Syria Has Used Chemical Arms on Rebels, U.S. and Allies Find – NYTimes.com
Syria Has Used Chemical Arms on Rebels, U.S. and Allies Find – NYTimes.com.
By MARK MAZZETTI, MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — American intelligence analysts now believe that President Bashar al-Assad’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 Obama administration to develop a response to a provocation that the president himself has declared a “red line.”
“Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,” the deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said in a statement released by the White House on Thursday afternoon. “Our intelligence community has high confidence in that assessment given multiple, independent streams of information”
President Obama 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. Mr. Rhodes said that American intelligence officials now believed that 100 to 150 people had died from the attacks, and he said that the number “is likely incomplete.”
In his statement, Mr. Rhodes alluded to Mr. Obama’s position that the use of chemical weapons would be a red line for the United States. “The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his caluclus, and it has,” he said.
But a flurry of high-level meetings in Washington this week only underscored the splits within the Obama administration about what actions to take in Syria 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 militant group Hezbollah — claimed the strategic city of Qusayr and raised fears in Washington that large parts of the rebellion could be on the verge of collapse.
Senior State Department officials have been pushing for an aggressive military response, including 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.
The Obama administration’s cautious approach about Syria has already frayed relations with important American allies in the Middle East that have privately described the White House strategy as feckless. Saudi Arabia and Jordan recently cut the United States out of a new rebel training program, a decision that American officials said came from the belief in Riyadh and Amman that the United States has only a tepid commitment to supporting rebel groups.
Moreover, the United Arab Emirates declined to host a meeting of allied defense officials to discuss Syria, concerned that in the absence of strong American leadership the conference might degenerate into bickering and finger pointing among various gulf nations with different views on the best ways to support the rebellion.
Adding to those voices was former President Bill Clinton, who earlier this week endorsed a more robust American intervention in Syria to help the rebels, aligning himself with hawks like Senator John McCain, who fault Mr. Obama for his reluctance to get entangled in the bloody civil war there.
Speaking on Tuesday at a private session in New York with Mr. McCain, Mr. Clinton said, “Sometimes it’s best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t overcommit.”
“Some people say, ‘O.K., see what a big mess this is? Stay out!’” Mr. Clinton said. “I think that’s a big mistake. I agree with you about this,” he added, gesturing to Mr. McCain, who has called for supplying the rebels with weapons and conducting airstrikes.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, pushed back on Mr. Clinton’s comments, saying, “The president makes a decision about the implementation of national security options based on our national security interests, not on what might satisfy critics at any given moment about a policy.”
The conclusion by American intelligence agencies strengthens their assessment earlier this year and poses an important test for the White House.
Mr. Obama had repeatedly said the use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces would a cross a red line, but he has not indicated what action he would take in response.
In an April letter to Congress, the White House said that intelligence agencies had “varying degrees of confidence.”
But the conclusion of the latest intelligence review is much stronger and is based on evidence that includes reporting on planning by the regime for the use of chemical weapons, accounts of specific attacks and descriptions of physiological symptoms.
Mr. Rhodes said there was no reason to think the resistance has access to chemical weapons.
“We believe that the Assad regime maintains control of these weapons,” he said. “We have no reliable, corroborated reporting to indicate that the oppositiion in Syria has acquired of used chemical weapons.”
According to a C.I.A. report, which was described by an American official who declined to be identified, the United States has acquired blood, urine and hair samples from two Syrian rebels — one dead, and one wounded — who were involved in a firefight with Syrian government forces in mid-March near the town of Utubya, northeast of Damascus.
The samples showed that the rebels were exposed to sarin and supports the conclusion that the regime has used the weapon.
In recent days, the British and French government have also asserted that there is evidence that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons
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WarSclerotic 
June 14, 2013 at 12:13 PM
” American intelligence analysts now believe ”
That’s it, you got to believe it, because evidence there is none.
June 14, 2013 at 12:46 PM
The use of WMD in Syria is not relevant for us right now, because Assad only tried the cold water with his toes and didnt go further.
What is really disturbing in this war is the human slaughter there, in Syria, and the easiness the shiite militia entered in a war against their muslim brethren, in another country. The Karbala Battle is still raging here, today, under the very eyes of ours; the ghosts of the past have returned and are demanding from the livings a new tax in blood.
No matter how ”convenient” is for an israeli like myself to see the foes of my country killing one each other, I truly regret the losing of life there and I hope than one day muslims, christians and jews will forget war and will only visit the monuments and the holly places of the other.
June 14, 2013 at 12:48 PM
…as we all know, there is only One God.
June 14, 2013 at 1:43 PM
AND his name is Tyr or Odin or Thor
June 14, 2013 at 12:50 PM
That’s much easier to believe than the idea that the 12. imam is hidden in a well for centuries and that he waits for the monkeys in Tehran to spread chaos in the world so that he can finally come out of the well and reveal himself.
Consistency where art thou?
June 14, 2013 at 1:38 PM
I really didnt follow you on this one, Artaxes. But, it seems that you didnt follow my idea, either.So its like an intellectual standoff, so to speak, hehe… Anyhow, I always enjoy your well sustained assertions.
June 14, 2013 at 2:35 PM
Luis, my comment was a response to our spokesman for the monkey regime.
Complaining about the lack of evidence and about having to take these intelligence reports on faith is not consistent with the believe in this crazy 12. imam stuff, It is much more easier to believe these reports.
I did not respond to your comment which was well written as allways because I could add nothing except Amen.
But now something else comes to my mind.
The human misery that you (and I) hope to end is caused by evil.
And what is the source of evil?
Whether we know it or not we all are guided by ideas.
False and evil ideas are the source of all evil.
And so we see the profound wisdom of the Bible when it says:
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
One calls it evil spirits another one calls it evil ideas.
Yes, ultimately we battle not against those who do evil but against the ideas that cause them to do evil.
And we all know the author of all false and evil ideas. It is ultimately against him that we battle. The father of all lies.
June 14, 2013 at 2:53 PM
First and foremost, my apologises for misunderstanding you, in the first place. But still I’m happy for writing that, because your answer was very explicit and instructive – as always.
June 16, 2013 at 2:44 PM
you still dont get it do you renbe,Its our excuse we dont have to justify it it is as it is now time has run out .syria iran and russia will now pay the price that was there choice we dont care,you should know that you live in the uk you understand the Barbarians from the north are going to wipe iran and syria off the map with our proxies,then we will finish the job ourselves its a matter of power watch russia run but this time they wont have any place to run to turkey is going to shut the Bosphorus and the UK is going to close the Gibraltar strait and eguipt the suiz canal nowhere for iran and russia to run to and then you wont believe the contingency plan for this event 8 carriers 30 destroyers 5000 aircraft 5000,000 troops ready for action and all in place,and you know what its all gone according to plan from day one you people are so predicable,you did it to yourselves,now pay,you dont like your own tactics now face the terror you dished out for decades,,,,
PAY BACK TIME ha ha ha
June 14, 2013 at 3:59 PM
Evil is like beauty it is in the eye of the beholder.
June 14, 2013 at 4:26 PM
Does objective morality exist?
What do you think?
June 14, 2013 at 5:31 PM
A more larger question, if I may, might be: Does the Absolute exist? According to the quantum physics, the answer is No!; The Principle of Incertitude by Werner Heisenberg gave, at its time, a death blow to all kinds of ”absolute” in physics as well as in philosophy. I won’t develop this subject anymore, because it is way out off topic. But I as much I will say : God is Absolute ( which is an extension to Einstein’s famous telling: ”I dont believe that God is playing dices” ).
June 15, 2013 at 1:05 AM
In general not ,not yet perhaps it will be possible one day.
June 15, 2013 at 3:33 AM
Joop. This is an nonanswer-answer.
If I asked, you whether Atoms exist and you answered me: “In general they exist”, that would be the same nonanswer.
If I ask: “Does A exist?”, it is an absolute clear question: Does A at this moment somewhere in the universe exist? The answer to this question can only be a yes, no.
If A is an abstract thing then the question is not limited to space and time because an abstract thing is spaceless and timeless and so if I asked: “Does freedom exist?” that would be equivalent to asking: “Does freedom exist at all?”.
Because I asked you about the existence of an abstract thing the answer can only be a yes or a no.
so either objective morality exists or it doesn’t exist there is no “sometimes” or “in general”.
If objective morality does exist then the behaviour of a person A under given circumstances B can be determined to be moral or immoral REGARDLESS of what any person might think.
If killing Jews for fun is objectively morally wrong then it is morally wrong REGARDLESS of what anyone thinks.
Even if some sicko thinks that it is OK, killing Jews for fun is still morally wrong.
The question whether we can always KNOW what is objectively moral right or wrong for any given circumstances is an entirely different question.
My question was: “Does objective morality exist?”.
If you say that it does exist then you contradicted yourself because then evil is not in the eyes of the beholder but there are things that are objectively evil.
If you say that it does not exist you give Hitler a free pass, because then Hitler would have OBJECTIVELY done nothing wrong.
Evil is in the eyes of the beholder and some people still think that killing six million jews was morally justified and they would be perfectly right if what you say is true.
So I give you a friendly advise. Before you say something or before you adopt a view think it through to its logical conclusion. I really mean it. Please do not view this as a personal attack but as a friendly advise.
Luis, interesting questions.
I respectfully disagree with you. Quantum physics does not tell as that there are no absolutes but that there are things that cannot be ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Schrödinger’s equations have as a consequence that you cannot determine the location and the impulse of an electron absolutely. The more precisely you determine the impuls of an electron the more unprecise you determine the location of the electron and vice versa. As a consequence there can only be calculated statiscal probabilities.
For example we can the determine the orbit of an electron around an H-atom with a probability of 90%.
Also there is a logical problem with the statement: “There are not absolutes”.
This statement is self-refuting because ths statement is in itself an absolute statement which categorically states that there are no absolutes. If this satement were true then it would contrdict itself.
I agree. Interesting questions but way off topic.
June 15, 2013 at 7:28 AM
Artaxes, really great answer but one can say that absolute doesn’t exist in its self and that wont be an ”absolute” statement, but a statement about the ”absolute”. Good observations regarding Heisenberg Principle, any physics teacher would be proud of them. But, I wont go further with that, because we are already way off of topic here. I dont want to get an ” yellow ” on this from Joseph.
June 15, 2013 at 7:48 AM
As a philosopher, I find it both interesting and amazing to see this discussion emerging on my site. I’ve refrained from commenting to see where it would lead.
Clearly some very thoughtful people contributing. Thanks to you all!
June 15, 2013 at 4:35 PM
Wow JW, didn’t know you are a philosopher.
I did not study philosophy but I like such discussions.
Luis, though I disagree about the statement I won’t pursue this any further but I want to make a much more powerful final argument instead.
Anything that is relative is relative to something else which in turn is either absolute or relative. In a world where only relative things exist this would go ad infinitum and you would never arrive at anything. In short: Such a world cannot exist.
I agree that GOD is absolute. HE is THE absolute.
I have learned a lot from William Lane Craig, a brilliant worldclass philospher who argues for the existence of God.
You can watch plenty of his debates on Youtube.
June 15, 2013 at 2:51 PM
If i may
We ail living in a translation of the real reality, the real reality is hidden for us we can not see the interaction between the 4 basic natural forces , if we try to look at them we are chancing the interaction of these forces.( to complicated for me to explain this in detail here )
So we are living in a temoprale translation of the real reality , a reality in the past because the now is not to define.
To come back at artaxes
You are arguing from out your and mine Judeo, Christian humanitarian meme, however this meme is not universal ( yep Houston we have a problem ) The difference between the meme of the different tribes is not black white but overlapping, so is it possible that what is evil in one meme good or accepted is in an other meme.
If you had ask your question a bit more specified, i would be able to give you a more accurate answer, now i had to answer in general.
Let me try to catch it in this way
We all ( every thing ) living on the surface of a pan of soup, we are moving the surface what course disturbing of the underlaying soup ( forces)
Once in a while this disturbing find his way to the surface and will be notices by the soup surface movers ( every thing ) and some will call that a spiritual moment.
Basically the entropy is just growing.chaos my dear nothing more than chaos.
And of course the endless search for a systematic description of this chaos
What of course contributes to the entropy, and so the search for a systematic description of the chaos impossible makes.
So in mine humble opinion there is nothing like an absolute thing.
Just a temporal absolutism in a translation of the real reality.
Jees and that for a early Saturday morning.
June 15, 2013 at 6:15 PM
Logic is universal. 1+1=2 is equally true in China.
Since I cannot read your thoughts I can only ask you more specific questions if you make more specific statements.
If we say that all we see is the shadow and not the reality itself there is no point in talking about real reality because then neither the real reality can be known nor yor funny interactions. If we hold it to be true that we can only see the shadows than we can only talk about the shadows and any statements about the real reality is just speculation which can never be proven.
If objective morality does not exist than might is right and any idea of justice also goes out the window because justice cannot exist without objective morality.
While some people claim that there is no objective morality I have never met one of them who could live this in practice.
At some point in time they complain about being treated unfair or unjust which presupposes that there is objective morality.
Why do they cling so stubbornly to something that supposedly doesn’t exist?
Still the conclusion stands. If objective morality does not exist Hitler did objectively nothing wrong and neither does Iran objectively anything wrong if it tries to annihilate Israel.
Basicall anything is OK, when you can get away with it.
Why should the world care about Iran nuking Israel if it’s just a question of who is stronger?
June 15, 2013 at 6:47 PM
Objective morality = That which promotes interconnectedness, complexity & complex adaptive systems.
This is what the universe has been “doing” since the big bang.
It has done so so powerfully and consistently though all time that in my mind it is close to another “law” of nature.
That makes my standard “objective” in that it applies anywhere and anytime.
Cheers!
June 15, 2013 at 8:25 PM
As i have to go offline, I want to make some final remarks.
Joop, there are cultures in which things that we consider evil are not considered evil.
But if you ask the poor little girl in Egypt or Sudan if it was an evil act that her clitoris was cut out and her vagina was closed with stitches so that she could hardly urinate she would undoubtetly say yes.
The fact that people who live in different cultures view certain things as evil despite of their culture tells me that there are things which are truly evil and that only sick perverts or a sick culture claims otherwise.
June 16, 2013 at 1:24 PM
Thanks for your answer.
Lets start whit something simple, whit nothing, that must be simple not ?
As soon we have given nothing a definition we have made from nothing something,.
Something has to be somewhere, where is the location of nothing ?
If you do not know the location of something it must be nothing.
coming back on the universal objective morality.
You are still arguing from out your position, your meme ( and of course for a big part mine meme )
The different meme from the tribe, s are more and more over lapping each other and in time we will have one universal world wide meme.you may call it development of human kind, a step higher on the staircase to real humanity, i like to call it evolution.
practical example :
If you married an other women whit kids you are not killing the kids, we are not doing this, our meme is telling us it is bad.
However lions do it as a natural thing, if a stronger male lion wins the batlle for the female lions he kill,s all the cubs because his meme is telling him to have kids from the strongest male is good.
( i know animals an humans, but dig in into the wonders of the islaam )
You see different time space reality.
your question was:
Does objective morality exist?
mine answer :
In general not ,not yet perhaps it will be possible one day.
Let me give an other one .
long long time ago, it was complete normal and accepted that you kill the bandit who steel your property and raped your wife, if you do it now you go to the jail because you have to invite the criminal for a cup of tea wile you are calling the police.
shifting panels , the meme changed trough time and place.
so your objective ( and logically universal morality )morality is depending on time and place.
Further more you make a mistake, the real reality exist but the reality is just a translation and the reality where we live in is just an agreement about the translation, this translation is changing trough time and space ( place )
example .
If you where born and direct dump t in a forest you will never get a the word red for the activation of your senses for the color red , the word red is just an agreement between your brain and that from your educators.
Again
objective ( and logically universal morality )morality is depending on time and place.
Regards
Joop
June 20, 2013 at 3:08 PM
Joop, it seems that there are some things that you have not understood yet.
Definitions cannot create anything. They are abstract descriptions of things that exist either in reality or only in our
mind.
I just defined a thing that’s called AbraCatDabra and looks like a black cat and sits on my keyboard all the time. Yep,
failed to materialize.
If true, that definitions create anything we could expect that anything that is imaginable is also possible. This creates
ugly problems that you get when there are definitions of things that are logically impossible or when there are definitions
of different persons that conflict each other in such a way that they cannot coexist in the same reality. This shows
conclusively that definitions cannot create anything.
By nothing we mean ‘not anything’. Of course you can play word games but that would not prove anything.
It’s like saying. “Nothing kept him from posting. Ah, so it was something that is called nothing which kept him from
posting.”.
We all know the meaning: “There wasn’t anything that kept him from posting”.
I hate to repeat myself. I showed you already that Plato’s cave theory or whatever we call it can never be proven right or
wrong.
And so I show it to you for the last time.
If it’s true that we are living in a cave which we cannot leave and see only the shadows and not the reality we can never
prove the theory right because to prove it we must step outside the cave and show that the real reality is different from the
shadows. Which leads to the paradoxon that we have to prove the theory wrong to prove it right.
But can we prove it wrong? The answer is: No. A theory that states we cannot see the reality but something else instead can
never be proven wrong because there is always the possibility that we see something else and not the real reality.
A theory that cannot be proven wrong is not a scientific theory because scientific theories must be falsifiable and so this
theory falls outside the realm of science and into the realm of, well, faith and religion.
You confuse the reality with the explanation of the reality.
Example:
We have four guys each from a different era. All of them throw a piece of wood into the fire and all of them observe the same
reality.
All of them see how the wood burns, how the flames grow, how the smoke rises and how only ashes remain.
If you ask them for an explanation the answers may go like this.
Guy from 1000 BC Greece: The god of fire did eat the wood.
Guy from 200 BC Greece: The wood disintegrated into the four elements earth (ashes), wind (smoke), fire and water (vapor).
Guy from 18th century France: The wood released its Caloricum (the substance that contains the heat). By loosing its
Caloricum it lost most of its mass and only ashes remain.
Guy from 21th century Europe: Due to their great electric potential differences Carbon-Hydrogen-compounds and
Oxygen-molecules reacted in an exothermic Redox-reaction producing CO2 and H20 thereby increasing the entropy of the closed
system universe by turning a solid well-ordered compound into more chaotic gas and liquid.
As you see the observed reality does not change, only the explanations.
If these guys had to testify before a court they would all witness the same observation.
Now to your translation-theory.
“Further more you make a mistake, the real reality exist but the reality is just a translation and the reality where we live
in is just an agreement about the translation, this translation is changing trough time and space ( place ) ”
You cannot prove that your theory is right, because to do that you have know the real reality to prove that the real reality
is different from the translation.
You see this theory suffers the same fatal flaw as Plato’s cave. To prove your theory right you have first to prove it wrong.
And it does not help if we add the explanation of the reality to the translation. No matter how you get to your view of
reality. you cannot prove that your theory is right.
What about proving your theory wrong? Same problem as with Plato. Impossible to prove it wrong.
Again your theory falls outside the realm of science and into the realm of faith and religion.
And to top it all, your theory is selfrefuting.
If the statement “Real reality is hidden and can only be seen through a translation” is true, then the real reality is that
we can not know the real reality, which is a logically impossible statement to make.
How much more absurd can it get?
And so, since it is impossible for you to ever proof your theory I don’t waste my time talking about it.
It’s something either one wants to believe or not. In other words: it’s a matter of faith.
Maybe you have noble motives to try to convince everyone that you are right about reality. I really don’t want to rule that
out.
But I find it deeply ironic that you insist so vehemently on the truth of a world view based merely on faith and furthermore
it is totally inconsistent for someone who claims that the real reality is hidden to make any kind of truth claims.
It’s like the guy in the mental asylum who accuses everyone of the inmates of being crazy.
I won’t tackle the rest of your misunderstandings or errors but I rather want to cut to the heart of the matter and see where
we stand in our discussion.
So far neither you nor anyone else has challenged my conclusion that if there is no objective morality Hitler objectively did
nothing wrong.
From this I gather that you agree with my conclusion.
Where we disagree is whether objective morality exist or not.
I don’t expect you to abandon your faith, because that’s all it is. Just another faith.
You have given us no good reasons why we should prefer your faith over any other faith.
I have shown where a world without objective morality leads to.
It’s up to you to decide if you want to live in such a world or not.
That’s all.
Sincirely
Artaxes
June 15, 2013 at 3:05 PM
Joop…
Wow… Too many notes!
Here’s what I believe you were saying… The “Cliff Notes” version.
You are a Platonist. You see the world through his “myth of the cave.”
Where you depart from Plato is with your “temporal translation.” Plato saw his forms as absolute through time. You see them as constantly changing.
Furthermore, you believe that the shadows of the forms impact the forms themselves and are part of the process that gives them a “temporal” quality.
Let me know if I misunderstood. If my understanding is correct, all I can say is, “Cool!”
June 15, 2013 at 4:08 PM
Plato + Immanuel Kant+ a bit taoism + Joop and a bit more.
I,am a full technical educated person, but i,am reading sins i could read.
i like to think that i have a logical exact brain longing for understanding.
I like to say:
I,am a traveler on a journey trough live, who change shoes when necessarily.( endless learning )
Kant 1781 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kant pointed out that we all shape our experience of things through the filter of our mind. The mind shapes that experience, and among other things, Kant believed the concepts of space and time were programmed into the human brain, as was the notion of cause and effect. We never have direct experience of things, the noumenal world, and what we do experience is the phenomenal world as conveyed by our senses
You understand it well, but we can talk about this for hours so not weeks , perhaps a life time.
Oeps i forget to mentioned space time continuum , ships even that is temporal.
I love this type of conversations.
June 15, 2013 at 4:22 PM
Lao Tzu has been my mentor and guide for the last 25 years.
He answered Artaxes’ question, “Does objective morality exist?” as follows.
“In High truth, is there any difference between yes and no?
Between good and evil, is there any absolute distinction?
Must one fear what everyone fears?
It is still too early for the subtle truth to dawn on those who are so self-assertive.”
Tao Te Ching, Ch. 20