The US has decided to reroute its nuclear-powered multimission aircraft carrier CVN-68 USS Nimitz and four destroyers of her strike group towards the Mediterranean Sea, “to help support a limited US strike on Syria, if needed", defense officials said on Sunday. ’The Nimitz carrier strike group, which includes four destroyers and a cruiser, has no specific orders to move to the eastern Mediterranean at this point, but is moving west in the Arabian Sea so it can do so if asked,’ he said. Saturday evening Barack Obama decided to wait for the Congress approval before launching a military strike on Syria. The Congress is set to decide on the military operation on September 9th.

Jason Ditz: Kerry: Obama Can Attack Syria Regardless of Congress Vote ● Though many in both houses of Congress say they anticipate a lot of opposition to the Syrian War, Obama Administration officials, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, say they don’t anticipate a “no” vote under any circumstances. But what happens if Congress says no? Kerry insisted that President Obama has a “right” to attack Syria no matter how Congress votes, and said the administration was willing to go forward with its war “no matter what Congress does.”

Brandon Turbeville: Western Special Forces Working With Death Squads in Syria
Yulia Zamanskaya: Obama’s intervention in Syria might make him a criminal terrorist supporter
Tyler Durden: US Training "Rebels" Since 2011 And The Complete Grand Plan - The March 2012 Leak

Gilad Atzmon ■ If you want to know why PM Cameron was keen to launch an immediate attack on Syria while the UN mission was still collecting evidence on the ground, but then was very quick to scrap the idea all together, dailyrecord.co.uk provides the answer. Britain and Cameron’s government may as well be complicit in the unfolding tragedy. It would seem that British firms sold Syrian companies the chemical components needed for the production of chemical weapons, long after the beginning of the civil war.

IntelliHub: Syrian Rebels Were Caught Sneaking Sarin Gas Across the Border in May ■ The evidence continues to mount proving that the Syrian rebels are in fact the ones who are using chemical weapons. At this point there are various pieces of evidence indicating that the Syrian rebels are responsible for the chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and not one piece of evidence linking the regime of Assad to the attacks. While it is true that both sides of this conflict are brutal murderers, to accuse the regime in power of these crimes could be used to justify a full scale invasion of the country, making the predicament that much worse for the people who live there.

Insurgents in Syria take responsibility for chemical weapons attack

● As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.
● Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.
● U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.” However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
● In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Gilad Atzmon: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack ● I do not possess the means to verify how credible the following report is. It suggests that it was actually Syrian forces’ conventional artillery and missiles that hit rebel’s WMD storage. If the report is genuine, it would be consistent with the American intelligence account: Assad's forces indeed fired rockets and artillery at the time of the alleged chimical attack, yet the rockets were of a conventional nature. The meaning of it is simple, the rebels posses WMD supplied by foreign agents and the conflict is about to escalate into a genocidal warfare, an unfolding tragedy. What we need is divine intervention as opposed to Zionist immoral interventionist pathology.

Patrick Martin: Report links US-backed Syrian opposition to Ghouta gas attack
Al-Manar TV: Syrian Army Kills 40 al-Nusra Front Members in Damascus Ambush

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support to the Russian Parliament's initiative to send a parliamentary delegation to discuss the crisis in Syria with the U.S. Congress. "There is no better way than direct dialogue and presenting attitudes publicly," Russian Itar Tass news agency quoted Putin as saying on Monday. Chairman of the Russian Duma Council, Sergei Naryshkin, and President of the Russian Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko, asked President Putin to use parliamentary ties between Russia and the US to encourage dialogue with Washington on Syria.

Debunking the "U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013" - Eric Draitser

Peter Symonds ● In the wake of the British parliament’s vote against military action in Syria, the Australian Labor government is one of the few that has openly declared its support for US military strikes on the basis of lies about the Syrian regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons. ● The Labor government’s decision to back US attacks on Syria has been taken completely anti-democratically, in the face of widespread opposition to another US war of aggression like the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. Despite the support of the entire Australian political establishment for US attacks on Syria, antiwar protests took place in Australian cities on Saturday. ● Over the past six years, the Labor government has fully backed the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan, as well as the US-led regime-change interventions in Libya and Syria. Rudd was ousted as prime minister in June 2010 by a handful of Labor and union powerbrokers closely connected to the American embassy.

The Syrian government calls on the UN Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria, Syria's permanent representative to the UN Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari, said. ● The Syrian permanent representative stressed that the Syrian government categorically dismissed any use the chemical weapon." Syrian government is the first side who asked the UN Secretary General to form an objective investigation team to investigate into the use of chemical weapon in Khan al-Assal in Aleppo."

Voice of Russia: Syria has asked UN to 'prevent any aggression'

Nobel laureate and poet Seamus Heaney's last words to his wife were "don't be afraid", one of his son's has revealed at his funeral. Family and friends joined contemporaries and dignitaries of the world renowed writer and hundreds of mourners at a church in south Dublin to pay last respects to one of Ireland's literary greats. The internationally acclaimed 74-year-old writer died unexpectedly in hospital on Friday after a short illness. Mourners at his funeral at the Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook - near where the Northern Ireland-born poet made his home - were led by his widow Marie and children Michael, Christopher and Catherine Ann. Michael spoke briefly at the end of the service to thank those who cared for his father and those who have offered support and praise since his death. "His last few words in a text message he wrote to my mother minutes before he passed away were in his beloved Latin and they read - 'nolle timere' ('don't be afraid')," he said.

Seamus Heaney on AWIP