Turkey claims evidence of Syrian chemical weapons use

[haikuman]

The Mideast continues to heat up and Bashar al Assad is likely going down very soon imho.

10 May 2013 Last updated at 16:16 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22484115


Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told US media he has evidence that Syria employed chemical weapons against opposition forces.

He cited as proof the discovery of missile remains and added that Syrian patients brought to Turkey "were wounded by these chemical weapons".

Mr Erdogan rejected the idea that the weapons could have been used by rebels.

This contradicts an earlier claim by a UN expert who said there were "concrete suspicions" that rebels used nerve gas.

Carla del Ponte, who serves on the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said testimony from victims strongly suggested that opposition fighters had used sarin, an extremely potent chemical nerve agent - although there was "no incontrovertible proof".

However, the commission later stressed that it had "not reached conclusive findings" as to their use by any parties.

[cbelt3]

And yet the Rooskies still protect him and ship him weapons, and the Iranians are still supporting him and using him as a conduit for their weapons shipments to Hamas.

[Ted King]

I didn't think the Assad regime would last this long, but it seems to me now that this war has become a somewhat asymmetrical proxy war - a war that the Iranian leadership (and perhaps many other Shia Muslims in the region) supporting Asad feels that they need to not lose, but because the rebels have some ties (how deep and wide?) with radical Muslim militants, it isn't clear that the U.S. and other western powers want to fully embrace the rebels to be a proxy for their conflict with Iran. That asymmetry may work to keep Asad in power for quite some time still.

What if they had a war and everyone lost? I think this may be one - and the biggest losers are most of the population of Syria that just want to enjoy their families and work to make a living.

[haikuman]

Agreed Ted """What if they had a war and everyone lost? I think this may be one - and the biggest losers are most of the population of Syria that just want to enjoy their families and work to make a living."""

[SteveG]

Well great, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has a NATO-ready, modern-equipped army, navy and air force. I think he should immediately do something about this and use those forces to stop Assad and his nerve gas weapons.

[max]

Go ahead, you too can buy into the WMD propaganda.
It is so cute how it works when Obama needs an excuse to go in and do the dirty work for Saudis.
Instead of being the puppeteers, today we are the puppets, the Sunni proxy.
It is amazing that except for the Russians, nobody here has learned the lessons of Benghazi and our overthrow of the Libyan regime.
Yes, Benghazi, Benghazi does matter for the fact is the very same person that was in charge of arming and supporting the Islamist jihadis"rebels", Chris Stevens, was the victim of jihadi gratitude.

The truth is that in return we did get some Libyan oil and although Libyan concession are not very profitable, they do make up on the volume and Libyan oil is very cheap to produce.
There is no oil in Syria, the regime change will result in an unprecedented jihadi bloodbath and the only reason for taking Assad down and to replace it with a bunch of bloodthirsty for revenge jihadis is Saudi desire to get one over Iran and Shias.

And the Turkish assertion, despite the baseless claim by BBC, does not contradict UN's inconvenient finding of jihadi's use of sarin, the claim is total bs and a well proven propaganda ploy to neutralize a bothersome fact of UN finding contradictory to Obama's excuse to go into Syria. The old Goebbels routine, repeat lies often, make dismissive noises (Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi) about any facts that conflict with your propaganda.

The facts do not matter, Bush/Obama has made the decision to go into Syria no matter what some time ago....