Syria in the Gunsights

(Article changed on May 13, 2013 at 21:53)

  Despite revelations by a UN official that Syrian rebels, and not the Syrian government, used chemical weapons in a civil war, officials of the Obama administration and others are still determined to create regime change in Syria, if necessary by force.

Carla del Ponte, who sits on a UN commission of inquiry on Syria, told   Italian-Swiss broadcaster RSI, "According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas."

Del Ponte, who previously served on Western-backed international courts on Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said,   "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals, and according to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated. This was on the part of the oppostition, the rebels, not the government authorities."

   The commission of inquiry later issued a statement saying it had not yet reached official conclusions about whether poison gas was used in the Syrian conflict, and by whom.

Nonetheless, Del Ponte's statements would seem to undercut the case being made by the administration of President Barack Obama, advocates for war in the Republican Party and many pundits in the press, that the U.S. must intervene in Syria, to stop an out-of-control government from using chemical weapons against its own people.

    However, in an echo of the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Del Ponte's comments are being brushed aside by administration officials and others as being irrelevant or not worthy of attention. Without any evidence, they insist that Syrian government forces are using chemical weapons.

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