[frank_boyd]

True, but the take-way is:

> Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.

This means: it's not impossible that rebels have access to some chemical weapon.

The US gov keeps repeating "we have evidence that it has happened" but a) they have never shown it, and most of all: b) they don't say "we have evidence that shows it was Assad".

[mapt]

Earlier events, if they actually occurred, were very small-scale; They killed a handful of people, and were very difficult to confirm - with blood tests eventually being held up as a smoking gun that chemical weapons were used at all.

What happened on August 21 is an entirely different matter: it involved a large-scale rocket barrage on a dozen locations in discontinuous rebel-held neighborhoods which gassed entire city blocks; the gas persisted long enough afterwards to kill people such as journalists who responded to the reports. Hundreds of Youtube videos of the fairly characteristic aftermath exist, with the bodycount presently at about 1500. The areas gassed were threateningly close to the core of Damascus. This much cannot be reasonably contested.

The US government reports that it was listening in on the phone calls from one military commander to another and heard comments indicating regime involvement. They are also claiming to have identified using aerial imagery the area the rockets were fired from, the preparation three days before, and the actual firing of the rockets:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nearly...

[frank_boyd]

> The US government reports that it was listening in on the phone calls from one military commander to another and heard comments indicating regime involvement.

I just don't understand why they could not let the UN check what they call "evidence".