U.N. Report on Chemical Attack in Syria by Robert Mackey
The UN’s report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria is above. Fisher observes that, while “the investigation was barred from assigning blame, a number of details in the report seem to strongly suggest that the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was likely responsible.” Among other evidence:
The U.N. investigators analyzed 30 samples, which they found contained not just sarin but also “relevant chemicals, such as stabilizers.” That suggests that the chemical weapons were taken from a controlled storage environment, where they could have been processed for use by troops trained in their use. This would seem to downplay the possibility that the chemical weapons were, as some speculated, fired by rebels who had stolen them from government stockpiles.
Moses Brown likewise thinks the evidence points to the Assad regime:
You have claims the attacks were faked, the victims being Alawite hostages from Latakia, that were somehow driven through hundreds of miles of contested and government controlled territory to Damascus. There’s claims that this was some sort of accident involving Saudi supplied chemical weapons, which fails to explain how one incident could effect two separate areas. Other claims centre around the opposition having sarin, based off reports in Turkey in May, where it was reported Jabhat al-Nusra members were arrested with sarin. The “sarin” was later reported to be anti-freeze, and only this week some of the members are being prosecuted for trying to make sarin, having only a shopping list of ingredients, rather than actual sarin. It seems to me, that compared to the evidence of government responsibility for the attacks, the evidence of opposition responsibility seems very poor.
Peter Bouckaert is on the same page:
The various theories claiming to have “evidence” that opposition forces were responsible for the attack lack credibility. This was not an accidental explosion caused by opposition fighters who mishandled chemical weapons, as claimed by some commentators online. The attacks took place at two sites 16 kilometres apart, and involved incoming rockets, not on-the-ground explosions. This was not a chemical attack cooked up by opposition forces in some underground kitchen. It was a sophisticated attack involving military-grade Sarin.
C.J. Chivers weighs in:
Put simply, viewed through a common-sense understanding of the limits and conditions of the battlefield, the rebels could not have done this. Claims of rebel culpability are now specious; technically and tactically implausible, they are too outlandish for even a sci-fi script.
Drum adds:
Added to all the other intelligence pointing in the same direction, there’s really no longer any case to be made that this was some kind of false-flag rebel operation. It was a chemical weapons attack mounted by the Assad government.
The Dish 