“If you click on the link for Hot Air below, it will take you to the video.”

Well, it just became well nigh impossible to root for anybody in the Syrian civil war. J. E. Dyer sums it up at Hot Air:

According to a video reportedly posted by the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian rebels have their own chemical weapons to match Bashar Al-Assad’s – and you get to watch two rabbits die to prove it.

This link is to the video posted at YouTube.  But Breitbart has helpfully loaded the video to its post on the topic today, so you don’t have to sign in at YouTube to watch it.  Warning: graphic content.

After apparently setting off the chemical agent in a glass box containing the hapless rabbits, the speaker in the video issues this warning (translation cited at Breitbart):

You saw what happened?  This will be your fate, you infidel Alawites, I swear by ALLAH to make you die like these rabbits, one minute only after you inhale the gas.

Breitbart.com speculates that the chemical used on the rabbits is a nerve gas, due to its observable effects.  That’s a good guess.  The close-ups early in the video, of potassium chlorate and sodium nitrite containers, show explosive agents that could be used to disperse the toxic chemical.  This latter is actually interesting, as it seems to suggest that the rebels or their terrorist compadres have the capability to build their own chemical weapons.

They may not have to do that, however.  In the back-and-forth battles across Syria over the last year, it’s not impossible that the rebels have gotten hold of weapons from Assad’s own stash. They could also have weapons from Saddam’s Iraq that didn’t go to Syria before the 2003 invasion, but were taken by terrorists afterward, on an opportune basis.  (In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, there were numerous reports of chemical agents and weapons turning up fields and barns around central Iraq.  The likelihood of these items getting directly into terrorist hands is high.)

Hey, wasn’t using chemical weapons the “red line” of U.S. policy? Didn’t Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta say the other day that if the dictator Assad used the chemical weapons, “there will be consequences”? (Quite the generically worded threat.) So what do we do if the rebels use the weapons?

Maybe we can tell them to knock it off on Skype. The Sunday Times, over in the U.K. reported:

THE United States is launching a covert operation to send weapons to Syrian rebels for the first time as it ramps up military efforts to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles will be sent through friendly Middle Eastern countries already supplying the rebels, according to well-placed diplomatic sources.

The Americans have bought some of the weapons from the stockpiles of Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan dictator killed last year. They include SA-7 missiles, which can be used to shoot down aircraft.

The rebels are gaining ground after 20 months of civil war in which an estimated 40,000 Syrians have died. They have entered the suburbs of Damascus and have surrounded its airport. US State Department officials are in regular contact with rebel field commanders, talking to them on Skype for hours every day.

But hey, at least it’s contained to Syria . . . oh, wait:

Lebanese officials say sectarian gun battles linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria have killed another four people in the northern city of Tripoli.
Authorities said Sunday’s fighting involved Sunni supporters of Syria’s rebels in the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh and Alawite loyalists of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the adjacent district of Jabal Mohsen.
Gun battles between the rival neighborhoods have killed at least 13 people since early last week. The violence began after reports emerged that Syrian government troops ambushed and killed a group of Lebanese Sunnis from Tripoli who crossed into Syria to join the rebels last month.

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