In reality, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has long ago been exposed as an absurd propaganda front operated by Rami Abdul Rahman out of his house in England's countryside. According to a December 2011 Reuters article titled, "Coventry - an unlikely home to prominent Syria activist," Abdul Rahman admits he is a member of the so-called "Syrian opposition" and seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad:
After three short spells in prison in Syria for pro-democracy activism, Abdulrahman came to Britain in 2000 fearing a longer, fourth jail term.
"I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I'll return when Bashar al-Assad goes," Abdulrahman said, referring to Bashar's father and predecessor Hafez, also an autocrat.
One could not fathom a more unreliable, compromised, biased source of information, yet for the past two years, his "Observatory" has served as the sole source of information for the endless torrent of propaganda emanating from the Western media. Perhaps worst of all, is that the United Nations uses this compromised, absurdly overt source of propaganda as the basis for its various reports . . . .
The video (see here) starts with several scenes showing chemical containers with Tekkim labels (Tekkim is a Turkish chemicals company) and some lab equipment, while playing Jihadists chants in the background. A glass box then appears with two rabbits inside, with a poster on the wall behind it reading The Almighty Wind Brigade (Kateebat A Reeh Al Sarsar). A person wearing a lab mask then mixes chemicals in a beaker in the glass box, and we see some gas emitting from the beaker. About a minute later, the rabbits start to have random convulsions and then die. The person says: You saw what happened? This will be your fate, you infidel Alawites, I swear by ALLAH to make you die like these rabbits, one minute only after you inhale the gas.
The recording of the phone conversation purports to be between two FSA militants, one inside Syria and one outside of the country. Abu Hassan, the militant inside Syria, asks the person on the other end of the line to transmit a message to Sheikh Suleiman, a rebel-seized army base in Aleppo, asking for “two chemical bombs ….phosphoric” in order to “finish this whole thing.”
“I want them to be effective,” states Hassan, adding, “The radius of the strike, or reach of the gases, has to be 1km.”
The Syrian military is said to believe that a home-made locally-manufactured rocket was fired, containing a form of chlorine known as CL17, easily available as a swimming pool cleaner. They claim that the warhead contained a quantity of the gas, dissolved in saline solution. . . .
CL17 is normal chlorine for swimming pools or industrial purposes. It is rated as Level 2 under the chemical weapons convention, which means it is dual purpose - it can be used as a weapon as well as for industrial or domestic purposes. Level 1 agents are chemicals whose sole use is as weapons, such as the nerve agents sarin or tabun.
There has been extensive experimentation by insurgents in Iraq in the use of chlorine, which is harmful when mixed with water to form hydrochloric acid. It vapourises quickly, meaning that in a big explosion it will evaporate; in a small blast - for instance, one delivered by a home-made rocket - it will turn into airborne droplets before dispersing quickly.
So it is likely only to produce limited casualties. In this case there were only 26 fatalities, far fewer than would be expected from a full chemical weapon attack. In short, it is easily improvised into a chemical device but not one that would be used by an army seeking mass-casualty effects. [emphasis added]