[WS:] How do you know they are reliable? I have seen a similar situation with Eastern European emigres - if you listen to them you would get a picture of unspeakable horror on a scale never seen before. Most of these stories were fantastic and testing people's credibility, yet many Americans bought them wholesale. This is not to say that the regime was not authoritarian and it did not commit human rights violations, but the reality on the groud was nothing like the stories told by the opponents.
This was before social media - these horror stories were spread by the word of mouth and interviews with the local media willing to put on the air. I can imagine that something similar, but on much larger scale must be going on the social media. Hence my question - how do you know they are reliable?
I am not trying to defend the Syrian regime in any way or, for that matter, bash Obama's administration that in my view is acting very responsibly under severe pressure - I just do not trust any stories coming out of that civil war. And the stories about WMDs just do not add up. It does not seem plausible that local militias have access to WMDs - it looks more likely a false flag operation - someone staging these attacks to force Western countries to intervene on the side of the rebels. From what I heard, some al qaeda units fighting against regime have no problems executing other opponents of the regime, so it is not that far-fetched that they use them as victims in false flag operations involving chemical agents.
Such false flag operations have been rather common in the history of warfare, see for example Operation Himmler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."