Oh bull cpwill! Doctors without Borders confirmed that there were deaths and casualties.
Did you miss the words "its' incidence"?
As stated - the use of chemical weapons was confirmed by DWB, and the fact that those weapons had come from the regime was confirmed by the U.S. and British Intelligence Communities.
They don't know who is responsible.
Hmm, now that's an argument that requires an interesting implication. Given that the U.S. and British governments say that they
do know who was responsible, what is your background expertise in U.S. / FIVE EYES collections capabilities that you are able to state with certainty that this is a false claim?
HOWEVER, as others have said, why would the Syrian government use chemical weapons after we warned them not to, and when they are winning the conflict?
:lol: because we are toothless saps, Chris. Our "warnings" and "let me be clears" and "we will take this very seriously's" are worth approximately a bucket of warm spit in the Middle East right now.
Hopefully we will actually (finally) start to back up our words with action, and this will change in the future. But as of a month ago, if I were advising Assad, I would have told him he could pretty much ignore U.S. blustering as a vast majority of their populace didn't want to get involved, and their president was unlikely to break his pattern of behavior in order to cross them.
In the meantime, limited use achieves two objectives: 1. it
lends credibility to his detterence. North Korea has nukes for this (and Iran wants nukes for this), but Assad has chemical shells, so that's what he uses to ensure regime survival - but you have to demonstrate willingness and capability. and 2. it establishes a baseline for future use. You don't go all-out immediately after the President of the U.S. issues a redline statement, that puts him in a situation where his hand is forced. You boil the frog slowly, and after you have imported enough SA-20's from Russia that you feel that you have a strong enough deterrent from an air campaign - the trick is to introduce the system in such a way that U.S. reaction is limited and mitigated.
It just doesn't make sense. Some think that Al Qaeda is behind this in order to draw the United States into this cluster ****. They bring up some good points.
Yup. And while it's not impossible, so do the people who claim that 9/11 was an inside job to legitimize an American invasion of Iraq. But claims of conspiracy which lack evidence have a forum.
Regardless, the argument for a series of strikes and a limited campagin in Syria does not depend on Chemical Weapons usage by any player - though that does increase rather the urgency for it.