U.S. lays out case for Assad’s culpability in chemical weapons attack

White House officials say the U.S. intelligence community is confident that Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked his own people with chemical weapons on April 4 — and that an alternate explanation offered by Russia is an effort to deflect blame and “confuse the world community.”
Senior administration officials “suggested that the attack may have been motivated by rebel gains in the surrounding area, as rebel forces approached a strategic Syrian air base,” NPR&rsqu