[Roverron]

Just saw this....

The report itself was not released. But the statement drew a pointed comparison between what it said was the scientific detail of the report and the far shorter intelligence summaries that the United States, Britain and France have released to justify their assertion that the Syrian government launched chemical weapons against Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The longest of those summaries, by the French, ran nine pages. Each relies primarily on circumstantial evidence to make its case, and they disagree with one another on some details, including the number of people who died in the attack.

Specifically, the Russians claim to have evidence that:

The shell fragments in the chemical attack are inconsistent with anything known to be in Syrian government inventory -- but are consistent with that of improvised shells constructed by the rebels.

The gas itself contains contaminents not consistent with industrial-scale production of Sarin, but is consistent with old, 1950s-era production when the processes to make the gas were in development. Syria didn't exist as a government producing such material in the 1950s.

The bursting charges (the part that goes "boom") apparently were RDX. RDX is a compound not typically used by government military entities because it is expensive and there are better compounds available to them. But RDX is common in terrorist munitions.

There are various reports about whether this particular set of data came from the attack in August, or an earlier one in March. McClatchy believes this is from March. I'm not so sure. But it doesn't really matter, does it, if it establishes that the rebels use chemical weapons, irrespective of when they used them.

After all, the premise behind us bombing Assad is that he used them against the rebels. If the Rebels used them either instead of Assad or both sides used them then exactly what justification do we have for getting involved in this at all?