After the White House stepped out, officials in Moscow said Friday they've seen the evidence the U.S. says is proof that Syria has used chemical weapons, but it's not going to be enough to get the Russians to turn their back on their man.
As the Syrian civil war drags on into its third summer, the conflict only grows larger and more vicious, with Hezbollah, Israel, Turkey, Russia, and even the North Koreans joining in the fight.
John McCain recently visited with Syrian rebel leaders inside the civil war torn country where he was told about alleged chemical weapons attacks from the Assad regime. These allegations seem to be supported by evidence presented in a lengthy and detailed report from the French magazine Le Monde accusing the Assad regime of using chemical weapons frequently in the fight around Damascus, the country's capital, over the last two months.
A member of the United Nations commission of inquiry announced on a Swiss-Italian television show that they believe the Syrian rebels have used chemical weapons on Assad's troops.
Syria's government has come forward to deny accusations that it has used chemical weapons, saying the United States lacks credibility. However, everyone from David Cameron to Barack Obama to Chuck Hagel and Jay Carney are stepping carefully around any response to the big question: "What are you going to do about it?"
Around the same time that the White House announced that it believe the Assad regime had crossed the "red line" President Obama set months ago, some troubling videos of alleged victims of a chemical attack made their way around the web.
In a stunning admission, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, as well as the White House and Secretary of State John Kerry, announced today that the U.S. intelligence services have evidence that chemical weapons have been used in the Syrian civil war
Last month at a meeting in Israel, President Obama defined his "game changer" on American involvement in the Syrian civil war as Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against his people. Today in Israel, a major Israeli military intelligence official said that Assad had done just that. With British and French officials appearing to believe the same, is the game about to change?
U.S. intelligence sources spent most of last week tamping down the idea that the Syrians have begun using chemical weapons on each other. So why isn't Representative Mike Rogers going along with them?
This week delivered a familiar narrative from Syria. Allegations of a chemical weapons attack bubbled up to the international stage, eliciting shock and awe across the board, only to be disproven a couple days later.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
President Obama faced a simple question: Did the dueling accusations about chemical weapons in Syria cross his supposed line to engage or not? Well, in a press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, he said the line is still there, and chemical weapons are a "game changer" — he's just not sure who crossed it yet. But he's "deeply skeptical" the opposition did.
Did Syria use chemical weapons on its own people? If the verdict comes back "yes," then what? Will U.S. troops invade or bomb the country, as Republicans have suggested? Give the rebels all the guns they need? Welcome to the land of no consequences.
Israel still isn't (officially) talking about what they were doing in Syria last week, but American officials have revealed a few new details about their cross-border attack.
After a report last week presented some startling evidence that Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people, a follow up this week only bolsters the case.
It's unclear exactly what exactly happened in Homs on Sunday, but it doesn't sound good.
It's scary enough to think of what the Assad regime could do with the several hundred tons of chemical weapons that are scattered across Syria. It's simply horrifying to think of what terrorists would do.
Dina Esfandiary on Syria's chemical weapons, David Ignatius on an economic NATO, Ezra Klein on budget bickering, Amy Davidson on Bob Costas, and Nora Caplan-Bricker on Uganda.
President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons would bring "consequences" to Syria, but with nerve gas bombs already being filled, would the United States act before Bashar al-Assad unleashes them? Can they act?
Bad news: Syria has filled several aerial bombs with the deadly nerve gas sarin and is ready to drop them onto its own people as soon as President Bashar al-Assad gives the word.
As concern grows over Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, a new report suggests that one country is already figuring out how it intends to bomb them out of existence.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sounded totally detached from reality Wednesday, telling an interviewer that "the situation is much better" in Syria following 18 months of violence and an estimated death toll of 22,000.
At a news conference in Moscow Tuesday, Syria's Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil warned the U.S. against foreign military intervention, saying such efforts would lead to "a confrontation wider than Syria's borders."
With so many Beltway voices calling for U.S. military intervention in Syria, President Obama finally drew a "red line" Monday that would prompt U.S. engagement in the region. Sort of, anyway.
Syria's public position is that it won't use its chemical weapons unless some outside state attacks it, but a Reuters Insight piece on Tuesday included the scary detail that the regime there was close to using them on rebels two weeks ago, but Russia stopped it.
The Syrian foreign ministry claims that the military would never use its stock of chemical weapons "inside Syria," but let the world know that it could definitely bring them out if a foreign country tries to interfere in its civil war.
The most prominent Syria defector to date says that his country's "wounded" regime may have already used chemical weapons on its people and has collaborated with Al Qaeda terrorists to orchestrate high profile bombings across the country.
The 2007 explosion at a Syrian chemical weapons plant still taints that country's safety record when it comes to its chemical weapons, so the news that it's breaking them out of storage is, well, disturbing to say the least.
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