Al Qaeda's affiliate inside Syria is now the best-equipped arm of the terror group in existence today, according to informal assessments by U.S. and Middle East intelligence agencies, a private sector analyst directly familiar with the information told CNN.

Concern about the Syrian al Qaeda-affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the al-Nusra Front, is at an all-time high, according to the analyst, with as many as 10,000 fighters and supporters inside Syria. The United States has designated al-Nusra Front as a terrorist group with links to al Qaeda in Iraq.
[...snip...]
"They are making desperate attempts to get chemical weapons," the analyst told CNN, noting that in the past few weeks, security services in Iraq and Turkey arrested operatives who were "trying to get their hands on sarin."

A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN recently that gathering intelligence on Syria, including its potential future use of chemical weapons, is now one of the top priorities of the U.S. intelligence community.
[...snip...]
In one corner, the United States, the United Kingdom and France say rebels need more help in ousting a 42-year dynasty and ending a regime that crushes dissent with lethal force.

In the other corner, Russia says its supply of arms to the Syrian regime isn't nearly as bad as sending weapons to the rebels.

"I believe you will not deny that one should hardly back those who kill their enemies and eat their organs. ... Do you want to support these people? Do you want to supply arms to these people?" Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Sunday.

Am I saying they're lying?  No.  But we've been down this road before, and I don't like where it's going.

And for the umpty-umpth time: WHAT IS THE GOAL???

Are we securing the weapons, destroying the weapons, sending a message at the end of a Tomahawk missile, and if so, what is it - "you want something to cry about - we can give you something to cry about?"

Remember Maher Arar?  Charlie Pierce does:

I wondered what Maher Arar thought today when Kerry made what appeared to be the most compelling case yet for regime change in Syria, and then said he wasn't talking about regime change at all. I mean, Jesus, if we've got all the proof Kerry says we have, and Assad's own brother directed the chemical attack that killed 1429 people, many more than the original estimates, then what in the hell are we fking around with a "limited response"? (To be fair, shortly after Kerry had finished, Andrea Mitchell defined a "limited response" as "100 or so cruise missiles," which is only "limited" if you don't happen live in Syria.) There was a lot of boilerplate there about credibility and what will history, Russia, China, Iran -- or North Korea (?) -- think of us if we don't act. But the case that Kerry put forth for the Assad regime's complicity in what can justifiably be called an atrocity gave us a million dollars worth of motive to justify a ten-cent response. What in hell are we doing here?

I do not want to believe that American policy is to weaken Assad but somehow not weaken him enough so that the rebels -- whom we do not trust and, frankly, do not know -- can actually overthrow him. I do not want to believe that the policy is to let Syria bleed itself white. I do not want to believe this because I remember when Henry Kissinger, that sociopath, actually adopted that policy during the Iran-Iraq War. We armed both sides to keep them at each other so that neither one would win. Thousands of people who were not us got slaughtered meaninglessly. I do not want to believe that American policy in Syria is within miles of that kind of lycanthropic realpolitik. I'd prefer to believe we just don't know what in the hell to do.

There is no question, however, that's it's on now, probably some time over the weekend. If I were a cynical clod like John Boehner, I'd hide until the missiles were launched and then scream that I wasn't consulted, and maybe throw a little wink to the impeachment crazies over the president's actions. If I were the Democrats, I'd be standing up right now demanding to be consulted, and demanding that Boehner get his orange ass back to Washington and put the House into session. And, to tell you the honest to god truth, if I were Maher Arar, I'd be marvelling at the American government's sudden shock and horror at what a monster Bashar al-Assad is, when it was the very fact that he was a monster on which American policy depended when Arar was picked up at JFK and shuffled off to be held in a rat's cage for over a year. I'd be marvelling at the horror expressed by an American government -- the same government that fought my lawsuit and hid behind secrecy and denied me justice for what the Assad did to me with the encouragement of the American government -- at the inhumanity of the Syrian regime. If I were Maher Arar, I might even laugh, although I rather doubt it.

This chemical weapon bugaboo is so much horsesh-t as far as I'm concerned.

The drones that we are accustomed to using incinerate people - including bystanders.

We possess and have used nuclear weapons which have the capacity to incineration hundreds of thousands if not millions at one go.

So who is going to believe that all this lethal sh-t is acceptable, but we draw the line at chemical?

Look for UH to rise significantly in the standings next week. Tonight's was a high-quality win over the defending national champions, who returned all six starters from last season. And that's the type of triumph which will be very hard for the NCAA to ignore in December, when it comes to seeding teams come tournament time.