Like Assad, Churchill liked
to stockpile poison gas

"It is one of the extraordinary twists and turns of the war in Syria that the alleged use of sarin against civilians in rebel-held districts in Damascus on 21 August should turn out to be to the advantage rather than to the disadvantage of President Bashar al-Assad. The most immediate effect seemed likely to be foreign military intervention against Assad. In the event, the United States and Britain balked at the idea of another war in the Middle East, particularly one that might put in positions of power al-Qa'ida-linked groups such as the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant."
Alleged use. You might think that's put right by the headline, or that we are being told by Patrick Cockburn that if Churchill was prepared to do it, it isn't so bad. "People from Eastern Ghouta in Damascus complain that nobody has objected strongly to the fact that they have been shelled and bombed," I think they are harder on those who equivocate about who attacked them.
To those who weren't left wondering why Assad would do such a barbarous thing, it was clear from the beginning that he was expecting an advantage to flow from their use, to frighten more people into fleeing seeming like the main one, but given the unlikelihood of any "foreign military intervention" against Assad, it was hard to see the downside from his point of view. Again the last bit chimes with the régime view that it is them or the terrorists; it is the lack of funding for the FSA, not the threat of action against Assad that has given the jihadists opportunity. When the Syrian people are being brutalised, abandoned in part because of such distortions, it is understandable that Syrians would not feel at all civil towards their purveyors.