"... what grabbed me much harder was the next section. Hersh recounted how in March and April a series of small-scale chemical weapons attacks had occurred in Syria. The administration reported that the intelligence community had assessed ‘with varying degrees of confidence’ that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks, while noting that the White House had no direct evidence of Syrian army or government involvement, a fact that was only occasionally noted in the press coverage. The White House stated that it had no evidence that the opposition in Syria had obtained or used chemical weapons. But the truth was, this “statement contradicted evidence that at the time was streaming into US intelligence agencies.”
"By the end of May, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, as well as reporting that another active Syrian fundamentalist group, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also understood how to make sarin. “At the time, al-Nusra was operating in areas close to Damascus, including Eastern Ghouta. An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. The consultant told [Hersh] that Tariq had been identified ‘as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin’. He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military.”
"At the end of June, a classified report about al-Nusra’s nerve gas capabilities was sent to the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in which it was confirmed that al-Nusra was able to use sarin and had the ability to get it. In preparing for the potential invasion of Syria to gain control of Syrian chemical weapons, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had an analysis of the potential threat to US troops prepared. That report “concluded that the rebel forces were capable of attacking an American force with sarin because they were able to produce the lethal gas. The examination relied on signals and human intelligence, as well as the expressed intention and technical capability of the rebels.”
"In both its public and private briefings after attack in Syria on August 21, the White House ignored all this intelligence about al-Nusra’s access to sarin in favor of its claim that the Assad government was in sole possession of chemical weapons. The administration went on to make this same claim to lawmakers in its push to attack Syria, as well as to the media and to the U.N.
"Is this what you all remember being reported to us in the run up to the potential Syrian bombing/invasion?"
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/1...against-Assad#
It's a shame that the Russians are more truthful than the lib-retarded MSM and the Odumbo administration.
Obama - Syria
