Briareos H on 16/9/2013 at 12:34

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One angle of approach is to follow the munition trail. Interesting things have cropped up, see (http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/a-detailed-summary-of-evidence-on.html) this post and the more recent ones. In a few words, some very strange, custom munitions have been used -- with good confidence in the fact that they were fired by the Syrian army -- and if those munitions can be reliably linked to a chemical agent, which seems likely considering their configuration, they'll do a lot to alleviate some of the doubt.

Personally, my gut feeling is that el-Assad's chain of command was indeed responsible for a couple chemical attacks, although limited in scope. But I don't think it's enough reason to start an attack on the regime, especially considering that the different factions in the opposition are getting completely out of hand, with everything from African-style ransomers and kidnappers controlling entire areas of the country, to pseudo-quranic squads made of young idiots with no ideals and nothing better to do, to well-equipped, well-backed and very agressive islamist rebels, and everything in-between. If anything, I'd like to see the western world help the regime instead -- even though it made some pretty stupid moves. That would fall in line with what my own country did in Mali not too long ago, so I can't condone the staunch support of the French governement towards a military intervention against el-Assad instead. Maybe it's just all talk, maybe we're too eager to show off again and sell multirole fighter jets or warships.

Also, I think that the Russian diplomacy has been executing a masterstroke. Carefully defending their own interests, which are very strong in the region, flipping the bird to the U.S. by using negotiations to stretch things out while at the same time pressuring el-Assad into stopping being dumb and bailing him out with obvious returns in the future. Love the old-school politics on display there.

LoLion on 16/9/2013 at 15:37

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The matter of evidence and other aspects of the crisis are discussed (http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidesyria/2013/09/2013914142352162311.html) here in some detail. I think the show sums up the situation quite well if you have half an hour to watch it.

LoLion on 16/9/2013 at 16:07

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Arguments I heard are that:

1) Assad is actually sure that no intervention is going to come and he is free to do whatever he likes, so why not? (This was actually said by a Syrian anti-Assad activist in an interview for Democracy Now! a couple weeks ago)
2) Assad is simply ruthless/stereotypical mad dictator – he started by shooting into unarmed demonstrators, then bombed towns, so escalation to chemical weapons shouldn’t surprise anyone
3) The attack was done by a rogue element within the army or by accident

That said I think only the third argument has some credibility, since as was already pointed out, there is simply no rational explanation why would Assad use the chemical weapons now on such scale and mostly against civilians, while the UN inspectors were present. This would make some sense if the regime used chemical weapons at the start of the war when it seemed the rebels will take the whole country by a storm in the first few months, but certainly not now when the army started to push the rebels back.

On the other hand the rebels are now in crisis as it seems that all the money, weapons and training they are getting from the gulf monarchies, US and others is not going to be enough. They are the ones who could clearly benefit from such incidents, so I am inclined to believe the whole thing is a false flag event meant to lure the US and whoever joins them to turn the war in the favour of rebels.

Chade on 16/9/2013 at 22:31

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But governments already look at existing research and try to figure out what the best thing to do is ... except in those areas where someone is paying them to do otherwise, or there is strong public opinion to do something else.

I don't really see the link between changing the way we argue about policy and getting rid of corruption. The way to get rid of corruption is to look at what power structures exist and how they can influence each other and make laws directly targeting that. Making people use intellectual arguments rather then emotional arguments is ... well, it's just not much of a barrier to overcome. Think tanks do this every day.



You assume people choose who to vote for because of campaign promises. Now this isn't my field, but my understanding of political science is that this simply isn't true.

faetal on 17/9/2013 at 09:02

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But how does that apply to where he used them?