In the two weeks since the gas attacks in the suburbs of Damascus that killed more than 1,000 people and may yet trigger a U.S. military response, a lot of people have been wondering what Bashar al-Assad could have been thinking. Given that President Obama had made it quite clear that the Syrian government could do whatever it wanted without triggering U.S. intervention except for using chemical weapons, why would he tempt fate? The question of motivations has even led some commentators to question if the Syrian government actually did carry out the attack, or whether the rebels themselves might have been trying to trigger an international intervention.
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