use of chlorine gas in Syria and Anne Barnard's report which was based on the account of "many Syrians"--as she put it

From a well-known Western correspondent in the Middle East who does not want to be identified: "As you say, no crime committed by the regime or opposition should surprise anybody but claims of chlorine use by the government are strange to me. Chlorine is a useless weapon unless its massively used so they can take an area and all this use of chlorine is very small and achieves nothing. More importantly, only two organizations can bring in chlorine to Syria for the last few years, UNICEF and ICRC, because of the sanctions and chlorine is carefully regulated. There are no chlorine producing factories in Syria. The chlorine factories in Aleppo were long ago seized by the insurgents with huge amounts in them. So while I hate conspiracy theories I do wonder if this is just part of an attempt to provoke military intervention. Anybody accusing the regime of using chlorine gas would have to also explain how they got it and if they went through all the effort of smuggling it into the country why they would waste it killing some civilians in some village in Idlib to no strategic advantage".