"In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was taped by someone, it doesn't make sense that we don't see videos, that we don't see photos showing bodies of the dead, the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the afflicted," he says.
While the French claim they have an "unbroken chain of custody" from the attack to the lab, even experts who believe the intelligence reports disagree. Greg Thielmann of the Arms Control Association says that while his "guess" is that the poison gas was used, there is a lack of "continuous chain of custody for the physiological samples from those exposed to sarin."
One "Western diplomat" told the Washington Post, "The chain-of-custody issue is a real issue," in part because the "red line" speech was an incentive to "prove" chemical weapons had been used. As Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish scientist who headed the UN's weapons inspections in Iraq, said, "If you are the opposition...you have an interest in giving the impression that some chemical weapons have been used."
According to a report in the New York Times, samples gathered in Aleppo were carried by a civilian courier from that city to the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, "a journey that took longer than expected. At one point," reports the Times, "the courier forgot the blood vials, which were not refrigerated, in his car. Ten days after the attack, the vials arrived at the Turkish field office for the Syrian American Medical Society."
In short, the samples were hardly secured during the week and a half it took them to get to Turkey, and they were delivered into the hands of insurgency supporters.
Carla del Ponte, former war crimes prosecutor and currently a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, says it was the rebels, not Syria, who are the guilty party.
Damascus refuses to allow the UN to test for chemical weapons inside of Syria, which certainly raises suspicions. On the other hand the UN has not exactly been a neutral bystander in the civil war. UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon has demanded "unfettered access" -- an unlikely event in the middle of a war -- and while sharply condemning Iran and Russia for supplying arms to Assad, has muted such criticism of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the main arms suppliers for the rebels.
There is a certain common sense factor in all this as well. Would the Assad government really "cross the red line" in order to kill 150 people?
When U.S. Special Forces invaded Syria in 2008 to attack what they claimed was a "terrorist gathering" -- it turned out to be carpenters and farmers -- the Syrians protested, but did nothing. At the time, Syria's Foreign Minister told Der Speigel that Damascus had no wish to "escalate the situation" with the U.S. "We are not Georgia" he added, an illusion to Georgia's disastrous decision to pick a fight with Russia in the 2008 Russian-Georgian war.
Nor has Syria responded to three bombing raids by Israel, knowing that challenging the powerful Israeli air force would be suicidal.
Western intelligence services want us to believe that Damascus deliberately courted direct U.S. intervention for something totally marginal to the war. Maybe the Assad regime has lost its senses. Maybe some local commanders took the initiative to do something criminal and dumb. Maybe the whole thing is a set-up.
Shouldn't we wait until the dog barks?
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