I am naive... I believe that Syria never used chemical weapons... But like the proof of Saddam weapons of mass destruction, we go on the slippery-dip on a whim with a small white lie... The underlying event here is not so much to provide "freedom" for Syria because anyone and his/her dog would know that the freedom under the Sunni rebels in government would be a Sharia nightmare, akin to Saudi Arabia, but to get after Iran in the process. This is the general gist of the purpose here.

One person called Putin may not stay idle in his little corner and may increase the stakes a tad more as the US is now raising the stakes... 

Result: more death, more war, more pain, more blood...

Will arming the rebels succeed?

The pattern of the fighting remains mixed on the ground, but it is clear that the opposition suffered a serious reverse at Qusair and government forces and their allies are advancing on Aleppo.

But are these set-backs due to lack of weaponry or poor training and coordination?

The opposition forces have been getting significant quantities of weaponry already, brokered by their backers in the Gulf and elsewhere. What difference will US arms supplies make ?

If US arms supplies do not alter the balance - it may be that the intervention of well-trained and motivated Hezbollah troops on the government side has been the real deciding factor in recent combat - what then?

Will more sophisticated arms be supplied?

Will this require active US training?

And is this the start of a slippery slope towards more direct intervention?

Western spokesmen have spoken confidently about ensuring that any supplied weapons go to moderates and do not end up in the hands of Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda. But what is the value of such assurances?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22903168

Syria has dismissed as "a caravan of lies" claims that it used chemical weapons, after the US said it would give the rebels "direct military aid".

President Barack Obama's decision came after the White House said it had clear evidence of government forces carrying out small-scale chemical attacks.

Rebel commander Gen Salim Idris told the BBC it was a "very important step".

But Syria's foreign ministry said the US had used "fabricated information" on chemical weapons to justify the move.

Washington was resorting to "cheap tactics" to justify Mr Obama's decision to arm the rebels, a statement from the ministry added. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22908836

"The White House has issued a statement full of lies about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, based on fabricated information," a statement issued on Friday by the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

"The United States is using cheap tactics to justify President Barack Obama's decision to arm the Syrian opposition," it said.

The statement also accused the US of "double standards", by combatting terrorism while providing support for "terrorist" groups in Syria, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, with arms and money. The group, also known as the Nusra Front, is an al-Qaeda affiliate that has emerged as one of the most effective rebel factions in Syria.

Russia, a staunch ally of the Syrian government, also disputed the US charge on Friday.

President Vladimir Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters that the information provided by US officials to Russia "didn't look convincing".

Asked if Russia could retaliate to the US move to supply weapons to the Syrian rebels by delivering the S-300 air defence missile systems to the regime, Ushakov said "there is no talk about it yet".

"We aren't competing over Syria, we are trying to settle the issue in a constructive way," he said.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that "the validity of any information on the allege use of chemical weapons cannot be ensured without convincing evidence of the chain-of-custody", and said increasing the flow of arms to either side "would not be helpful".

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/06/2013614152849859283.html

West considers action as America says it will arm Syrian rebels after nerve-gas attacks

Britain and US spell out catalogue of chemical weapons atrocities as the threat to supply arms to Assad’s enemies risks rift with Russians

Nigel Morris, David Usborne

Western nations took a big step today towards supplying arms to Syrian opposition groups after the United States warned Bashar al-Assad’s regime it had crossed a “red line” by mounting deadly nerve-gas attacks against rebel fighters.

Britain and the US spelt out details of chemical weapons atrocities blamed on Syrian government troops and signalled the time had come to bolster support for moderate groups resisting Assad’s forces.

The deepening sense of crisis over the two-year civil war will eclipse the G8 summit of world leaders taking place next week in Northern Ireland.

It has been heightened by the Syrian army’s recent successes in reversing the gains of rebel fighters and signs that Assad’s soldiers are preparing a major offensive against the opposition-held city of Aleppo.

There were signs of a concerted US-European effort to persuade the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, to abandon his support for the Assad regime. One UK source said: “Pressure is building – and not just on Assad.”

The Kremlin dismissed US claims of evidence that the Assad regime had used nerve gas, resulting in the death of up to 150 people. “I will say frankly that what was presented to us by the Americans does not look convincing,” said Mr Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov.

Mr Putin will hold talks in Downing Street tomorrow ahead of the G8 meeting beginning on Monday. The carnage in Syria, which has already cost up to 100,000 lives, looks certain to eclipse the summit’s formal agenda.

The announcement by the White House that it has clear evidence the Assad regime had used chemical weapons raised diplomatic tensions.

The US government received strong backing from David Cameron, who disclosed that Britain had confirmed the “abhorrent” nerve agent sarin had been used against rebel fighters on two occasions – at Utaybah on 19 March and at Sheikh Maqsood on 13 April.

The US ambassador the UN, Susan Rice, also delivered a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, detailing the use of chemical weapons. The letter stated that sarin gas was used by government forces twice in March in and close to the city of Aleppo, a rebel stronghold.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/west-considers-action-as-america-says-it-will-arm-syrian-rebels-after-nervegas-attacks-8659778.html#

Ah, we can't stop fiddling with what is a civil war, the result of which we have decided should be: An extremist Islamisation of Syria... And we know that giving more weapons is only going to inflame the conflict further, while we hope to convince Russia of its wrong ways... Are we nuts?

President Bashar al-Assad's government and its opponents have accused each other of using chemical weapons.

The UN team of more than 20 investigators conducted 430 interviews from January 15 to May 15 among refugees in neighbouring countries and by Skype with people still in Syria.

Vitit Muntarbhorn, one of its members, said the team had cross-checked testimony about chemical weapons and viewed videos including on YouTube.

But the team said the findings remained inconclusive and that it was vital a stalled separate team of experts named by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon be given full access to Syria to collect samples from victims and sites of alleged attacks.

UN Human Rights Team Believes Chemical Weapons Used By Both Sides In Syria

meanwhile ….

President Vladimir Putin's top foreign policy adviser said US officials had recently presented Russia with new information about president Bashar al-Assad's alleged chemical weapons use.

"What was presented by the Americans does not look convincing to us," Yury Ushakov told reporters.

"The information that has been presented, the facts that have been presented do not look convincing to us," he stressed.

Mr Ushakov says the chances of holding a Syrian peace conference that Russia and the United States proposed jointly on May 7 would be hurt by US president Barack Obama's decision to provide military support to the armed wing of the opposition Syrian Military Council (SMC).

"Of course, if the Americans truly decide and in reality provide more large-scale assistance to rebels, assistance to the opposition, it won't make the preparation of the international conference easier," Mr Ushakov said.

The head of the Russian lower house of parliament's foreign affairs committee went even further than Mr Ushakov, bluntly accusing Washington of making up claims that Assad had used chemical weapons.

"Information about Assad's use of chemical weapons has been fabricated in the same place as the lies about [Saddam] Hussein's weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, Alexei Pushkov said on Twitter.

"Why would Assad use sarin 'in small amounts' against the fighters? What is the sense?! In order to prompt outside intervention? It makes no sense," he wrote.

Russia 'Unconvinced' By Evidence Of Syrian Chemical Weapons Use

Britain should arm the Syrian rebels and consider imposing a no-fly zone over Syria to prevent "catastrophic consequences", Tony Blair has said.

The former prime minister said the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government and the involvement of Iran in the civil war meant intervention was necessary.

"You've got the intervention of Hezbollah, at the instigation of Iran. The other big change is the use of chemical weapons. Once you allow that to happen – and this will be the first time since Saddam used them in the 1980s – you run the risk of it then becoming an acceptable form of warfare, for both sides," he told the Times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/tony-blair-west-intervene-syria

-------------------------------

At least, these days Bush has the decency to paint dogs and keep his trap shut....

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny.

“It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”

Foremost among those missing items, Zanders said, are cellphone photos and videos of the attacks or the immediate aftermath.

“In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was taped by someone, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t see videos, that we don’t see photos, showing bodies of the dead, and the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the affected,” he said.

Other experts said that while they were willing to give the U.S. intelligence community the benefit of the doubt, the Obama administration has yet to offer details of what evidence it has and how it obtained it.

White House foreign policy adviser Benjamin Rhodes gave dates and places for the alleged attacks – March 19 in the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal; April 13 in the Aleppo neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud; May 14 in Qasr Abu Samrah in Homs province, and May 23 in Adra, east of Damascus. But he provided no details of the fighting that was taking place or the number of dead in each incident. He said the United States estimated that 100 to 150 had died in all.

“Ultimately, without more information, we are left with the need to trust the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community in arriving at its ‘high confidence’ judgment,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said in an email. While he said that “my guess is they have it right,” he also noted that the White House statement was “carefully and prudentially worded” and acknowledged the lack of a “continuous chain of custody for the physiological samples from those exposed to sarin.”

“It does not eliminate all doubt in my mind,” he said.

Philip Coyle, a senior scientist at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, said that without hard, public evidence, it’s difficult for experts to assess the validity of the administration’s statement. He added that from what is known, what happened doesn’t look like a series of sarin attacks to him.

“Without blood samples, it’s hard to know,” he said. “But I admit I hope there isn’t a blood sample, because I’m still hopeful that sarin has not been used.”

Even a proponent of the United States providing military assistance to the rebels raised doubts about the possible motive for announcing the chemical weapons conclusion.

In a passionate argument for U.S. involvement in Syria, Anthony Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote Friday that “the ‘discovery’ that Syria used chemical weapons might be a political ploy.” The phrase was in an article that described strong strategic and humanitarian reasons for involvement in the crisis, particularly the recent involvement of the Lebanese group Hezbollah on the side of Assad.

Chemical weapons have been a focus of discussion in Syria ever since the day in August 2012 when President Barack Obama announced that the use of such weapons was a “red line” that would trigger possible U.S. military involvement. Since then, rebels have reported the likely use of chemical agents on dozens of occasions with varying degrees of credibility.

Only one detailed independent report of a chemical attack has surfaced in that time, however – a lengthy report in the French newspaper Le Monde last month that triggered both French and British letters to the United Nations.

Zanders, however, said that much about that report bears questioning. Photos and a video accompanying the report showed rebel fighters preparing for chemical attacks by wearing gas masks. Sarin is absorbed through the skin, and even small amounts can kill within minutes.

He also expressed skepticism about the article’s description of the lengthy route victims of chemical attacks had to travel to get to treatment, winding through holes in buildings, down streets under heavy fire, before arriving at remote buildings hiding hospitals.

Zanders, who also has headed the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and was director of the Geneva-based BioWeapons Prevention Project, noted that had sarin been the chemical agent in use, the victims would have been dead long before they reached doctors for treatment.

Zanders also said he’s skeptical of sarin use because there have been no reports of medical personnel or rescuers dying from contact with victims. Residue from sarin gas would be expected to linger on victims and would infect those helping, who often are shown in rebel video wearing no more protection than paper masks.

Le Monde reported that one doctor treated a victim with atropine, which is appropriate for sarin poisoning. But that doctor said he gave his patient 15 shots of atropine in quick succession, which Zanders said could have killed him almost as surely as sarin.

© 2012 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Truthout has licensed this content. It may not be reproduced by any other source and is not covered by our Creative Commons license.

Chemical Weapons Experts Still Skeptical About US Claims That Syria Used Sarin

Obama now said to be 'very, very hesitant' about arming rebels, while Boris Johnson calls it madness

David Cameron is looking increasingly isolated in his desire to arm the rebels in Syria after the plan was attacked today by leading Conservative Boris Johnson as "mad" and the BBC reported that President Barack Obama had gone cold on the idea.

As President Obama flew into Ulster for the G8 summit, where Syria is high on the agenda, Mark Mardell, the BBC Washington correspondent travelling with the White House press corps, said that since announcing last week that Syria had crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons and that the US was now prepared to arm the rebels, Obama has made speeches about the importance of fathers, basketball coaches, and gay and lesbian rights, but he hasn't mentioned Syria once.

Obama, said Mardell on Radio 4's Today programme, now "feels very, very hesitant about this [Syria] and isn't quite sure what to do."

And in a remarkably critical note for a BBC man, Mardell, a former Westminster lobby correspondent, added: "Whereas David Cameron is a real liberal interventionist - he wants the West to go in - he is restrained by his backbenchers. Obama is restrained by his principles."

Ouch! Mardell might find himself in hot water with Downing Street if he's suggesting Cameron lacks principles.

Obama has cold feet about the idea of the US becoming involved in the tribal war between Sunnis and Shias in Syria. Mardell reckons Obama is also cool on calls by right-wingers such as Senator John McCain for a no-fly zone which could risk Nato warplanes.

Boris Johnson also tried to bash some sense into Dave this morning by using his column in the Daily Telegraph to back a majority of Tory MPs who are warning Cameron they will not support any move to arm the rebels.

Boris said it would be "madness" to arm fanatics, including al-Qaeda terrorists, fighting in Syria. He gave as an example of their fanaticism the killing of a 15-year-old boy in Aleppo in front of his parents because he made a joke and mentioned the Prophet Mohammed.

"This is not the moment to send more arms," said the Mayor of London. "This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness. It is time for the US, Russia, the EU, Turkey, Iran, Saudi and all the players to convene an inter-governmental conference to try to halt the carnage. We can't use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won't get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs."

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, sounded less than convincing when asked to explain Cameron's policy on the Today programme.

"We haven't taken any decisions about this," said Hague when Boris Johnson's remarks were quoted to him by presenter John Humphrys. "This is the worst human tragedy of our times... We should not rule out any option. There are no palatable options. I want to be clear to the country about that."

Hague said Cameron's threat to arm the rebels was intended to force the Syrian leader Bashar Assad to accept a political solution.

But military chiefs fear that Cameron is set on emulating Tony Blair by supporting "liberal interventionism" - the doctrine espoused by Blair in his Chicago speech before the Iraq war. And on that, Cameron is definitely on his own.

Arming Syrian Rebels - Cameron Isolated As Obama 'Gets Cold Feet'

UNITED NATIONS — Despite months of laboratory testing and scrutiny by top U.S. scientists, the Obama administration’s case for arming Syria’s rebels rests on unverifiable claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people, according to diplomats and experts.

The United States, Britain and France have supplied the United Nations with a trove of evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that U.S. officials say proves that Syrian troops used the nerve agent sarin on the battlefield. But the nature of the physical evidence — as well as the secrecy over how it was collected and analyzed — has opened the administration to criticism by independent experts, who say there is no reliable way to assess its authenticity.

The technical data presented by the three Western powers is of limited value to U.N. inspectors trying to determine whether Syria’s combatants used chemical weapons during the country’s 25-month-old conflict. Under the United Nations’ terms of reference, only evidence personally collected by its inspectors can be used to fashion a final judgment.

But no inspectors have been allowed inside Syria, so Western governments have relied on physical evidence smuggled out of the country by rebels or intelligence operatives. Precisely who acquired the evidence and what methods were used to guard against tampering may be unknowable, according to experts experienced at investigating chemical weapons claims.

“You can try your best to control the analysis, but analysis at a distance is always uncertain,” said David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector who led the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. “You’d be an idiot if you didn’t approach this thing with a bit of caution.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-syrian-chemical-weapons-claim-criticism-about-lack-of-transparency/2013/06/20/fa799e6e-d925-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_print.html

The Federal Government has raised concerns that Australians may be caught up with a group fighting the Assad regime in Syria that has been listed as a terrorist organisation.

Jabhat al-Nusra is the first group in four years to be listed in Australia as a terrorist organisation.

The Government describes Jabhat al-Nusra as an extremist group with direct links to Al Qaeda in Iraq and has been responsible for indiscriminate bombings in Syria.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says it is not part of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.

For operational reasons the Australian Government will not say how many Australians are believed to be fighting for groups in Syria but they face prosecution when they return home.

A Syrian Catholic priest has been publicly executed by rebels at a monastery in the northern Syria, the Vatican says.

Father Francois Murad, 49, was beheaded on 23 June when militants attacked the convent where he was staying.

The Vatican news agency said the circumstances of the killing were not fully clear.

But local sources said the attackers were linked to the jihadist group known as al-Nusra Front.

Unconfirmed video footage claiming to show the priest's death, together with that of two other unidentified people, has been posted on Catholic websites.

Father Murad had moved to the convent in the area of Gassanieh for safety reasons, the Vatican said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23138679

Russia says it has obtained scientific evidence that indicates Syrian rebels used chemical weapons in a deadly attack in March.

Moscow's United Nations envoy Vitaly Churkin says Russian experts were let into Syria to examine the site of the attack near Aleppo.

He says the inquiry has established that the rebels fired a missile containing the nerve agent sarin at the town of Khan al-Assal.

The attack killed 26 people including 16 regime troops.

"The results of the analysis clearly indicate that the ordnance used in Khan al-Assal was not industrially manufactured and was filled with sarin," Mr Churkin said.

"The projectile involved is not a standard one for chemical use.

"Hexogen, utilised as an opening charge, is not utilised in standard ammunitions. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that it was armed opposition fighters who used the chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-10/russia-says-it-has-evidence-syrian-rebels-used-sarin-gas/4810508

It is likely that the US government knew this but kept it hushed up...

-------------------

The United States has rejected Russian claims raised at the United Nations that Syrian opposition fighters had used chemical weapons.

"We have yet to see any evidence that backs up the assertion that anybody besides the Syrian government has the ability to use chemical weapons, [or] has used chemical weapons," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/20137920448105510.html

------------------------------

2013: The United Nations has investigated reports that both sides in the Syrian civil war have used sarin,[27][28][29] use of the gas has been confirmed by French officials. [30][31] UN findings indicate that the FSA rebels possess and have used sarin gas. [32] [33] [34] [35]. Contrary to UN findings the White House claims the use of sarin gas by the Syrian Government.[36]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

Arms Shipments Seen From Sudan to Syria Rebels

Syrian rebels, frustrated by the West’s reluctance to provide arms, have found a supplier in an unlikely source: Sudan, a country that has been under international arms embargoes and maintains close ties with a stalwart backer of the Syrian government, Iran.

In deals that have not been publicly acknowledged, Western officials and Syrian rebels say, Sudan’s government sold Sudanese- and Chinese-made arms to Qatar, which arranged delivery through Turkey to the rebels.

The shipments included antiaircraft missiles and newly manufactured small-arms cartridges, which were seen on the battlefield in Syria — all of which have helped the rebels combat the Syrian government’s better-armed forces and loyalist militias.

Emerging evidence that Sudan has fed the secretive arms pipeline to rebels adds to a growing body of knowledge about where the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is getting its military equipment, often paid for by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or other sympathetic donors.

While it is unclear how pivotal the weapons have been in the nearly three-year-old civil war, they have helped sustain the opposition against government forces emboldened by aid from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

Sudan’s involvement adds yet another complication to a civil war that has long defied a diplomatic resolution. The battle has evolved into a proxy fight for regional influence between global powers, regional players and religious sects. In Sudan’s case, it has a connection with the majority Sunni rebels, and a potentially lucrative financial stake in prosecuting the war.

But Sudan’s decision to provide arms to the rebels — bucking its own international supporters and helping to cement its reputation for fueling conflict — reflects a politically risky balancing act. Sudan maintains close economic and diplomatic ties to Iran and China.

Both nations have provided military and technical assistance to Sudan’s state-run arms industry and might see sales of its weapons by Sudan to help rebels in Syria as an unwanted outcome of their collaboration with Khartoum, or even as a betrayal.

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/world/africa/arms-shipments-seen-from-sudan-to-syria-rebels.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print       

See toon and articles from top...

BEIRUT — A rebranded version of Iraq’s al-Qaeda affiliate is surging onto the front lines of the war in neighboring Syria, expanding into territory seized by other rebel groups and carving out the kind of sanctuaries that the U.S. military spent more than a decade fighting to prevent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the four months since the Iraqi al-Qaeda group changed its name to reflect its growing ambitions, it has forcefully asserted its presence in some of the towns and villages captured from Syrian government forces. It has been bolstered by an influx of thousands of foreign fighters from the region and beyond.

The group, now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is by no means the largest of the loosely aligned rebel organizations battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and it is concentrated mostly in the northern and eastern provinces of the country. But with its radical ideology and tactics such as kidnappings and beheadings, the group has stamped its identity on the communities in which it is present, including, crucially, areas surrounding the main border crossings with Turkey.

Civilian activists, rival rebel commanders and Westerners, including more than a dozen journalists and relief workers, have been assassinated or abducted in recent months in areas where the Islamic State has a presence.

Most of the cases are being kept quiet for fear of jeopardizing the victims’ release, but the escalating pace of disappearances is turning already-dangerous parts of rebel-held territory into effective no-go areas for many Syrians as well as foreigners, deterring aid efforts and media coverage and potentially complicating future attempts to supply more-moderate factions of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

A rapid ascent

With multiple groups competing for influence, the Islamic State cannot be held responsible for all the incidents that have occurred in Syria. Jabhat al-Nusra, the original Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, which has resisted efforts by the Islamic State to absorb it, maintains a robust presence in many parts of the country. Criminal gangs also have taken advantage of the vacuum of authority to carry out kidnappings for ransom, mostly of Syrians.

But at a time when the Islamic State is undergoing a revival in Iraq, killing more people there than at any time since 2008 and staging a spectacular jailbreak last month that freed hundreds of militants, the push into Syria signifies the transformation of the group into a regional entity. The U.S. military — which referred to the organization as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) — claimed it had subdued AQI by the time the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011.

Evidently it did not, said Bruce Hoffman, director of security studies at Georgetown University, who thinks Syria is even more strategically significant for the group than Iraq. Syria’s location — the country shares borders with Turkey, Israel, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon — gives al-Qaeda a foothold in the heart of the Middle East, Hoffman said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/al-qaeda-expands-in-syria-via-islamic-state/2013/08/12/3ef71a26-036a-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_print.html

Important note: Al Qaeda was non-existent in Iraq before the invasion by the axis-of-dummies, led by Bush with Howard and Blair as his sidekicks...