Ball of fire in Middle East’: Tehran, Damascus warn US against Syria strike
25August, 2013 – RT

Iran has warned the US not to cross “the red line” on Syria threatening it would have “severe consequences” for the White House. This follows a statement from Syrian officials who said a strike would create “very serious fallout” for the whole region.

“America knows the limitation of the red line of the Syrian front and any crossing of Syria’s red line will have severe consequences for the White House,” the Iranian Fars news agency quoted deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Massoud Jazayeri, as saying.

Syrian authorities also warned the United States against any military intervention, saying this would “inflame the Middle East”.

“US military intervention will create very serious fallout and a ball of fire that will inflame the Middle East,” Information Minister Omran Zoabi told the Syrian state news agency, SANA.

The warning comes as Western officials stated they are considering “a serious response” from the international community to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Arab state.

On Saturday, British PM David Cameron’s spokesperson said that both the UK and the US have tasked officials to examine all the options.

At the same time, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that the Defense Department is “prepared to exercise whatever option – if he [Obama] decides to employ one of those options”.

Earlier on Friday Hagel suggested the Pentagon might move naval forces closer to Syria in case Obama decides to proceed.

However, US media reports that four US Navy Destroyers – USS Ramage, USS Gravely, USS Barry and USS Mahan – are being pre-positioned in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, although officials stress that the US Navy has received no orders to prepare for military action.

All four warships are said to have been equipped with cruise missiles.

It was initially planned that the USS Mahan would be replaced with the recently arrived USS Ramage, but navy commanders decided to change the agenda and now have four warships in the region instead of three.

Also, reports say that among the military options under consideration are missile strikes on Syrian units believed to be responsible for chemical attacks, or on Assad’s air force and ballistic missile sites.

Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad have accused government forces of attacking people in the Damascus suburbs with toxic gas on Wednesday, claiming it killed anywhere between ‘dozens’ to ‘1,300’. …more

Accusations that Syria used chemical weapon ‘against logic’ – Assad
26 August, 2013 – RT

Syrian leader Bashar Assad has stressed that the claims of his government using chemical weapons made by Western countries are “an insult to common sense” and “nonsense,” in an interview to Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.

“The statements made by the politicians in the USA and in other Western countries represent an insult to common sense and neglect of the public opinion of citizens in those countries. It’s nonsense: first, they bring charges, and then they collect evidence. And it’s one of the most powerful countries that does it – the US. They accused us on Wednesday, and in only two days the American leadership announces they started to collect the evidence.… They accuse our army of using chemical weapons in the area that’s reportedly controlled by the terrorists. In fact, there is no precise front line between the army and the insurgents in that area. And how can a government use chemical weapons – or any other weapons of mass destruction – in the area where government troops are concentrated? This is against elementary logic.”

The Syrian leader also indicated that not only the accusations stopped making sense, but the whole Western “peacemaking” plan in Syria has run amok: the Us and its allies have attempted to launch the mission, but failed to convince Russia and China to vote for it.

“They have failed to convince their peoples and the rest of the world that the policy, which they carry out in the Middle East, is smart and effective. Moreover, it appears that the situation here is different compared to the one in Egypt and Tunisia.”

“One and the same plot of the Arabic revolutions is no longer convincing. They may launch any kind of war but they don’t know how long it would last and how much of a territory it would cover. They have realized that their plot has gone out of control.”

The main cause of the continuing conflict, the Syrian leader pointed out, is the influx of tens of thousands of foreign insurgents that arrive in Syria every month and kill innocent people. What’s more, the terrorists are provided with money and weapons from abroad. And, according to Assad, world leaders don’t understand the dangers that terrorism may entail – despite past experience.

“Nowadays there are many politicians, although very few leaders, among the heads of states. The point is that they don’t know history and don’t learn its lessons. Some of them forget even the recent past. Have they learnt the lessons of past 50 years? Have they even glanced through the documents of their predecessors who failed in all wars they started since Vietnam? Have they realized those wars brought about nothing but havoc and instability in the Middle East and in other regions? To those politicians I would like to explain that terrorism isn’t a bargaining chip to pull out and use anytime one wants, and then put back. Terrorism, as a scorpion, can bite anytime. You can’t be for the terrorism in Syria and against it in Mali.”

However, Russia’s aid helps to improve at least the economic situation in the conflict-torn country, Assad indicated, not revealing any particular details though.

“I want to say that all contracts that have been concluded with Russia are being fulfilled. And no crisis or pressure from the US, Europe and the Gulf states interfered with the deliveries. Russia provides for Syria the things that are necessary for its protection, and the protection of its people. And the things Russia delivers to Syria according to our military contracts will undeniably lead to the improvement of the Syrian economy.” …source

“Using force without the approval of the UN Security Council is a very grave violation of international law,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Monday, saying military strikes would put coalition countries on “a very dangerous path, a very slippery path.”

“They (the West) have not been able to come up with any proof but are saying at the same time that the red line has been crossed and there can be no delay,” Lavrov said.

Calls for Restraint Rise as US/NATO Push for “Illegal” War in Syria
by Jon Queally – Common Dreams, 26 August, 2013

As the civil war in Syria continues, where are the calls for peace, a cease fire, and international diplomacy coming from? Not from the US or NATO. (File: Common Dreams)As all signs indicate a growing push for Western military intervention—war, that is—in Syria, have the U.S. and its “more than willing” coalition of NATO allies done anything to enact or facilitate a diplomatic solution?

And amid calls for missile strikes and possible air assaults against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the wake of possible use of chemical weapons, has there been adequate consideration of the further violence and bloodshed that such attacks are likely to cause?

For many, the answer to both questions: No.

Over the weekend, the Assad government acquiesced to demands to give UN inspectors access to the site outside Damascus where a suspected chemical gas attack took place last week. However, Western governments were quick to rebuff the gesture, saying that it was “too late” and claiming that their own intelligence—though offering little insight or details to how they achieved it—left “little doubt” that government forces were behind the attack.

“Here’s the core question now, in regard to Syria: if it’s true that President Bashar al-Assad’s government used poison gas in an incident that killed hundreds of people, at least, in the suburbs of Damascus, can the United States avoid military action in response? The answer is: yes. And it should.” –Bob Dreyfuss, The Nation

As The Independent reported on Monday, “Western countries, including Britain, are planning to take unilateral military action against the Assad regime within two weeks in retaliation” for the alleged attack.

Across corporate media outlets and cable news channels on Monday, talk about U.S. missile strikes—most likely from U.S. battleships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea—were being discussed as an almost “foregone conclusion.” Citing high-level talks at the White House and between Washington and its European allies over the weekend, reports indicated events are moving rapidly toward a NATO-driven coalition military assault on Syria, similar to that done to Libya in 2011 or Sarajevo in the 1990s.

As was reported by numerous outlets, it is likely that this coalition—led by the U.S., France, and Britain—would not be looking for support or official sanction at the UN due to the assumption that Russia—a permanent member of the Security Council—would veto any effort to authorize an assault.

On Monday, Russia all but conceded that assumption and said that any military attack on Syria by Western nations would be both a “catastrophe” for the region and a violation of international law.

“Using force without the approval of the UN Security Council is a very grave violation of international law,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Monday, saying military strikes would put coalition countries on “a very dangerous path, a very slippery path.”

Lavrov continued, warning that strikes would deepen Syria’s conflict, creating more violence, not less. “This is not just an illusion, it is a grave mistake that will not lead to any peace, but only mark a new, even bloodier stage of the war in Syria,” he said.

“They (the West) have not been able to come up with any proof but are saying at the same time that the red line has been crossed and there can be no delay,” Lavrov said.

He also compared the rhetoric over Syria to that made in the lead up to U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the NATO-led assault on Libya in 2011. “The intimidation campaign has already begun, the events in Iraq ten years ago and in Libya, more recently, began the same way,” Lavrov said. He also called out the hypocritical nature of US foreign policy by adding, “You cannot fight with a regime only because you don’t like the dictator that heads it, and then not fight another regime where you like the authoritarian ruler.”

But Russia, with its well known and highly referenced history of backing the Assad regime against Western powers, is not alone in calling for restraint even as U.N. inspectors finally reached the scene of the alleged gas attack on Monday—though not without incident—to begin their investigation into the available facts.

Worried that the pace of events was scuttling a chance for a diplomatic solution, The Nation’s Bob Dreyfuss was among those calling for a path forward that didn’t involve Tomahawk cruise missiles, writing:

Here’s the core question now, in regard to Syria: if it’s true that President Bashar al-Assad’s government used poison gas in an incident that killed hundreds of people, at least, in the suburbs of Damascus, can the United States avoid military action in response? The answer is: yes. And it should.

That doesn’t mean that the United States ought to do nothing. The horrific incident, reported in detail by Doctors Without Borders, demands action. But the proper response by the United States is an all-out effort to achieve a ceasefire in the Syrian civil war. It’s late in the game but it can be done. The first step would be for Washington to put intense pressure on Saudi Arabia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Turkey, to halt the flow of weapons to the Syrian rebels, while simultaneously getting Russia and Iran to do the same. A concerted, worldwide diplomatic effort along those lines could work, but there’s zero evidence that President Obama has even thought of that.

Indeed, it seems clear now that the United States is about to launch a series of cruise missile strikes against Syrian targets, including military command centers, airports, and other facilities. A US naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria, is underway, including four destroyers carrying cruise missiles. Ominously, the United States yesterday rejected as “too late” a Syrian offer – which, indeed, may have been disingenuous – to allow United Nations inspectors to visit the site where the gas was reportedly used. Virtually the entire Obama administration national security team huddled in the White House yesterday to decide what to do about Syria.

But it’s not just The Nation where warnings are circulating. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

Officials cautious of intervening say targeted strikes to punish Mr. Assad for using chemical weapons risk triggering a bloody escalation. If the regime digs in and uses chemical weapons again, or launches retaliatory attacks against the U.S. and its allies in the region, Mr. Obama will come under fierce pressure to respond more forcefully, increasing the chances of full-scale war, the officials say.

The WSJ also cites weekend comments from Syria’s Minister of Information Omran al-Zoubi who said that an attack by U.S./NATO forces would unleash “chaos” and a “ball of fire and flames” that would “consume not only Syria but the entire Middle East.”

And the Independent’s Partick Cockburn—who has been both circumspect about the chemical weapons claims but also willing to say that evidence is piling up that Assad’s military may have been behind the massacre—argues that European leaders and President Obama himself may well absorb the risks of a wider regional escalation in the name of saving face over earlier statements about “red lines” and chemical weapons. Cockburn writes:

The firing of Tomahawk cruise missiles from four American destroyers in the Mediterranean at targets in Syria are among the actions being telegraphed ahead by the US, Britain and France as the most likely form of retribution for the Syrian army’s alleged chemical attack on civilians in Damascus.

The units and bases from which the US believes rockets carrying poison gas were fired will be probable targets. So too would be Syrian airfields and probably the bases of elite units frequently deployed against the rebels.

If these attacks do take place, with Britain and France in a supporting role, then President Barack Obama will make them heavy enough to be more than a slap on the wrist but not so devastating that they herald the US becoming a participant in the war. It will not be an easy balancing act: ineffective air strikes that the Syrian government can shrug off would be a demonstration of weakness rather than strength. But strikes by missiles and possibly military aircraft will mean the US is crossing a Rubicon, committing itself more than ever before against President Bashar al-Assad and in favour of the armed opposition. This may mean that if there are missile strikes they will be limited in their timescale but heavier and more destructive than expected.

However, as Just Foreign Policy’s Robert Naiman pointed out in an interview with Common Dreams last week, “there is no silver bullet of military action when dealing with chemical weapons. Military intervention is not going to control chemical weapons. ”

“We saw that in Libya,” Naiman said.”Intervention didn’t control weapons, it set them free.”

“We need to be working through international diplomacy, through the UN,” he concluded. …more

The War Drive Against Syria
25 August, 2013 – World Socialist Web Site

Ten years after the US government went to war in Iraq on the basis of lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a no less grotesque provocation is being concocted by Paris, London, and Washington to justify a new war of aggression against Syria.

The allegations that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out mass chemical weapons attacks last Wednesday in Ghouta, near Damascus, lack any credibility.

The Assad regime has no motive to carry out such an attack. Until Wednesday, its forces were handily defeating the US-backed opposition militias without using chemical weapons. Due to their lack of popular support and the repeated defeats they have suffered, the opposition is disintegrating into bands of looters and murderers—a state of affairs confirmed by Al Qaeda-linked opposition forces’ declaration that after the Ghouta attack, they will kill any member of Assad’s Alawite faith they capture.

Allegations that Assad used chemical weapons serve only one purpose: to give Washington and its allies a pretext to attack Syria, which they have repeatedly threatened to do if a chemical attack by the regime occurred. If a chemical weapon attack did take place in Ghouta, François Hollande, David Cameron, and Barack Obama know far more about its execution than does Bashar al-Assad.

Before any proof of a chemical attack had emerged, and before any investigation had even begun—indeed, in less time than police departments take to issue an indictment in a routine street crime—French and British officials were calling for war with Assad. The day after the alleged attack, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius insisted that “force” was the only appropriate response.

Obama administration officials even said that they did not want a UN investigation or the collection of evidence before proceeding with their war plans. They told the New York Times yesterday that, with target lists for US strikes in Syria already circulating at the White House, they were “determined not to be drawn into a protracted debate over gaining access for United Nations investigators, because of doubts that they could now produce credible findings.”

The Obama administration’s claims that it is going to war because it is concerned that a “red line” of chemical weapons use has been breached is utterly fraudulent. It does not intend to investigate what occurred in Ghouta. Rather, it wants to obtain a pretext for war that it can present as “credible” to the media, to justify military action that it intends to pursue regardless of whether the Assad regime used any chemical weapons.

Paris, London, and Washington are rushing into a war with far-reaching implications. US guided missile destroyers are heading to the eastern Mediterranean to get in position to strike Syria, and military planners are preparing a massive bombing campaign and stepped-up weapons shipments to Islamist opposition militias in Syria. They are dismissing blunt warnings by Syria’s allies, Iran and Russia, that a US attack on Syria will have dire consequences throughout the region.

The geostrategic and economic interests driving war preparations against Syria were spelled out in a long statement by one of US imperialism’s leading strategists, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, issued two days after the alleged chemical attack. …more

Ignored by English-language media, rural uprisings spread across industries as hundreds of thousands protest US-backed govt

Colombia Nationwide Strike Against ‘Free Trade,’ Privatization, Poverty
by Sarah Lazare – Common Dreams, 25 August, 2013

Protests in Sincelejo (Photo: Marcha Patriotica)A nationwide strike in Colombia—which started as a rural peasant uprising and spread to miners, teachers, medical professionals, truckers, and students—reached its 7th day Sunday as at least 200,000 people blocked roads and launched protests against a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and devastating policies of poverty and privatization pushed by US-backed right-wing President Juan Manuel Santos.

“[The strike is a condemnation] of the situation in which the Santos administration has put the country, as a consequence of its terrible, anti-union and dissatisfactory policies,” declared the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), the country’s largest union, in a statement.

The protests and strikes, largely ignored in the English-language media, have been met with heavy crackdown from Colombia’s feared police, with human rights organization Bayaca reporting shootings, torture, sexual assault, severe tear-gassing, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses on the part of state agents. Colombia’s Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon recently claimed that the striking workers are being controlled by the “terrorist” Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in a country known for using unverified claims of FARC connections as an excuse to launch severe violence against social movements.

“Violent clashes continue in rural areas where farmers and truck drivers have been setting up roadblocks since Monday, and the Santos administration has deployed 16,000 additional military personnel to ‘control the situation,'” Neil Martin of the Colombia-based labor solidarity organization Paso International told Common Dreams Sunday. “There have not been deaths reported in relation to this violence, but human rights organizations and YouTube videos have documented military personnel beating protestors, stealing supplies, carrying out vandalism unwarranted arrests, and generally inciting violence.”

Protesters are levying a broad range of concerns about public policies that devastate Colombia’s workers, indegenous, and Afro-Colombian communities. The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement has forced small farmers to compete with subsidized US products, made them more vulnerable to market fluctuations, and eroded their protections and social safety nets through the implementation of neoliberal policies domestically. Farmers are demanding more protections and services in a country beset with severe rural poverty.

Meanwhile, the Colombian government is handing out sweetheart deals to international mining companies while creating bans and roadblocks for Colombian miners. Likewise, the government is giving multinational food corporations access to land earmarked for poor Colombians. Healthcare workers are fighting a broad range of reforms aimed at gutting and privatizing Colombia’s healthcare system. Truckers are demanding an end to low wages and high gas prices.

“This is the third or fourth large-scale non-military rural uprising this year,” Martin told Common Dreams.

Colombian workers organizing to improve their lives are met with an onslaught of state violence: Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for union activists, according to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, and 37 activists were murdered in Colombia in the 1st half of 2013 alone, leading news weekly Semana reports. …more

Anti-Syria Western axis coming apart
26 August, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

The recent spate of military setbacks heralding eventual defeat for the Western-led axis has created a new dynamic of calculations among the protagonists. This is typical of a criminal conspiracy coming unstuck. The different priorities of the protagonists start to diverge; that dynamic then induces feelings of distrust, treachery and resentment.”
As in all criminal conspiracies when results do not go according to plan, the protagonists start blaming one another; and because of the treacherous nature of the conspiracy, the partners-in-crime are eventually prone to feelings of distrust, resentment and paranoia.

This splintering and bickering can be seen in the Western-led axis against Syria. In recent weeks, we have signs of emerging rivalries, spats and distrust that all point to the axis coming apart.

That may be the important backdrop to this week’s alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus, in which over 100 people were killed.

Suspicion points to the atrocity being ultimately the work of Saudi Arabia or Israel, or both, in an attempt to trigger a full-scale Western military intervention. This despicable act is more a sign of desperation stemming from failing cracks in the Western-led axis against Syria. It is an attempt to bring about cohesion in the axis, which has in recent weeks seen its various adherents drifting apart as a result of the losing war situation.

Thus, this past week we witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of Saudi King Abdullah rebuking the United States for “ignorant meddling” in Egypt; we also saw NATO member Turkey accusing Israel of fomenting the military coup in Egypt against Ankara’s allied Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi; and then the US slapped down Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for leveling such accusations against its client in Tel Aviv.

Before that rash of grouching, the Persian Gulf Arab sheikhdoms were aggrieved by Washington’s unprecedented closure of embassies throughout the region over an alleged terror threat. There were even paranoid accusations from the monarchs that the US was trying to destabilize their autocratic rule.

Within the Persian Gulf oil monarchs, there has of course been a seething rivalry between the dominant Saudi Arabia and the upstarts of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. This came to the fore last month when the House of Saud pushed Qatar out of the driving seat for gun-running in the Western-led axis against Syria.

Why these tensions within the Western-led axis are emerging now is because of the imminent failure of the military option for regime change in Syria. The main Western powers of the US, Britain and France seem to have given up the ghost on overthrowing the Damascus government through covert state-sponsored terrorism. Turkey’s Recep Erdogan has also reportedly decided to back off from supporting the Takfiri militants in Syria, probably reflecting his government’s concern that the repercussions of blowback terrorism are destabilizing Ankara’s internal authority.

Saudi Arabia and Israel appear to be still committed to the militarist option, not only in Syria, but also in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere.

The recent spate of military setbacks heralding eventual defeat for the Western-led axis has created a new dynamic of calculations among the protagonists. This is typical of a criminal conspiracy coming unstuck. The different priorities of the protagonists start to diverge; that dynamic then induces feelings of distrust, treachery and resentment.

For nearly two and half years, Syria has been targeted by a relentless covert war of aggression aimed at destabilizing the country and instigating regime change. The Western axis sponsoring the covert war comprises primarily the United States and the former colonial powers Britain and France, along with their regional proxies Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey.

The military option for regime change in Syria is proving to be a failure. The turning point was the battle for Qusayr when the Syrian army liberated the key mid-regional town. Since then, the Western-backed mercenaries have been decisively on the retreat, engaging in more and more sickening atrocities. The elusive goal of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad has created a sense of defeatism among the Western-led conspiracy.

This explains why the Americans, British and French have not delivered on promised weaponry to the foreign militants in Syria, despite having given the official go-ahead for this supply more than two months ago. This delay has engendered bitter resentment among the mercenaries and their Saudi paymaster towards the Western governments, whom they accuse of betraying.

Notably too when the Saudi-backed exile group, the Syrian National Coalition, sent its top delegates to the US at the end of July to drum up weapons and materials, they came away jilted and empty handed. The SNC delegation, headed up by Saudi protégé Ahmad al-Jarba, was told by US Secretary of State John Kerry that there was “no military solution” to the Syrian problem, and that they would have to sit down to negotiate with the government in Damascus. …more

Alexander Lukashevich, spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, said: “All these things force us to remember the events of 10 years ago, when false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was used as a pretext by the U.S., who went around the UN on an undertaking, the consequences of which are well-known to all. We again firmly urge to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and not to allow actions that are out of accord with international rights.”

UN inspectors’ car ‘deliberately shot at multiple times’ by snipers in Syria
By Albina Kovalyova, Alastair Jamieson and Catherine Chomiak – NBC News – 26 August, 2013

A United Nations team investigating claims of a poison-gas attack in a rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital collected blood samples and interviewed survivors Monday despite being temporarily turned back by sniper fire.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said the team had completed its first day of inspection as he chided the regime and opposition forces to ensure “the safety and security of the investigation teams.”

The six-car convoy carrying the team was initially thwarted and forced to return to a government checkpoint after being “deliberately” targeted while driving in the capital.

“Despite such very difficult circumstances, our team returned to Damascus and replaced their car and proceeded to a suburb of Damascus to carry on their investigation,” the secretary-general said.

“They visited two hospitals, they interviewed witnesses, survivors and doctors, they also collected some samples.”

The investigation centers around a rebel-held suburb of Damascus known as Eastern Ghouta, where activists say rockets loaded with poison gas killed hundreds of civilians on Wednesday, many of them women and children.

Dressed in blue U.N. body armor, the team was accompanied by security forces and an ambulance.

There’s a sense of urgency at the White House about the ongoing issues in Syria. NBC’s Kristen Welker reports.

Earlier, Reuters cited residents saying that at least one mortar bomb fell in the area near the Four Seasons hotel, where the U.N. officials are staying. Syrian state media said the bombs had been fired by “terrorists,” the term it uses for rebels fighting President Bashar Assad.

White House officials said Sunday there was “very little doubt” that the Syrian government was responsible and had used chemical weapons to kill hundreds of civilians.

President Barack Obama has already discussed “possible responses by the international community” with allies including Britain and France, with limited airstrikes emerging as the most likely option.

Britain said it would be possible to respond to the “outrages” in Syria without the unanimous backing of the U.N. Security Council.

“We cannot in the 21st century allow the idea that chemical weapons can be used with impunity,” British foreign secretary William Hague said Monday. “The Prime Minister has discussed that with President Obama, they are agreed there must be a serious response by the international community.”

He added that Britain and other U.S. allies were “in close consultation…every hour” and that details of the international response “will emerge in due course.”

But Russia criticized the tough talk, warning the U.S. that the recent escalation in pressure by Washington and its allies echoed the preamble to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Alexander Lukashevich, spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry, said: “All these things force us to remember the events of 10 years ago, when false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was used as a pretext by the U.S., who went around the UN on an undertaking, the consequences of which are well-known to all. We again firmly urge to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and not to allow actions that are out of accord with international rights.”

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov later echoed those comments, telling a Moscow news conference that military action without U.N. Security Council approval would be “a very grave violation of international law.”

“If anybody thinks that bombing and destroying the Syrian military infrastructure, and leaving the battlefield for the opponents of the regime to win, would end everything – that is an illusion,” Lavrov said.

In an interview with a Russian newspaper, Assad denied that his forces had used chemical weapons and predicted that any U.S. military intervention in his country would be unsuccessful.

“Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day,” he told the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper. “Would any state use chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction in a place where its own forces are concentrated? That would go against elementary logic.”

The Obama administration does not want to act unilaterally, an official said Sunday. The official added that the president has not yet determined whether to take action, but wants to have a clear plan in place for how to proceed in the event of U.S. military intervention.

A senior member of the administration said any decision would be based on U.S. intelligence in addition to any findings by U.N. inspectors. The investigators have a mandate to determine if chemical weapons were used, but do not have a mandate to determine who used them, the official said. …source

More Evidence Points To The Syrian Rebels
By: CTuttle, 24 August 24, 2013 – FDL

As U.S. Forces Prepare to Act on Syria as Chemicals Alleged. A lot of new developments have since arisen that points the finger squarely at the Syrian Rebels and not the Syrian Regime. First off, it is almost certain that military grade Chemical Weapons were not used, instead, it is likely that it was some combination of Toxic Industrial Chemicals! (PDF6pgs)

From the Huffington Post…

…Jean Pascal Zanders, an independent researcher who specializes in CBW and disarmament, said that in videos of the aftermath of the attacks, the hue of the victims’ faces appeared to show many suffered from asphyxiation. However, he said the symptoms they exhibited were not consistent with mustard gas or the nerve agents VX or sarin. Mustard gas would cause blistering of the skin and discoloration, while the nerve agents would produce severe convulsions in the victims and also affect the paramedics treating them, neither of which was evident from the videos or reports. “I’m deliberately not using the term chemical weapons here,” he said. “There’s plenty of other nasty stuff that was used in the past as a chemical warfare agent, so many industrial toxicants could be used too.”

Now, as I’ve noted before, prior to the new findings in those Rebel-held tunnels…

Syrian rebels’ Damascus chemical cache found by Syrian Army

A video shot by RT’s sister channel Russia Al Youm shows an old, partly ruined building which was set up as a laboratory. After entering the building, Syrian Army officers found scores of canisters and bags laid on the floor and tables. According to a warning sign on the bags, the “corrosive” substance was made in Saudi Arabia.

Now, while I suspect the Saudis, British MP Galloway thinks it’s the Israelis…

“If there’s been any use of nerve gas, it’s the rebels that used it…If there has been use of chemical weapons, it was Al Qaeda who used the chemical weapons,” claims Galloway in a video distributed on the internet.

“Who gave Al Qaeda the chemical weapons? Here’s my theory: Israel gave them the chemical weapons.”

Btw, whatever happened to the initial 1,300 dead that was(is) wildly hyped about in our MSM…?

Now, contrary to PM Cameron’s assertion that Assad refuses to allow the UN inspectors access…

Prime Minister David Cameron discussed the situation in Syria with President Obama and Prime Minister Harper.

The Prime Minister also spoke to Prime Minister Harper who agreed that the situation was extremely troubling and that the international community must respond appropriately.‬

Well, lah di da…

Syria will let UN inspectors probe chemical attack: FM

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem says Damascus will provide the UN team with access to the site of the recent alleged chemical attack in the country.

In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Saturday, al-Muallem added that his respective country has cooperated with the UN team of chemical experts present in the country.

He added that Damascus is now holding talks with the UN inspectors on the access to the site of the alleged chemical attack.

Now, as Obama adds another Ballistic Missile Cruiser to the Eastern Mediterranean… Putin Responds To Syria Escalation: May “Reinforce Naval Grouping In Mediterranean” Following US Buildup

Speaking of Russia, Putin’s been keeping a very close eye on Syria, as As-safir reported that Russian satellites had tracked the origin of the attack to a rebel held area…

“The Russian said that the rockets, two of the manufacture of domestic and carrying chemicals, set off from the area controlled by «the banner of Islam», led by Zahran Alwash, the most prominent forces of the armed opposition in Gota.” [Google translate]

And, if there was any doubt about the Syrian Rebels possibly using chemical weapons…

Syria Rebels: We’ll Use Chemical Weapons, Too

The rebel commanders announced that thus far, their forces had refrained from taking over the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons stores, but they will no longer set any limitations on themselves in the fight against the Assad regime.

…more