In an interview with Fox News, Syrian President Bashar Assad denied using chemical weapons. The leader of the Syrian military—who is currently engaged in a years-long civil war with anti-government rebels—even suggested that recent videos that surfaced online showing the aftermath of a chemical attack, could be fake. He told Fox News that “there is a lot of forgery on the Internet” and said that if the videos were authentic, than they depict a “despicable … crime” carried out by rebels, not his forces. “We have evidence that terrorist groups (have) used sarin gas … The sarin gas (is) called kitchen gas. You know why? Because anyone can make sarin in his house.”
U.S. officials say that they have clear evidence indicating that Assad’s forces were behind the “largest chemical weapons attack in 25 years” that killed more than hundreds—including many children—near the town of Damascus. Though Assad acknowledged that his government maintained a stockpile of chemical weapons, he said that his military will cooperate with a recent Russian agreement to hand them over to be destroyed. Obama administration officials said that U.S. military intervention is still possible if the Assad regime does not comply with an agreement currently being drafted by the U.N. …
