Chapter VII a Stretch for the West Despite Winning Propaganda War on Ghouta CW Attack

C.J. Chivers, a reporter who does good work, has another story today, "U.N. Data on Gas Attack Points to Assad’s Top Forces," fleshing out the azimuths evidence contained in the recently released United Nations report on the August 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. The angle of impact taken from rocket craters point to the Republican Guard 104th Brigade located atop Mount Qasioun. This revelation, mostly unanswered in the last 36 hours, is being countered this morning by the Syrian government. Agence France Presse reports that "Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday after the first of two days of talks in Damascus that the Syrian regime has handed Russia new materials implicating rebels in the attack that horrified the world." Ake Sellstrom's UN investigators are returning to Syria to continue inspections.

Regardless of the actual truth of who is behind the Ghouta chemical attack, the Syrian government has been losing the rhetorical war with the West since Monday. This has given renewed impetus in the Security Council to include Chapter VII sanctions in the draft resolution governing Syrian compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention. Here's Rick Gladstone's take in "Security Council Returns to Role in Syria Conflict":

[D]iplomats, who declined to be identified, said Russia, Syria’s most important ally, was resisting components of the draft, composed by the three Western permanent members — Britain, France and the United States — that discuss the threat of force to ensure Syrian compliance, whether to condemn the Syrian government for chemical weapons use and whether suspected users should be referred to the International Criminal Court for war crimes prosecutions. 

The discussions are unlikely to produce a quick resolution, the diplomats said, and it is unclear when a draft will be ready for a vote.

Even though Syria and their Russian ally are losing the public relations war on the Ghouta attack, they remain in a strong position vis-a-vis the West. Public opinion is overwhelming against military intervention even though a super-majority already believes the Syrian government to be responsible for the attack; that's what polls published earlier showed. The United States Government is facing the very real threat of a shutdown in the near future. In his negotiations with the House GOP there is no way Obama is going to risk losing public support by launching a unilateral strike. Russia will block any threat of force or official condemnation in the Security Council. It is likely that Sellstrom's inspection team will eventually document evidence of rebel chemical weapons use. The West will do everything it can to prevent this because once it happens any military support for the opposition will be exceedingly difficult to justify to a public bludgeoned about the horrors of using gas on the battlefield.