It is crazy to watch President Obama and President-Wannabe Kerry – two woefully naive politicians whose shameless anti-war at-all-costs rhetoric during the Bush administration is legend – try to rattle their sabers at Syria. Talk about your stumbling and bumbling!

It looks like there is a strong possibility the US is being played by Islamo Fascist elements of the Syrian Rebels to bring down Assad and open Syria to revolution. One bit of evidence to arise is the fact Syrian Rebels last year had over run a munitions depot that contained chemical weapons:

U.S. officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.

Last week, fighters from a group that the Obama administration has branded a terrorist organization were among rebels who seized the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted. Rebels are also closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions, according to U.S. officials and analysts.

***

A former Syrian general who once led the army’s chemical weapons training program said that the main storage sites for mustard gas and nerve agents are supposed to be guarded by thousands of Syrian troops but that they would be easily overrun.

The sites are not secure, retired Maj. Gen. Adnan Silou, who defected to the opposition in June, said in an interview near Turkey’s border with Syria. “Probably anyone from the Free Syrian Army or any Islamic extremist group could take them over,” he said.

Syria actually has one of the third world’s largest chemical weapons arsenals, which means they could have ‘lost’ some of the weapons at any time in recent years.

The size of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal is not known with any precision, though the French government has estimated it to be more than 1,000 tons.

The lack of certainty poses a problem, according to intelligence and arms control experts. “No one but the Syrians knows the inventory, and if the rebels overrun one of these depots, there are worries about the physical control of the weapons,” said one U.S. official, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity.

The experts say that Damascus’ program is distinguished by its size, diversity, quality and reliability. President Bashar Assad’s regime is believed to possess sarin, VX (a persistent form of sarin that could render a city uninhabitable “for some days,” according to the CIA), tabun (another older nerve agent) plus blistering agents like mustard, phosgene and hydrogen cyanide. In addition, it is believed to have large stores of “precursor chemicals” that it could use to create more of the toxic agents.

Of course, Assad would not report the theft of secret weapons of mass destruction to the world. And in this general assessment of Syrian capabilities, we learn this is not the first time Assad has been accused of chemical weapon use against his people:

The U.S. reported last week that Syria has used chemical weapons “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” The British government places the number of attacks at 14 since 2012. Chemical weapons also were used under Assad’s father, Hafez, more than 20 years ago in Hama during a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired rebellion. According to a November 1990 Senate Foreign Relations Committee memo, Syrian army units went to every house suspected of hiding insurgents and pumped in cyanide gas, killing as many as 20,000 occupants. Later, the government broadcast a report saying security forces had taken fierce reprisals against the Brotherhood and its sympathizers, “which stopped them from breathing.”

Which tells me we have been able to resist reprisals in the past, so why now?

Is it really a surprise that rebels who are anti-western Islamists (i.e., are enemies of the US and Syria) would concoct a plan whereby they martyr some fellow Muslims in order to invoke the US military to do their dirty work for them?

How brilliant is that? Dupe the the US into destroying Assad’s power base and then waltz in and take over Syria – which neighbors Turkey, Jordan and Israel along with access to the Mediterranean Sea. Why not? Looks brilliant.

It looks like Congress was about to jump into this mess without out clear and unambiguous evidence as well. Before we take any military action we need to be sure we are not being played by our enemies. Hopefully Congress will slow down and engage their brains before setting the Middle East on fire.

Update: Hot Air has some great quotes reflecting the frustration Americans feel  as their leaders run over the cliff of war:

Federal lawmakers who plan to vote in favor of a U.S. military strike against Syria “might as well start cleaning out” their office, U.S. Rep. Justin Amash said Thursday.

Amash, R-Cascade Township, tweeted that the “unprecedented level of public opposition” to military intervention in the country should beg for dissenting votes…

Duh….