Bouie tours the fever swamps:
Yes, there’s no hard confirmation that Assad gave the order to use sarin gas against civilians. Still, each of these theories is easily debunked with the available evidence. The United States, for instance, isn’t alone in its conclusions: France, Germany, and the Arab League also agree that Assad’s regime was behind the attack. Indeed, to believe that the rebels are responsible is to ignore the extent to which the Syrian military possesses the materials for chemical weapons, to say nothing of the logistical complexity of setting up the attack and a subsequent cover-up.
As for the idea that President Obama is behind the attacks? The only thing I have for you is common sense. In order to pull off a conspiracy of that size, Obama would have to have the absolute loyalty and cooperation of hundreds—if not thousands—of people. He would also have to be an evil genius on par with some of the worst people in history. Even his most devoted opponents can agree that this is wildly implausible—the stuff of Alan Pakula political thrillers, not reality.
But conspiracy theories have never been about plausibility. More than anything, they reflect our uneasiness with the modern world, its complexity, and often its capriciousness. And at times, they’re a natural consequence of past actions. Given the circumstances of the war in Iraq — where high-level officials, up to and including the president, misled the public — it’s not a surprise that some people are paranoid about the situation in Syria.
But eschewing conspiracy theories does not mean abandoning skepticism of all self-serving accounts of what happened. The motive for such a brazen attack has yet to be cleared up definitively. We should never dismiss the possibility of divisions within Assad’s regime, mistakes, miscalculations, misunderstandings, and so on. A new analysis from German intelligence services, for example, has found intercepts that suggest that Assad repeatedly refused requests to use chemical weapons:
The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.
I’m haunted by the simple fact that almost no one believed that Saddam was bluffing about his WMD arsenal before we went to war. It seemed impossibly naive to believe that. But it was true.
The Dish 