@Pricknick
used the sarin gas on the Syrian population, but no newspaper in this country would publish his article.
I have found 2 articles about the sarin gas and one from Tulsi Gabbard's trip to Syria. I don't know how many here are aware of how her trip to Syria has been viewed by the warmongers in our country, but it hasn't been well.
This is Hersh's article where he shows that it was the 'moderate ' rebels who this government has been arming and funding who were the ones that used the sarin gas.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

This article was written by Ray McGovern who had been in the CIA for decades and has come out against what it has been doing..
The Syrian Sarin 'False Flag' Lesson
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/11/the-syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson/

And this is Gabbard's article about her time in Syria and what she found out after actually speaking with the Syrian people.
https://medium.com/@TulsiGabbard/the-syrian-people-desperately-want-peac...

How anyone could find out who actually used the sarin gas in such a short time period and then are sure that it was Assad who used it reminds me of after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration just knew that it was Saddam who was involved in the attacks and that he needed to be removed from office and it was going to take the whole military and our friends to do it.
It's too bad that a letter written to Bill Clinton was sent long before 9/11 happened and the people who wrote the PNAC had asked him to remove Saddam.
Here's the link to the letter sent to Clinton in February 1998
http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rumsfeld-openletter.htm

And the controversy surrounding the White Helmets who were the ones who reported on this leaves me highly skeptical about who actually used it.

And why is there the big push to punish Assad and get more troops into Syria?
I know, let's ask McCain. He's the one who is most upset with Trump for not going after Assad. The McCain who has been photographed with members of Al Qaida and the leaders of ISIS.

Good job, Ellen.

But a hell of a lot of hyperbol. Actually, let's call it what it is.....Bullshit.
There is still no proof of who used them in 2013.
Let's talk about cluster bombs and white phosphorus. Crickets.

@ZimInSeattle @ZimInSeattle
great article by Robert Parry. Here are excerpts I thought were crucial:

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/05/another-dangerous-rush-to-judgment...
Another Dangerous Rush to Judgment in Syria

April 5, 2017
The U.S. government and the mainstream media rushed to judgment again, blaming the Syrian government for a new poison-gas attack and ignoring other possibilities.

By Robert Parry

… After noting the Assad government’s denial, Gordon and Barnard added, “But only the Syrian military had the ability and the motive to carry out an aerial attack like the one that struck the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.”

But they again ignored the alternative possibilities. One was that a bombing raid ruptured containers for chemicals that the rebels were planning to use in some future attack, and the other was that Al Qaeda’s jihadists staged the incident to elicit precisely the international outrage directed at Assad as has occurred.

Gordon and Barnard also could be wrong about Assad being the only one with a motive to deploy poison gas. Since Assad’s forces have gained a decisive upper-hand over the rebels, why would he risk stirring up international outrage at this juncture? On the other hand, the desperate rebels might view the horrific scenes from the chemical-weapons deployment as a last-minute game-changer.

… the pressing question now is: Have the American people come to understand enough about “psychological operations” and “strategic communications” that they will finally show the skepticism that no longer exists in the major U.S. news media?

So excellent. Parry raises the great question: WHY WOULD ASSAD DO THIS? WHO STANDS TO GAIN? It's becoming more and more obvious and predictable that the machination-ists of war will do anything to keep it going.

Another Dangerous Rush to Judgment in Syria

@Pluto's Republic
900 pound gorilla right next door that costs the US taxpayers $3.8 billion per year to keep. Gas pipelines from the largest gas fields in the world shared between Qatar and Iran, resisting World Bank/IMF overtures (Syria’s Central Bank is state-owned & controlled/no IMF debt), banned GMO seeds and the demands of a 900 pound gorilla is almost a guarantee for regime change.

There's a few more but the above are sufficient casus belli to destroy Syria as a viable country. World power is made up of oil/gas interests, banking, corporate agriculture and, in the MENA area, a 900 pound gorilla. Failure to comply to their demands can be hazardous to your health.

Three targets left - Iran, Russia and China. Is Trump stupid and rash enough? The guy has no backbone and no morals. He can be turned on a dime now that the Deep State has a ring firmly attached to his snout.

Russia gave all of Syria's gas weapons to the US to destroy a few years ago.

Assad is the only person with nothing to gain. Someone is doing the Neocons dirty work in Syria. Russia says shells hit an al Qaeda weapons lab. The UN already has inspectors in the area. The last time there was a poison gas bomb, it was a false flag from Turkey.

This is a proxy war over a pipeline.

@lizzyh7

at Sic Semper Tyrannis. A sample:

Old Microbiologist said in reply to Serge...
Being somewhat familiar with actually treating victims of chem/bio attacks, if it is Sarin (or similar nerve agent assumed from foam at mouth), it is a persistent agent used mostly for denial of terrain operations. Very tiny amounts can kill you and anyone entering a contaminated area will be equally dead. None of these people seem to be affected thus making this video very suspect. It outgases from contminated clothing and soil on a dose-dependent basis. On the other hand it could be chlorine gas which ISIS has used multiple times in the past and is not very useful in bombs. MOPP IV is the usual level of PPE required to treat victims. Anyone observe any PPE at all in the video? Looks fake to me.

And this -- pmr9 said:

... The alleged impact site is in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, but the site where the children's bodies are seen laid out is a sort of quarry with passages cut into the rock. This is tentatively geolocated to a site about fifteen miles to the south, just south of Latamineh, that was in use last year as a rebel headquarters (and bombed by the Russians) and is now apparently used by the White Helmets. It doesn't make any sense for the children to have been brought to this site, apparently separated from their mothers, unless they were captives. Even if the geolocation is incorrect it's clearly not in the town of Hama.

4. The Reuters photographer Ammar Abdullah, is deeply embedded with Nusra.

5. An alleged chemical attack on 30 March in Lataminah causing 70 nonfatal casualties and attributed to organophosphates (nerve agents) was reported by UOSSM, a French-based NGO closely associated with information operations. It's possible that the children were killed on this date, and that the videos were uploaded today as evidence of a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun.

6. As in the Ghouta massacre, there are no videos of victims found dead in their homes being removed by rescuers: just bodies laid out in the open and some alleged victims in hospital.

I think it's pretty clear that this incident was a massacre of captives, staged to look like a chemical attack. The victims may have been gassed, but not necessarily with an organophosphate: many other gased would be lethal in a confined space.

What's not clear is whether the rebels set up this operation on their own initiative, or whether this was an information operation directed by outside agencies. A possible motive would be to disrupt US-Russian cooperation, and to make a case for establishing a "safe zone" in NW Syria.

Of course none of the amibguity surrounding events like this, ever finds its way into the msm. No, the Mighty Wurlitzer says Assad done it, so Assad done it and that is that.

its a Black Flag, as you put it. I would not be surprised AT ALL to find out we did it and I told one of my co-workers that yesterday. She's not political and tries hard right now not to pay attention but even she agreed it sure sounds fishy.

@Big Al TOOTR = the Obama of the Right

Obvious war propaganda, just prior to the upcoming peace talks. I suppose there still remains no shortage of dupes out there who will believe that Assad did it, again, even after it was proven he didn't do it in 2013.

Avaaz wants us to demand "to lock up those responsible", how about we start with Obama, Clinton, Kerry and Rice and work from there.

This also further proves what should be clear now about the Trump administration, it's a continuation of the empire's imperialism and lies. It shoots out of the fucking water the notion that Trump is a non-interventionist.

@Azazello
pentagon. He has turned Iraq over to the generals and the pentagon and they are calling for more troops and not just in Iraq, but they want more troops in Afghanistan and Syria. And they aren't going to tell us how many troops they send anywhere.
I know that they are in over 150 countries, especially JSOC who are the president's special forces.
Nick Turse has been writing about this for over the 8 years of Obama's presidency.
I want to know who is in charge of the building up of troops in the countries surrounding Russia? If Trump doesn't want a war with Russia and they are still sending troops and equipment, who is making those decisions?
Anyone know?

They tried the "he gassed his own people" thing a couple years back with Obama. He didn't bite but Hillary was ready to go. Will Trump go along ?

@HenryAWallace
They have been meddling in Syria since the end of WWII. The CIA cut their teeth in Syria. It was the newly formed agency's very first covert operation.

Timeline of CIA Interventions in Syria
This partial timeline provides evidence that the U.S. government and Obama in particular bear a significant responsibility for the Syrian war and the results of that war. Obama approved elements of CIA plans that go back over 65 years. The CIA meddling is distinct from the Pentagon’s failed plan to train “moderate rebels”, not covered in this timeline.

1940s and 1950s “…if you want to understand the origins of authoritarian rule in Syria today, it is important to go back to the 1940s and the 1950s and see the role the CIA played in that land.” See also here, p. 122: “In the late 1940’s, U.S. policymakers grew alarmed when the Syrian government, bowing to public pressure, refused to let a U.S. oil company build a pipeline through its territory. Washington also found the strong anti-Western sentiment and the large Communist party in the country ominous. Concerned that Syria was ‘drifting leftward’, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) laid plans to overthrow its three-year old civilian government.” CIA operatives met with right-wing military leaders in Damascus to discuss installing a “military-supported dictatorship”.

1947-1948 CIA attempts “to influence the 1947-8 elections by backing right-wing figures in the Nationalist Party…”

March, 1949 CIA sponsors Syrian coup d’etat; CIA directly involved.

1957 CIA and MI6 devise plan to assassinate 3 top Syrian leaders and overthrow the government. “…they planned to use agents provocateurs to launch a series of incidents.” “A ‘Free Syria Committee’ should be funded and ‘political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities’ in Syria should be armed.” [Does this sound familiar?] See also here.

2006-2011 Prior to the onset of the Syrian war, the U.S. stirs up opposition to Syrian government (Assad). An April 18, 2011 article reads “Newly released WikiLeaks cables reveal that the US State Department has been secretly financing Syrian opposition groups and other opposition projects for at least five years, The Washington Post reports.”

March 2011 Daraa violence launches Syrian war. “The Daraa ‘protest movement’ on March 17-18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence.” “In Daraa, roof top snipers were targeting both police and demonstrators.” [Notice that this technique also occurred in the Kiev, Ukraine violence.] See also here.
...

what is really happening in Syria. Maybe, just maybe, that's why we should stay the hell out of the internal affairs of other nations, unless what is happening is very clear, as it was in Darfur. BTW, did we stay out of Darfur?

@CB Thanks for all this info CB, as always.

Gloves Are For Sissies: Photographs Show White Helmets Are Immune to Sarin
Who needs basic protective gear when dealing with chemical WMDs? The White Helmets have superhuman abilities

Chem attack blame game ‘failed’ at Syria conference in Brussels – Russian envoy
Attempts by some members of the Brussels conference on Syria to redraw the agenda and focus on allegations of the Syrian government’s complicity in the suspected chemical attack in Idlib have failed, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said.

Rebels ‘only people who benefited’ from Idlib chemical weapons attack – analyst
The Syrian government was quickly blamed by the West after the opposition-controlled Idlib region saw a chemical attack that reportedly killed dozens of civilians. However, a UK security analyst told RT the rebels were the only force that benefited from the incident.