I must have missed the part where Assad attacked us? Can we honestly expect whatever successor regime to do as well? And how can we be so sure of events 5000 mi from our home when this administration couldn't even count the number of people on its front lawn on inauguration day. We have to admit there is a chance shocking I know that our government is lying to us.

What? The American government lying to us? No! Our politicians don't lie except when their lips are moving.

I'm glad the posters here aren't buying it. The State Dept. state had the usual weasel words 'probably' and couldn't deny that it might just be a heating system. Snow melt proves it's a crematorium? Since we have fancy infrared satellites, how about showing pictures of it operating during summertime, that would be suspicious, not snowmelt.

Ah .. but crematorium conjures up images of the Holocaust which is etched into our psyche for the information war against the Assad govt.

Anti Assad proganda from US war mongers. We heard all this BS before. Nobody is buying it. I hope Assad stays in power and protects his country from the destruction seen in Iraq and Libya.

Assad is not a saint by any means, but the West has been consistently supporting the Syrian rebels against his regime, and the civil war has only worsened and intensified in the years since. We need to stay out of the Middle East.

"Assad is not a saint..."

No, he is not a saint but he is a far more decent person than most members of Congress or any of the previous four presidents. Assad is not a dictator. He has been elected at least twice, most recently in 2014. Last April (2015) elections were held to Syria's parliament and Assad's party won a comfortable majority.

Assad is an Alawite and an ophthalmologist but his highly educated British wife is a Sunni in a country where Sunnis are in the majority. Most Sunnis in Syria support their leaders as do Christians and Assad's fellow Alawite. Both husband and wife speak multiple foreign languages and could live comfortably in many countries. They committed themselves to reforming Syria and, if they were to go into exile as the US government wants, abandoning their people, tens of thousands more Syrians would be slaughtered but the US government would blame Assad.

The West opposes Assad not because he is bad but because he is good. It truly hurts 'our' foreign policy establishment for a backward country like Syria to have a president more intelligent and more decent than our own leaders. That's why they want to destroy him.

US has already did what it wanted - destroyed Iraq and Lybia and prompted the spawning of ISIS. Do we really need one more try?

Syrian war is like any other war, from atrocities against civilians to third parties involvement. Nothing new here.