US president Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry must privately be cussing over having been cornered by Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting the agreement that has been hammered out regarding the destruction of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons.
Do a bit of research beyond the mainstream Western press and you will discover there is just as much likelihood, and indeed evidence, that it was the rebels (partly composed of the Syrian El Qaeda faction known as El Nusra), who employed the offending weapons.
The US has a long term goal of a dis-estabilised Middle East and is slowly and surely picking off the smaller fry before it tackles the big fish, Iran.
It has little to do with human rights and democracy.
The Western form of democracy won't work in the Middle East because of all the tribal and religious differences within each country.
How are the people of Libya and Iraq better off today than before the so called ‘Arab Spring' swept through their countries with more than a little assistance from the West?
These countries are in tatters with sectarian violence running out of control; and more recently Egypt where a democratically-elected president is overthrown.
I believe the recent agreement regarding Syria is likely only a temporary set back for the West.
The foreign policy goals of the US remain, so don't be surprised if there is a major engineered, for example ‘False Flag', event that will give cause for direct Western alliance involvement.
An example could be in the form of an attack on Israel by the rebels, but of course engineered for the blame to fall on the so-called regime.
I'm no Assad sympathiser, just a truth seeker, but with news coming from a tightly-controlled foreign press, truth is an elusive quarry.

Ian Lucas, Brookfield.