Putin says he'd support action against Syria if charges against it can be proved beyond doubt - since I believe there's absolutely no way Putin would say something like that without being sure of his facts, I have to imagine that the facts that he's sure of are: there's no solid proof that can be unequivocally presented; Assad didn't do it, but possibly a rogue element did; the rebels did it or are responsible for falsifying evidence; it wasn't sarin or any other chemical banned under international treaty. I still maintain that there's no compelling tactical reason for Assad to have done this - that of course doesn't rule out him being stupid, but until I see evidence I'm going to still lean towards a rogue element, the rebels or an agent other than sarin being the most likely dispositive factors here. It reminds me of something I read yesterday by Michael Yon, who has had a lot of experience reporting from these failed states and war zones - he said it's virtually impossible to get truthful info in these places, everything is more or less corrupted by lies and propaganda - and therefore he found it highly suspicious that Kerry was assigning an exact figure to the number killed by the purported gassing, a degree of accuracy that Yon considered impossible to achieve, or that you could so quickly find evidence that wasn't tainted by something or someone.
I'm not saying there was no event - something clearly happened - but as yet there's nothing in the public domain that states clearly what that something was and who was responsible for it - and as far as I'm concerned the only way Putin says what he said is if he's convinced there's never going to emerge evidence proving what Kerry has charged.
[although you could make another argument here: that Putin has brought up the possibility of backing actions against Syria because he knows there's a chance the charges can be proven, which would mean he knows for a fact what actually did happen, and that now he's positioning himself to look like a reasonable man simply making the case for patience and in no way sanctioning the slaughtering of children etc etc]
