Calculus Awry

"Their mouths were foaming, their pupils were constricted, and those who were brought in while still alive could not draw their breaths and died subsequently. The skin around their eyes and noses was greyish."
Abu Ahmed, (pseudonym) opposition activist

"All what has been said is ridiculous and naive, unscientific, illogical and subjective."
Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi

Illogical and subjective. Certainly subjective; how else could it be? Illogical it also appears, since a 20-person UN committee of chemical experts had arrived in Syria only days earlier. To examine one particular site, and one only; the single site that the regime appears to feel certain it can convince the UN examiners was the damning work of the rebel opposition.

Other sites which are less likely to be identified as having been the work of the opposition are off limits. What likelihood is there that the UN observer/experts will be invited to look at the site of the latest attacks?

The Syrian National Coalition has placed the number of people killed or injured in the early-morning shelling of a Damascus suburb at 1,300. From information coming out from a variety of sources it seems that number will be validated, and it may even grow. Posted photographs claiming to show rows of Syrian children wrapped in death shrouds have been seen by countless sources. Little signs of blood or physical wounds.

This citizen journalism image provided by the Local Committee of Arbeen which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a Syrian man reacts as he carries a dead body of a Syrian girl, after an alleged poisonous gas attack fired by regime forces, according to activists in Arbeen town, Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013. Syrian anti-government activists accused the regime of carrying out a toxic gas attack that killed at least 100 people, including many children as they slept, during intense artillery and rocket barrages Wednesday on the eastern suburbs of Damascus, part of a fierce government offensive in the area. (AP Photo/Local Committee of Arbeen)

"Is this baby girl a terrorist? God willing, we will bring his regime down. He (Assad) is killing Sunni children in front of the whole world", cursed a man, heard on a video tape. Of course he's quite correct, the world is looking on, horrified, fascinated, disbelieving. Blown out of all proportion, and quite untrue, simply hysterical nonsense, as far as Russia is concerned. And Iran is watching and waiting, to see what the reaction of the international community may be.

That famous 'red line' has been breached, botched, mangled, torn and frayed beyond further use. When it was initially torn, William Hague, British foreign secretary said "I believe that the Assad regime, given the pattern of events, has at some stage over the last six months or a year given authority for the use of chemical weapons in a small-scale, localized way." Excusable, pardonable, explicable, because of small-scale use; a mere handful of deaths.

And President Barack Obama had made it abundantly clear; should Bashar al-Assad dare to defy the American red line, reaction would be firm, instant and punishing. The whole "calculus" would change. Something's wrong with the calculus; the military regime has resumed 'acceptable' types of bombing in the very same area where the chemical attacks took place.