Nihilistic Totalitarianism

"[The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) report's findings] corroborate allegations that the Assad regime is continuing to use chemical weapons on Syria, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention."
"That the Assad regime continues to commit such atrocities against the people of Syria is an outrage."
Philip Hammond, British foreign secretary

"In courtyards, domesticated birds and animals died, and leaves on plants facing the point of impact withered and wilted 'as autumn leaves'."
"In one case, a child standing close to the impact site died later because of exposure to the toxic chemical, while showing none of the obvious physical trauma as that usually inflicted by a conventional explosive device."
"All [witnesses] described the toxic chemical smell as being very strong, irritating, and of 'chlorine'."
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons report on fact-finding mission, Syria

People in Aleppo flee the scene after government aircraft staged a barrel-bomb attack Zein Al-Rifai, A

FP/Getty Images

While the Alawite Baathist regime in Damascus and the OPCW were deeply involved in the complexities of the mission to remove Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, which President Bashar al-Assad agreed upon through Russia's President Putin's intervention to persuade the Washington administration that diplomacy is far more useful than conflict, in deflecting U.S. President Obama from his warning of "red lines" not to be bridged, the regime used chlorine gas in attacks on Sunni Syrians.

Cleansing the stockpile of precursor chemicals and chemical weapons from the country, the poison gas, nerve agents and other deadly chemicals from the arsenal maintained by the regime and used on several occasions the international community -- shocked and concerned over the lethal madness that overtook the country -- was assured that their toxicity was removed from future use. But not, unfortunately, unlisted chlorine.

The report validated the findings of the first independent investigation to take place on the use of chemical weapons as a destructive element of waging war. Soil samples from villages in northern Syria were collected and tested after reports of those villages having been attacked with barrel bombs dropped from military helicopters, containing noxious substances.

A change from the usual barrel bombs packed with sharp metal objects that don't attack the central nervous system, merely mortally shredding human flesh.

This was affirmation that an investigation conducted by The Daily Telegraph indicating the "systematic" use of chemical weapons bombs was conducted against civilian populations in Syria; the Shia-led government attacking its own Syrian-Sunni population that had protested its unequal treatment to that of the Shia Alawite Syrians. The newspaper had engaged trained experts to collect soil samples.

Tested by a chemical weapons expert, the results confirmed strong traces of chlorine gas and ammonia. Although witnesses linked the chlorine attacks to helicopter-borne barrel bombs, the helicopters were too high in the atmosphere to enable the sighting of identifying aircraft markings. The Syrian rebels, however, don't have helicopter gunships, only the regime has. A tactic often attributed to forces of Syrian President al-Assad.