The horrors witnessed in Damascus last week are a painful reminder of the abuses that take place when the flow of information is shut down. Both the Assad regime and the anti-Assad forces have made Syria a hostile environment for journalists. As a result there is still no clarity about why this toxic chemical release happened.

Going to war is a very serious business with very serious repercussions, and must not be undertaken until the facts are in. Australia's federal election must not be used as a cover for taking our country into war.

The prospect of regime change in Damascus has long appealed to the US. For the Americans to be able to assert effective influence over Syria would serve US geopolitical interests in at least three ways. It would push back the last extended limb of Russian hard power and cement US victory in its long-term cold-war project to isolate Russian influence globally. It would strengthen Israel's hand by removing one of Hezbollah's main sources of support in Lebanon. And it would complete the encirclement of Iran, whose Shiite Islamist government US hawks have long been looking to overthrow.

The only thing holding the US back in its goal of regime change in Syria has been the difficulty in identifying a sufficiently strong and ''reliable'' partner in this endeavour. The Syrian opposition is kaleidoscopic. It includes extremist Sunni militant groups such as al-Nusra, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda, and has been reported to be in possession of sarin gas. As this civil war has progressed, it has increasingly become a Sunni-Shiite proxy war, which threatens to embroil the entire Middle East region, with all the major players aligning themselves with one side or another.