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US makes case for Syria strike

Releases chemical data, holds regime responsible, vows 'tailored' response despite major setbacks

AFP, Washington
The United States yesterday released intelligence to show why it is certain that Syrian forces have killed civilians with chemical weapons and said Washington has a historic duty to act.
As a time window for expected US air strikes beckoned, the White House produced a declassified intelligence report which said 1,429 people including 426 children were killed in the August 21 outrage outside Damascus.
Secretary of State John Kerry meanwhile made an impassioned case for a "tailored" US response, despite the lack of
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a United Nations mandate, and without help from Washington's closest ally, Britain where lawmakers blocked action.
"This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons. This is what (President Bashar al-Assad did to his own people," Kerry said.
The White House report said the judgment on the attack was based on "multiple” streams of intelligence including witness reports, satellite data and signals intercepts.
"The United States government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013," the report said.
"We further assess that the regime used a nerve agent in the attack."
The unclassified assessment, which omitted sourcing and raw intelligence to protect US espionage assets, also debunked the theory, advanced notably by Russia, that opposition forces could be to blame.
The report said Washington had intercepted the communications of a senior Syrian official, who was intimately familiar with the operation, soon after rockets started raining down on
civilians.
Kerry said the US government had repeatedly assessed the intelligence in the report, to avoid the kind of fiasco that erupted over botched covert material used to justify the Iraq war.
"We will not repeat that moment," he said.
And he argued that the world could not ignore the use of some of its most pernicious weaponry on some of its most vulnerable people.
A window for US action was opening with the expected departure of UN inspectors from Syria today.
Obama is expected to leave on a trip to Sweden and Russia for the G20 summit on Tuesday, and military action would be unlikely to take place with him overseas.
Earlier, France gave its backing to the US plans after British lawmakers voted against any involvement in military action against Damascus and other close allies including Germany, Canada said they would not sign up.
The White House has signalled that Obama, guided by the "best interests" of the United States, was ready to go it alone on Syria.
But Russia, Syria's most
powerful ally, questioned US intelligence on the August 21 gas attacks and warned against any military strikes without UN backing.
Meanwhile, Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem reportedly told the UN chief that Damascus would reject any “partial" conclusions about the attack before full analyses are undertaken.
The military buildup was continuing in the region, with US warships armed with scores of cruise missiles converging on the eastern Mediterranean.
In Damascus the mood was heavy with fear and security forces were making preparations for possible air bombardments, pulling soldiers back from potential targets.
And an opinion poll released yesterday showed half of all Americans believe Obama should not intervene, and Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said military strikes risked escalating the conflict into a "global conflagration”.
More than 100,000 people have died since the conflict erupted in March 2011 and two million are refugees, half of them children, according to the United Nations.