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Leaked emails have allegedly proved that the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country. A report released on Monday contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence where a scheme 'approved by Washington' is outlined explaining that Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons. Barack Obama made it clear to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last month that the U.S. would not tolerate Syria using chemical weapons against...

Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they're certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime -- and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days. But...

The U.S is confident that Syria was behind the deadly chemical weapons attack after intercepting a phone call from a Syrian defence chief demanding an explanation from its chemical weapon military unit for the action, according to new claims. Just hours after the attack last Wednesday an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of the unit, demanding answers, according to website Foreign Policy. The phone call was intercepted by U.S spies according to the website, and is now the reason that America is confident that it was carried out by the regime....

Late last week, the BBC began blasting the airwaves with stories about a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus. Initially, its reporters and presenters were reasonably careful to point out that the videos on which this claim was based were unverified - and in fact impossible to verify. As has since become quite clear, the site of the alleged atrocity is very difficult to reach. This fact would be well-known to those who released the films. Indeed, they are in a position to make the site hard to reach. This is by no means the first such allegation...

Three hospitals in Syria's Damascus governorate that are supported by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have reported to MSF that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21, 2013. Of those patients, 355 reportedly died.

Testimony from victims now strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin Nerve Gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior UN diplomat said Monday. Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent. But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons (CW), according to the BBC, she added...

A senior United Nations official has claimed that Syrian rebels may have used chemical weapons against government forces. Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals, and there are strong, concrete suspicions of the use of sarin gas, ‘This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.’

So, wait. It wasn’t the Syrian regime, but rather the Syrian rebels who used sarin nerve gas recently? That’s the story being reported tonight by Reuters, from actually named sources among U.N. investigators. But will anybody notice? Or, with Israeli airstrikes already under way, and the neo-cons already demanding another new war, is the news too little, too late…again? The week before last, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, reading from a letter sent by the White House to Congress, announced that the Administration believes that the Syrian government recently used chemical weapons against its own people. If true, it would be...

Thousands of sick and dying Syrians had flooded the hospitals in the Damascus suburbs before dawn, hours after the first rockets landed, their bodies convulsing and mouths foaming. Their vision was blurry and many could not breathe. Overwhelmed doctors worked frantically, jabbing their patients with injections of their only antidote, atropine, hoping to beat back the assault on the nervous system waged by suspected chemical agents. In just a few hours, as the patients poured in, the atropine ran out. To avoid contamination, medics stripped new arrivals down to their underwear and doused them with water before taking them inside....

There is a reason to be cautious. Both sides in the Syrian civil war have committed atrocities and both sides have misrepresented photos and falsified reports. But the burden appears to be on the government’s side. Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), which is above partisanship as well as devoted to saving lives, has reported that the hospitals it supports in Damascus have treated thousands of victims for neuro-toxicity. Their reports say that the symptoms are a result of the presence of Sarin gas. A former British Army chemical weapons expert says that the scale of the attack, the numbers affected and...

Contrary evidence arises as U.S. considers punishing Assad regime... NEW YORK – As the U.S. considers a response to what it calls a chemical weapon attack by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime that killed hundreds of civilians, reliable Middle Eastern sources say they have evidence the culprits actually were the rebel forces trying to take over the government. Secretary of State John Kerry accused the Assad government Monday of covering up the use of chemical weapons in “a cowardly crime” and a “moral obscenity” that shocked the world’s conscience. Kerry claimed the Obama administration had “undeniable” evidence “that the Assad government...

AFP - The United States provided Iraq with intelligence on preparations for an Iranian offensive during the Iran-Iraq war even though it knew Baghdad would respond with chemical weapons, Foreign Policy magazine reported Monday. Citing declassified CIA documents and interviews with former officials, the magazine reviewed the US record as Washington weighs military action against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons near Damascus last week. The magazine said the US knew in 1983 that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would not hesitate to resort to shelling Iranian forces with sarin or mustard gas. "As Iraqi attacks continue and intensify...

Woah! Hold your horses, Barack. Before we go to war with Syria can we be absolutely surely sure that we've got our pretext right? Only we've made a horrible mistake about WMDs before… The official UK/US narrative on the conflict in Syria is this. Last year, we drew a red line in the sand: if the regime uses chemical weapons then it makes itself a legitimate target for military action. Last week, it apparently did just that – murdering hundreds of people, including children, in a suburb of Damascus. John Kerry described this slaughter as defying "any code of morality",...

Recent news of a chemical weapons attack in Syria smacks of desperation. The question comes down to who is most desperate right now, the Assad regime or the Muslim Brotherhood rebels? Consider that since June, Assad’s forces have been winning. According to a CBS News report from last month, victories for the rebels had become “increasingly rare” and that the Muslim Brotherhood-backed opposition fighters were sustaining “some of their heaviest losses” near Damascus. The New York Times echoed this sentiment, even saying that before gaining the upper hand, concerns were that Assad would use chemical weapons; he did not. In...

<p>Images of multiple dead bodies emerged from Syria last week. It was asserted that poison gas killed the victims, who according to some numbered in the hundreds. Others claimed the photos were faked while others said the rebels were at fault. The dominant view, however, maintains that the al Assad regime carried out the attack.</p>

London, Jan 30 (ANI): The Obama administration gave green signal to a chemical weapons attack plan in Syria that could be blamed on President Bashar al Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country, leaked documents have shown. A new report, that contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence, showed a scheme 'approved by Washington'. As per the scheme 'Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons,' the Daily Mail reports.

On Saturday, Cyber War News released a cache of e-mails allegedly hacked by someone in Malaysia from a British private defense contractor called Britam Defence. One of the e-mails contains a discussion between Britam’s Business Development Director David Goulding and Philip Doughty, company founder. In the exchange, it’s revealed that there is a plan to unleash chemical weapons in Syria in order to blame it on the Bashar Al Assad regime to justify a direct intervention by U.S. and NATO forces in the country's civil war. The plan, thought up by the government of Qatar according to the e-mail, is...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not be "so stupid" as to use chemical weapons close to Damascus, the leader of the country's largest Kurdish group said. Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said he doubted the Syrian president would resort to using such weapons when he felt he had the upper hand in the country's civil war. He suggested last Wednesday's attack, which the opposition says was carried out by government forces and killed hundreds of people, was aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction. Assad has denied his forces used chemical weapons. "The...

An IDF intelligence unit listened in on senior Syrian officials discussing a chemical attack that allegedly took place on the outskirts of Damascus and left hundreds of Syrian civilians dead last Wednesday, a major German publication reported.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the use of chemical weapons in attacks on civilians in Syria last week was undeniable and that the Obama administration would hold the Syrian government accountable for what he called a “moral obscenity” that had shocked the world’s conscience. In some of the most strident language used yet by the administration, Mr. Kerry accused the Syrian government of cynically seeking to cover up the use of the weapons and he rejected its denial of responsibility for what he called a “cowardly crime.” Mr. Kerry’s remarks, in a prepared statement he read at...