Rush: Could Al Qaeda Be Framing Assad?

Rush Limbaugh speculated that perhaps the Syrian rebels affiliated with Al Qaeda used chemical weapons to frame Bashar Al-Assad and to draw the US into the effort to topple the Assad Regime. 

On his Tuesday morning program, Rush asked the provocative question: “What if Bashar didn’t do it? What if Bashar is being framed?”

The rebels nerve gassing their own people to create exactly what is happening- us mobilizing to get rid of Bashar.  They use chemical weapons on their people- it gets blamed on Bashar. We go in and take Bashar out, or do something- and end up on the same side as the rebels, in this case, al-Qaeda.

The speculation over who actually used chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus is not confined to talk show hosts: 

The Christian Science Monitor is questioning the death toll and dissects major differences between what the American government is saying versus what the French government claims to be evidence of the Syrian government’s involvement in the chemical attack

The US “knows” that the Syrian government used a chemical weapon near Damascus on Aug. 21. France “knows” that happened too. The problem is that what France knows is different than what the US knows, and both can’t be right.

MSNBC had a panel featuring American University Professor and former Bush Administration Middle East analyst Hillary Mann Leverett. Leverett challenged the entire panel by suggesting that the Obama Administration had not come close to making a case for war and mocked Secretary of State John Kerry’s evidence of the Assad Regime’s culpability in the attack. “Compared to Colin Powell’s, it’s a joke.”  Last week, Leverett wrote in the Huffington Post: 

Now that such weapons have been used, Obama cannot entertain that oppositionists may be responsible, for this would undercut his Syria strategy. His administration has presented no evidence that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons in Ghouta; when it alleged chemical weapons use at Khan al-Assal in March, it also offered no evidence of government responsibility. By contrast, Russia publicly presented a detailed forensic analysis showing that neither the munitions used at Khan al-Assal nor the chemical agent in them had been industrially manufactured and that, “therefore, there is every reason to believe that it was the armed opposition fighters who used the chemical weapons.” Washington rejected this — and, after trying to derail a UN investigation of more recent allegations about Ghouta, has preemptively dismissed whatever UN inspectors there now may conclude.

 Listen to Rush here: