UN inspectors are attempting to determine who is responsible for the chemical weapons attack in Damascus on Aug. 21. They say the evidence points toward Bashar al-Assad’s regime, not the rebels as the Russians contend.

According to Foreign Policy, however, “The inspection team, which is expected on Monday to present U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with a highly anticipated report on a suspected Aug. 21 nerve agent attack in the suburbs of Damascus, will not directly accuse the Syrian regime of gassing its own people, according to three U.N.-based diplomats familiar with the investigation. But it will provide a strong circumstantial case – based on an examination of spent rocket casings, ammunition, and laboratory tests of soil, blood, and urine samples – that points strongly in the direction of Syrian government culpability.”

Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons is quite large – too large, most likely, for the Russian proposal for their destruction to be realistic or effective.