifies his opposition to intervention, even limited by the fragmentation of the Syrian opposition and the weight exerted by extremist groups.

What are the options?

If the Syrian regime is actually behind the chemical bombardment of Damascus, it will take a further degree is a conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives. “There is more of a small-scale test as before. Chemical weapons are now part of the war, where they play a deterrent role. This is a message to the Americans. It is also a challenge to Barack Obama, who risks losing its legitimacy with its allies in the world, “an expert analysis of the case.

Along with clandestine operations from Jordanian soil, the international community, as each time the crisis is reaching a peak, reconsider the various military options. Arming the rebels? “If we do one day we will not say,” said a diplomatic source. Surgical air strikes? Possible, but the solution involves risk regionalization of the conflict. Special forces to secure and neutralize chemical weapons sites? Israel hit neighboring Syria repeatedly. But Western intelligence services did not want to risk that stocks of chemical weapons falling into the hands of jihadist groups. Last option, inaction. It is that which seems to have bet on Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

Reuters reports: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday acknowledged for the first time chemical weapons had killed people in ally Syria and called for the international community to prevent their use.

Rouhani stopped short of saying who had used the arms – Tehran has previously accused Syrian rebels of being behind what it called suspected chemical attacks.

He also did not mention the international furore around Syrian opposition reports that forces loyal to the Damascus government killed as many as 1,000 civilians with poison gas in suburbs of Damascus on Wednesday.

“Many of the innocent people of Syria have been injured and martyred by chemical agents and this is unfortunate,” recently elected Rouhani was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

“We completely and strongly condemn the use of chemical weapons,” he said, according to the agency.

“The Islamic Republic gives notice to the international community to use all its might to prevent the use of these weapons anywhere in the world, especially in Syria,” he added, according to the Mehr news agency.

The Associated Press reports: President Barack Obama on Friday played down the prospect of speedy U.S. intervention in Syria, stressing the difficulty of ordering military action against the Assad government without a strong international coalition and a legal mandate from the United Nations.

While his administration weighed military responses to this week’s claims of a large-scale chemical weapons attack near Damascus, Obama spoke as cautiously as ever about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaida.

He made no mention of the “red line” of chemical weapons use which he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and which U.S. intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.

“If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it — do we have the coalition to make it work?” Obama said Friday. “Those are considerations that we have to take into account.”

“As difficult as the problem is, this is something that is going to require America’s attention and hopefully the whole international community’s attention.”

“America’s attention” — these are not fighting words. The use of chemical weapons on a large scale — an event that would breach the “red line” Obama drew a year ago — would now (if confirmed) be “troublesome.”

The war-fearmongers need to step down. The United States is not about to enter another war.

As for the false-flag conspiracy theorists, you seem to have a feedback loop stuck in your brains that won’t stop running. The U.S. and its allies have been itching for military intervention in Syria for over two years — they just needed to find that perennially elusive pretext. We’ve had one false flag after another, and another, and another, and another.

If the West was looking for a pretext to invade Syria, wouldn’t 130,000 people killed, four million internally displaced, 1.7 million refugees having fled Syria including one million children, many cities reduced to rubble, and the long-reported existence of chemical weapons stockpiles — wouldn’t all of that add up to a pretext?

Apparently not. And given that human misery on such a vast scale has thus far not led to Western military intervention, what reason is there to believe that the latest in so many events that have swiftly been trumpeted as triggers of war will turn out to be the real thing? How many times can this story keep re-running?

(1 minute 34 second clip preceded by 30 second commercial.)

The Guardian reports: Expert opinion is hardening behind attributing the deaths on Wednesday of hundreds of people in Damascus to a nerve agent such as sarin, with regional and western governments expecting to receive smuggled biological samples from the site in the coming days.

Chemical weapons specialists, who have studied footage showing the dead and dying victims of the attack, said several symptoms offered strong evidence that a nerve agent was used; it would be the worst such attack anywhere in the world in the past 25 years.

Stefan Mogl, a Swiss chemical weapons expert and former arms inspector, said: “There’s a significant number of videos of children’s faces and of adults who seem to have been exposed, that show typical symptoms of acetylcholinesterase inhibition poisoning, which coincides with a nerve agent.”

Mogl told the Guardian it was very likely the agent used was sarin. “The significance is, it’s not a single case. One person with constricting of the pupils, or with excessive salivation, or with spasms, or gasping for air, one single incident is not very significant, but … I came to the conclusion that there is a likelihood of nerve agent poisoning and this should be thoroughly investigated. You see children dying, people with very severe effects. I’ve seen a lot of people with uncontrolled muscle movement.”

Alastair Hay, another former weapons expert, who investigated the aftermath of the Halabja attack, when up to 5,000 people were gassed in Iraqi Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1988, said: “I’m struck by the appearance of the victims and the absence of any signs of trauma. This suggests some powerful asphyxiant. Many of the victims have individual signs suggestive of exposure to an organophosphate agent. Nasal and lung secretions are very evident in many of the victims. These are just some of the signs consistent with [such] exposure.” [Continue reading…]

EA WorldView: One million Syrian children are now registered as refugees, the United Nations said Friday.

UN latest figures show that of the one million Syrian refugees under the age of 18, around 740,000 are under 11.

Children now make up half of all refugees from the Syrian conflict. Syrians have sought refuge in neighboring Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon as well as in Egypt. Others have fled to Europe and North Africa.

UNHCR High Commissioner António Guterres expressed the situation in stark terms: “What is at stake is nothing less than the survival and wellbeing of a generation of innocents. The youth of Syria are losing their homes, their family members and their futures. Even after they have crossed a border to safety, they are traumatized, depressed and in need of a reason for hope.”

The Wall Street Journal reports: Officers at the Pentagon on Thursday were updating target lists for possible airstrikes on a range of Syrian government and military installations, officials said, as part of contingency planning should President Barack Obama decide to act after what experts said may be the worst chemical-weapons massacre in more than two decades.

As the Pentagon worked on its options, Secretary of State John Kerry talked by telephone with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and the foreign-policy chiefs of Turkey, Jordan and the European Union, as well as with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, officials said.

The Syrian government denied allegations it gassed its own people, backed by new statements from regime allies Iran and Russia accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s international foes of conspiring against him. U.S. officials said they have seen “strong indications” that chemical weapons were used but that more work was needed to evaluate and collect evidence.

The regime gave no indication, however, that it would agree to Mr. Ban’s plea to let U.N. inspectors investigate the chemical-weapons allegations, as Syrian forces pressed on with an offensive in the towns around the capital where the attacks were alleged to have occurred.

U.S. officials who described the military options being revised at the Pentagon stressed that their purpose wouldn’t be to topple the regime, but to punish Mr. Assad if there is conclusive evidence that the government was behind poison-gas attacks on Wednesday.

Making its options known could constitute a U.S. warning to Mr. Assad and his backers. It was unclear if Mr. Obama would be prepared to use the options; he has resisted getting entangled militarily in the conflict since the start.

Fawaz Gerges writes: Although we do not have independent information as to whether Bashar al-Assad’s regime fired chemical weapons on the eastern suburbs of Damascus and killed hundreds of civilians, as the opposition claims, the burden of proof, morally and legally, lies squarely on the shoulders of the Syrian president.

If the regime’s counter-claims of denial are to be believed, Assad must convince the Syrian people and the world. He can do this by allowing the United Nations inspectors access to the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where this apparent massacre occurred. A 20-strong UN team is already in Damascus, investigating three other incidents of alleged chemical weapons attacks said to have taken place six months ago.

The UN, together with scores of nations, has called on Assad to grant permission to its inspectors and allow them to conduct a “thorough, impartial and prompt investigation”. Assad’s prompt agreement would not only show his sincerity about addressing the serious and urgent concerns of the international community, but could also forestall western military strikes. His refusal could prompt such a strike.

If proven, and given the scale of the atrocity, the “red line” established by US president Barack Obama about the use of chemical weapons has surely been crossed. Pressure is mounting on Obama at home. Some US lawmakers immediately renewed calls for the administration to intervene more decisively in the Syrian conflict.

France has already threatened to retaliate militarily against Syria after a UN security council statement failed to agree to call for UN inspectors to investigate. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said: “If it is proven, France’s position is that there must be a reaction, a reaction that could take the form of a reaction with force.”

It is therefore in Assad’s interests – and it is his responsibility – to co-operate with the UN inspectors. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Few people sleep early in Damascus, even in times of war. So when shells started to crunch into the east of the capital at around 2am on Wednesday, Um Hassan and her four children were wide awake, bracing for familiar sounds of bombs falling on buildings and the empty road below.

Soon, though, loudspeakers in the neighbourhood, some attached to mosque minarets, started blaring terrifying warnings – telling residents to leave their houses and flee.

“We were in a panic to take the children and run out of Zemalka to any nearby villages,” said Um Hassan of her area in the east Ghouta district of the capital. “People who were sleeping in their homes died in their beds because they could not feel the effects of the attack.”

Headaches and nausea quickly overcame the family as they scrambled though blackened streets towards the family car, a violent cacophony of shelling all around and the air filling with a strange, noxious odour.

“I still feel sick and drowsy with all the smoke I have breathed,” she said 36 hours after the attack, which killed hundreds of people, wounded many more, and sparked outrage around the world.

“As we were trying to [leave], I could see people coming out of their homes but they would fall down. We tried to help some of them but they died before we got them to the hospital.”

The attack seemed relentless, according to Um Hassan and other victims and first responders contacted by the Guardian via Skype onThursday. The Syrian government has acknowledged that its military launched a large operation in eastern Ghouta in the early hours of Thursday, but has vehemently denied the use of chemical weapons. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The longer chemical weapons inspectors wait in a Damascus luxury hotel for permission to drive up the road to the site of what appears to be the worst poison gas attack in a quarter century, the less likely they will be able to get to the bottom of it.

The poisoning deaths of many hundreds of people took place only three days after a team of U.N. chemical weapons experts arrived in Syria. But their limited mandate means the inspectors have so far been powerless to go to the scene, a short drive from where they are staying.

“We’re being exterminated with poison gas while they drink their coffee and sit inside their hotels,” said Bara Abdelrahman, an activist in one of the Damascus suburbs where rebels say government rockets brought the poison gas that killed hundreds of people before dawn on Wednesday.

The Syrian government denies it was behind the mass killing, the deadliest incident of any kind in Syria’s two-and-a-half year civil war and the worst apparent chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in 1988.

The United Nations has asked President Bashar al-Assad’s government for access to the scene, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it should be investigated “without delay”.

Former weapons investigators say every hour matters.

“The longer it takes, the easier it is for anybody who has used it to try to cover up,” said Demetrius Perricos, who headed the U.N.’s team of weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 2000s.

“The more you cover up, the more time it takes afterwards to uncover it. So time is definitely not something that you want to take, you don’t want to do it slowly,” Perricos told Reuters.

Chemical weapons experts say there is little doubt that it was exposure to poison gas of some kind that killed the hundreds of victims, although exactly what chemicals were used could not be determined from just looking at images.

“Clearly, something has killed a lot of people,” says Dan Kaszeta, a former U.S. Army chemical officer and Department of Homeland Security expert now a private consultant. “We’re not going to know what until someone gets a sample.”

Stephen Johnson, a former British Army officer specializing in chemical, biological and nuclear warfare and now visiting fellow at Cranfield University’s forensic unit, said it was also “staggeringly effective if it is a chemical attack, which implies more than a casual rocket or two.”

Reuters also reports: Talk, notably from France and Britain, of a forceful foreign response remains unlikely to be translated into rapid, concerted action given division between the West and Russia at Wednesday’s U.N. Security Council meeting, and caution from Washington on Thursday.

Moscow has said rebels may have released gas to discredit Assad and urged him to agree to a U.N. inspection. On Wednesday, Russian objections to Western pressure on Syria saw the Security Council merely call in vague terms for “clarity” – a position increasingly frustrated Syrian rebels described as “shameful”.

The State Department said senior U.S. and Russian diplomats would meet in The Hague next Wednesday to discuss ending Syria’s civil war, in what would be the first such meeting since allegations of the chemical attack.

A senior State Department official said chemical weapons would also be discussed at the meeting. The meeting had previously been announced, but no date had been released.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Syria must let the U.N. team already in Damascus investigate “without delay”. He said he would send a top U.N. disarmament official, Angela Kane, to lobby the Syrian government in person.

Ban said he expected a swift, positive answer.

Obama has directed U.S. intelligence agencies to urgently help establish what caused the deaths, a State Department spokeswoman said while acknowledging it may be difficult given that the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Syria.

“At this time, right now, we are unable to conclusively determine CW (chemical weapons) use,” the State Department’s Jen Psaki told reporters. “We are doing everything possible in our power to nail down the facts,” she added.

Another U.S. official said intelligence agencies were not given a deadline and would take the time needed to “reach a conclusion with confidence.”

Don’t expect that determination to take place any time soon. The Obama administration is still trying to figure out whether a military coup took place in Egypt and if that determination is a challenge then coming to a conclusion about the use of chemical weapons in Damascus can be assumed to be well nigh impossible.

But let’s indulge the conspiracy theorists and assume that Assad has been the victim of a false flag operation. If that was the case, why would he now place a single obstacle in the way of those who could establish his innocence? Why would he ignore the advice of his loyal ally, Russia, which is to let the inspectors do their work?

The fact is, if there was some compelling evidence that this attack could be blamed on Jabhat al-Nusra or some other rebel group, there would be discreet sighs of relief in many Western capitals.

EA WorldView provides a transcript of the doctor speaking in the video above:

You call these terrorists? These are children. Four or six missiles hit Zamalka. Look. I promise you that in one other hospital there are 155 dead.

Look at them! Children. Women. “Did you try to rescue them”? No, they were killed immediately. I swear to you some families were killed entirely. Mom, Dad, kids, and grandparents killed as they lay sleeping in their homes. We just brought down from three buildings entire families killed in their sleep. You will see in a bit. We will issue names for everyone. So far we have confirmed 400-500 martyrs [deaths], even 600. That number is climbing and we have wounded people who are almost martyrs.

I swear by God. When will this Government come and give a verdict on this? When will they act like a Government? When will traitor Bashar [President Assad] own up? God curse him and his parents.

Where is [United Nations envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi? [Former UN envoy] Annan, you talk of rights of children and people. Where are you? Come and see these children now! Don’t talk on TV. Just come and see. Come! God help us…

Look at this child. Look! We don’t know who his parents are. They’re just numbers now.

EA Worldview reports that at least 1,360 people were killed in Damascus suburbs in what are believed to have been chemical attacks: In the days leading up to the August 21 attack, insurgents launched a series of attacks on regime positions in Abbasyeen, Damascus.

On Monday and Tuesday, footage showed insurgents from the Islamist Liwa Fustat al-Muslimeen targeting the regime’s Civil Defense Office in Abbasyeen — including with Croatian M79-Osa anti-tank weapons.

On Tuesday, State media reported that the attacks caused eight civilian deaths in the Damascus neighborhoods of Abbasyeen and Al Zablatani, with a shell hitting the Al Abbasyeen Stadium.

The regime is not just under increased pressure in Damascus. Elsewhere in Syria, it has faced insurgent gains in key areas — including an insurgent offensive in Assad’s home province of Latakia, insurgent victories in Daraa in the south and in Deir Ez Zor, where insurgents have taken, and so far held, key neighborhoods in the city. In response, the regime has launched counter-offensives, characterized by airstrikes and artillery shelling. However these counter-offensives, together with ongoing in fighting in Homs — where the regime has invested considerable firepower to try to regain control — have spread Assad’s forces thin.

In the days leading up to the attack, insurgents based in Jobar — one of the Damascus suburbs hit in in Wednesday’s attacks and in the ongoing Damascus offensive — launched an assault, including with Croatian anti-tank missiles, at regime positions in Damascus.

Increasingly under pressure, and facing increased attacks on its positions in Damascus and elsewhere, the Assad regime decided to gamble on a major offensive to regain control of the Damascus suburbs. It gambled that the international community would not respond with intervention, and that the attacks would buy him enough time and weaken the Damascus suburbs to such a degree that Syrian forces could carry out a ferocious and swift offensive across multiple targets.

Wednesday’s attack can also be seen as an escalation of another tactic that Assad has employed against insurgent-held areas — that of “terror bombing“, i.e. the use of a ferocious, highly destructive attacks against civilian populations to create terror and fear, in the hope that this will weaken insurgent strongholds. [Continue reading…]

Foreign Policy reports: U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts are looking into claims of a new and massive chemical weapons attack that’s left hundreds dead. From the limited evidence they’ve seen so far, those reports appear to be accurate. And that would make the strike on the East Ghouta region, just east of Damascus, the biggest chemical weapons attack in decades.

The early analysis is based on preliminary reports, photography and video evidence, and conclusions are prone to change if and when direct access to the victims is granted. Over the past nine months, the Syrian opposition has alleged dozens of times that the Assad regime has attacked them with nerve agents. Only a handful of those accusations have been confirmed; several have fallen away under close scrutiny. But Wednesday’s strike, which local opposition groups say killed an estimated 1,300 people, may be different.

“No doubt it’s a chemical release of some variety — and a military release of some variety,” said Gwyn Winfield, the editor of CRBNe World, the trade journal of the unconventional weapons community.

While the Obama administration says it has conclusive proof that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in the recent past, the White House has been reluctant to take major action in response to those relatively small-scale attacks. (“As long as they keep body count at a certain level, we won’t do anything,” an American intelligence official told Foreign Policy earlier this week.) But this attack appears to be anything but small-scale. If allegations about this latest attack prove to be accurate, the strike could be the moment when the Assad regime finally crossed the international community’s “red line,” and triggered outside invention in the civil war that has killed over a hundred thousand people. [Continue reading…]

Someone posted a comment here earlier today saying: “It looks like a fake would look too! It is a simulation filmed to fool the gullible, or rather to provide ‘evidence’ for the warmongering/Zionists and others who interfere and arm terrorists.” And I dare say there are some others who share a similar sentiment — and perhaps also believe the Holocaust was a “fake.”

But none of these folks should worry themselves. It really doesn’t matter how many people die in Syria — there is zero chance that the U.S. and the West will intervene.

Do you really think that an administration that is unclear about whether a military coup just took place in Egypt is about to become more deeply engaged in Syria?

The U.S. and its allies — even if they would never dare admit as much — are profoundly grateful for repeatedly having had their hands tied by Russia and China at the UN. Today turned out to be no different than any other.

Reuters reports: The U.N. Security Council said it was necessary to clarify an alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus suburbs on Wednesday but stopped short of demanding a probe by U.N. investigators currently in Syria.

“There is a strong concern among council members about the allegations and a general sense that there must be clarity on what happened and the situation must be followed closely,” Argentina’s U.N. ambassador, Maria Cristina Perceval, told reporters after a closed-door emergency meeting of the council.

The United States, Britain and France are among around 35 countries that called for chief U.N. investigator Ake Sellstrom, whose team is currently in Syria, to investigate the incident as soon as possible.

U.N. diplomats, however, said Russia and China opposed language that would have demanded a U.N. probe.