This one small detail seems to get maligned and misrepresented; there has been no proof that Bashar Assad ordered or approved the chemical attacks on his own people.
This revelation to some, continues to haunt the Obama administration and should be a concern for all of us. There are many that believe that in fact the Syrian Rebels could be responsible for the attack, and that even the U.S. was involved at some level.
Washington Times reported: U.S. intelligence has yet to uncover evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad directly ordered the chemical attacks last month on civilians in a suburb of Damascus, though the consensus inside U.S. agencies and Congress is that members of Mr. Assad’s inner circle likely gave the command, officials tell The Washington Times.
The gap in the intelligence has raised debate in some corners of the wider intelligence community about whether Mr. Assad has full control of his war-weary Army and their arsenal of chemical missiles, which most likely would be treasured by terrorist groups known to be operating in Syria, said officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing intelligence matters.
“If there was a rogue general that did it on his own accord, that would be a bigger problem for Assad, because that would imply that he does not have control of his own weapons,” said one senior congressional source familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments on Syria.
Apart from concerns about weapons falling into the hands of such Sunni extremist and al Qaeda-linked groups as the al-Nusra Front, there are also concerns about serious hurdles now likely to lie ahead for the international community trying to assemble a special team to work with Mr. Assad on securing his chemical arsenal.
Some foreign policy insiders, meanwhile, said the lack of specific intelligence about who ordered the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack is the main reason why top Obama administration officials — including the president himself — have in recent days carefully assigned blame to “Assad’s regime” rather than the Syrian leader personally.
Officials stressed there is a high degree of confidence that Mr. Assad had previously delegated authority over the use of chemical weapons to senior military commanders within his regime, even if he didn’t directly order the latest attack or know about it in advance.
The “responsibility for the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons on Aug. 21 rests on his shoulders whether he ordered the attack or not,” one U.S. official said, summarizing the assessment of intelligence agencies. “Nobody doubts that Syrian military leaders report to Assad.”
Outside the Obama administration, some analysts with senior-level Middle East and intelligence experience say doubts about control of Mr. Assad’s chemical arsenal do exist and are very real.
“As far as I know, there’s no intelligence that links [Mr. Assad] directly to the operation, so that does raise the question of command and control,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who heads the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
In an interview, Mr. Riedel said the question now looms large, particularly since debate around how best to respond to the use of chemical weapons has shifted rapidly from a possible U.S. military strike to a diplomatic effort to get Mr. Assad to give up the weapons.
“The optimistic scenario is that we’re going to now have a U.N. system put in place to monitor and control Syria’s chemical weapons,” said Mr. Riedel. “If there are questions about who is in control of the weapons, it makes that whole mission harder.”
What’s worse, he said, is that as international pressure mounts on Mr. Assad to comply with international specialists, there could be “Syrian military units and generals who believe keeping chemical weapons is their trump card and key to their survival.”
“Any U.N. disarmament effort is going to become even more complicated because they’re going to have to use forces to get that general to give it up — the generals hide things [and] I can envision in the chaos that’s going on in Syria today, some Syrian general saying, ‘I don’t care what the president says, I don’t care what the minister says, I’ve got to have my insurance policy and it is hanging onto a stash of chemical weapons.’”
While President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry have given firm pronouncements blaming the Syrian government for using chemical weapons last month, the administration also has done a rhetorical dance around the question of who actually authorized and carried out the attack.
With the White House appearing to dial back its push for a U.S. military response in the face of resistance from Congress and from other world powers during recent days, some senior administration officials have appeared to acknowledge outright the lack of intelligence directly linking Mr. Assad to the attack.
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