Al Qaeda has its hands in lots of things, and if they can have plants in the Afghan army who kill US troops, then they can have infiltrated the Syrian army as well.
None of this explains why Assad would have used chemicals on people within easy driving distance of the visiting UN inspection team.
That's a suicide wish and demonstration of a desire to lose.
And every indication is that Assad does not desire to lose.
However, we have not analyzed this intercept. Could the call itself be an enactment, an operation run against both the intercept people and against Assad?
How do we know the intercepted call is really what it appears to be on its surface?
An al Qaeda-affiliated rebel commander in Syria has pledged to target communities of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority with rockets in revenge for an alleged chemical attack near Damascus, according to an audio recording seen on Sunday.
The leader of the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group fighting in Syria, has pledged allegiance to the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani said the group's behaviour in Syria would not change as a result. Al-Nusra claims to be have carried out many suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks against state targets. On Tuesday, al-Qaeda in Iraq announced a merger with al-Nusra, but Mr Jawlani said he had not been consulted on this. Al-Nusra has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the US.