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Syria Has Used Chemical Arms on Rebels, U.S. and Allies Find
[NY Times] American and European intelligence analysts now believe that Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
's troops have used chemical weapons against rebel forces in the civil war in Syria, an assessment that will put added pressure on a deeply divided B.O. regime to develop a response to a provocation that the president himself has declared a "red line."

According to an internal memorandum circulating inside the government on Thursday, the "intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year." President B.O. said in April that the United States had physiological evidence that the nerve gas sarin had been used in Syria, but lacked proof of who used it and under what circumstances. He now believes that the proof is definitive, according to American officials.

But a flurry of high-level meetings in Washington this week only underscored the splits within the B.O. regime about what actions to take to quell the fighting, which has claimed more than 90,000 people. The meetings were hastily arranged after Mr. Assad's troops -- joined by fighters from the bad turban group Hezbollah -- claimed the strategic city of Qusayr and raised fears in Washington thon the lam parts of the rebellion could be on the verge of collapse.

Senior State Department officials have been pushing for an aggressive military response, including Arclight airstrikes to hit the primary landing strips in Syria that the government uses to launch the chemical weapons attacks, ferry troops around the country, and receive shipments of matériel from Iran. But White House officials remain wary, and one American official said that a meeting on Wednesday of the president's senior advisers yielded no firm decisions about how to proceed.
Posted by: Fred 2013-06-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=370181