"Australia can clear the smoke by asking the right questions."

Which could be to ask the UNSC to mandate the League of Arab States to sort out and resolve your "...push for unarmed dialogue among Syrian citizens, free from [other] foreign intervention."?

Rouhani's statement, "We completely and strongly condemn the use of chemical weapons because the Islamic Republic of Iran is itself a victim of chemical weapons." is worth considering. When Iran was gassed by Iraq during their long war, Iraq's main enabler in that war was the US. Ditto for when Iraq gassed its own Kurdish citizens.
According to reports in the Turkish press, a group of Syrian jihadists were apparently caught with chemical weapons in Ankara in June. It would have been a circuitous route, but it would be interesting to discover where they got those weapons, if in fact they did have them.
This latest incident smells strongly of a false-flag operation.
Who benefits? Who wants to unleash the dogs of European and American war into Syria? Those are the questions that need pursuing. Answer them and whoever used gas in Ghouta will be outed.
Assad had just allowed UN inspectors into Syria. Then came the gas attack. Call him many things, but Assad is neither suicidal nor stupid.
And Obama? He had just been done like a dinner by events in Egypt. Nothing like a bit of distraction while he wipes the egg off his face.

Where would the rebels get their chemical weapons? Perhaps the Assad regime, who we know have been manufacturing them for decades, gave them some!
If the Assad regime had nothing to hide, why did they prevaricate so long over allowing UN inspectors to examine the critical time sensitive evidence in a timely manner?
It's time for the endless Assad obfuscation to simply be ignored, and a few cruise missiles dispatched through the dictator and his even more criminal mass murdering brother's front door.
Or if necessary, drop a few bunker busters on that regimes last refuge!
Good Intel will see the FINAL delivery made while they are at home!
The end of the Assad regime will see the end to hostilities, and it will demonstrate to all and sundry, that the West has enough resolve to contemplate a worst case scenario, yet proceed with plans to eliminate the mass murdering Assad regime, in any event.
It will also demonstrate to the obstructionist excuse making, recalcitrant Russian, virtual dictator Putin, that there is a line beyond which we will not go, nor allow any others to cross, with impunity, regardless of his objections/bully boy bluff and bluster!
Rhrosty.

On ATV news 10 minutes ago it was reported that chemical weapons inspectors after first being prevented from access to the Hospitals treating the victims from gas attacks. The inpectors took an alternative back route to the hospitals and talked to the doctors, took tissue samples and examined some the dead and emediately reported back their governments. It was reported that PM Rudd, and US, British Governments leaders want miiltiary action action action to put and end to genocide.

Rhrosty says "Where would the rebels get their chemical weapons? Perhaps the Assad regime, who we know have been manufacturing them for decades, gave them some!"
The rebels have been rampaging all over the country for the past two years. They have taken over various military bases and then have been driven out of those bases at other times. There have been mass defections from the Syrian army to the rebels side as well.The opportunity must have arisen on numerous occasions for the rebels to get hold of chemical weapons.
Like the author also points out, the rebels have a very strong motivation to make it appear that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons. In contrast there does not appear to be any reasonable reason for the Assad regime to do so though, particularly with the US having declared it would intervene in such circumstances. Why would the regime want to provoke such intervention, particularly when it appears to be winning the war with the use of its conventional weapons?

Perhaps Assad's lick-spittles could find a reason why - if if were the terrorists who used chemical weapons - Assad wouldn't let inspectors in for five days, and used snipers to keep them out of critical areas.

No names ;)

Ultimately, AND ironically, you may be on the side which wins this conflict: it's a three-way war after all, between the dictatorship, the Islamists and the secular-democrats, the last being by far the weakest force, but the one which the West would like to back.

So, to have any role at all, the West will be forced to choose between supporting the dictatorship or the Islamists. They will never support the Islamists. So they may have to hold their noses and support Assad, at least for a time, until they can overthrow him and get him brought to trial for war-crimes. Or strung up, whichever comes first.

But to paraphrase Wil Anderson, 'what will Iran do ?'

Joe