Posts
Trump’s Sarin Claims Built on ‘Lie’
Here
is some Sunday reading.
I
am reposting the discussion from yesterday between Don DeBar and mark
Sleboda on CPR News on the Trumps’ accusations of a chemical
weapons attack.
While
the Americans backed down almost immediately it acts as an open
invitation for al-Qaeda or other terrrorist entity to carry out a
false flag attack.
Mark
Sleboda recommended four sources so that people can make up their own
minds.
United
States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley has pre-warned
Assad, about a pre-planned chemical attack that he is putting
together, which pre-blames Assad, Iran and Russia.
Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.
U.S. says its warning appears to have averted Syrian chemical attack
U.S.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that the Syrian
government of President Bashar al-Assad appeared so far to have
heeded a warning this week from Washington not to carry out a
chemical weapons attack.
Seymour Hersh's explosive piece was turned down by the London Review of Books as well as as by US media so was published in the German newspaper, die Welt - an indication of a McCarthyite policy of repressing anything that goes aganst the official neo-con narrative.
Trump‘s Red Line
President
Donald Trump ignored important intelligence reports when he decided
to attack Syria after he saw pictures of dying children. Seymour M.
Hersh investigated the case of the alleged Sarin gas attack.
Will Get Fooled Again – Seymour Hersh, Welt, and the Khan Sheikhoun Chemical Attack
25
June, 2017
On
June 25th 2017 the German newspaper, Welt, published
the latest piece by
Seymour Hersh, countering the “mainstream” narrative around the
April 4th 2017 Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack in Syria. The attack,
where Sarin was allegedly used against the local population, dropped
in a bomb by the Syrian Air Force, resulted in President
Trump taking the decision to launch cruise missiles at a Syrian
airbase.
As
with his other recent articles, Hersh presented another version of
events, claiming the established narrative was wrong. And, as with
those other recent articles, Hersh based his case on a tiny number of
anonymous sources, presented no other evidence to support his case,
and ignored or dismissed evidence that countered the alternative
narrative he was trying to build.
This
isn’t the first chemical attack in Syria which Hersh has presented
a counter-narrative for, based on a handful of anonymous sources. In
his lengthy articles for the London Review of Books, “Whose
sarin?”
and “The
Red Line and the Rat Line”,
Hersh made the case that the August 21st 2013 Sarin attack in
Damascus was in fact a false flag attack intended to draw the US into
the conflict with Syria. This claim fell apart under real
scrutiny,
and relied heavily on ignoring much of the evidence around the
attacks, an ignorance of the complexities of producing and
transporting Sarin, and a lack of understanding about facts firmly
established about the attacks.
With
Hersh’s latest article, this pattern of behaviour is repeated. The
vast majority of the article appears to be based on an anonymous
source, described as “a senior adviser to the American intelligence
community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense
Department and Central Intelligence Agency”. As with his earlier
articles, details of the attack as described by his source flies in
the face of all other evidence presented by a range of other sources.
So
what scenario does Hersh’s source describe, and how does this
contradict other claims? Hersh claims that “Syrians had targeted a
jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb
equipped with conventional explosives”, and this attack resulted in
the release of chemicals, including chlorine, but not Sarin, that
produced the mass casualty event seen on April 4th. Hersh’s source
is able to provide a great deal of information about the target,
claiming intel on the location was shared with the Americans ahead of
the attack.
Hersh’s
source describes the building as a “two-story cinder-block building
in the northern part of town”, with a basement containing “rockets,
weapons and ammunition, as well as products that could be distributed
for free to the community, among them medicines and chlorine-based
decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial”.
According to Hersh’s source, the floor above was “an established
meeting place” and “a long-time facility that would have had
security, weapons, communications, files and a map center.”
The
source goes on to claim that Russia had been watching the location
carefully, establishing its use as a Jihadi meeting place, and
watching the location with a “drone for days”, confirming its use
and the activity around the building. According to the source the
target was then hit at 6:55am on April 4th, and a Bomb Damage
Assessment by the US military determined that a Syrian 500lb bomb
“triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have
generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town,
formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other
goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense
morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground.”
At
this point it’s worth taking a look at the claims the Syrian and
Russian governments made in response to accusations that Syria had
dropped Sarin on Khan Sheikhoun. Walid Muallem, Syria’s Foreign
Minister, stated in a
press conference two days after the attack that
the first air raid was conducted at 11:30am local time, attacking “an
arms depot belonging to al-Nusra Front chemical weapons”. It was
noted by observers at the time the time of the claimed attack was
hours after the first reports of casualties came in, and both
contradicts the 6:55am stated by Hersh’s source, and the slightly
earlier time provided by the Pentagon, approximately between 6:37am
and 6:46am local time. Not only that, but the Syrian Foreign Minister
also described the target as a chemical weapons arm depot, not a
meeting place that stored other items in the basement.
Russia
also published their own claims about the attack. Sputnik
reported the following:
“According to Konashenkov, on Tuesday “from 11.30 to 12.30, local time, [8.30 to 9.30 GMT] Syrian aircraft conducted an airstrike in the eastern outskirts of Khan Shaykhun on a large warehouse of ammunition of terrorists and the mass of military equipment”.
Konashenkov said that from this warehouse, chemical weapons’ ammunition was delivered to Iraq by militants.
Konashenkov added that there were workshops for manufacturing bombs, stuffed with poisonous substances, on the territory of this warehouse. He noted that these munitions with toxic substances were also used by militants in Syria’s Aleppo.”
These
claims are consistent with the claims of their Syrian ally, but not
the claims made by Hersh and his source. In the face of allegations
of chemical weapon use neither Russia nor Syria mention targeting “a
jihadist meeting site”, and described the location as a “large
warehouse” on the “eastern outskirts of Khan Shaykhun”, not a
“two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town”
with “security, weapons, communications, files and a map center.”
In fact, the only thing Hersh’s account and the Russian and Syria
account agrees on is it was a Syrian aircraft which conducted the
attack.
In
addition to this, neither Syria nor Russia presented any evidence to
support their claim. If, as Hersh claims, Russia had been observing
the site with a “drone for days” then they would not only have
the precise location of the site, but footage of the site. However,
both Syria and Russia have failed to make any imagery of the site
public, nor have they provided any specific details about the
location of the site. If they had, it would be possible to easily
check if the location had been bombed on Terraserver, which
has satellite imagery of Khan Sheikhoun before and after the date of
attack. In common with Russia and Syria, Hersh’s source seems
unable to provide the exact location of the attack, despite his
apparent in depth knowledge of the attack.
Ignoring
the fact that the version of events presented by Hersh runs counter
to narratives produced by all sides, the claims around the chemical
exposure are also worth examining. Hersh refers to “a Bomb Damage
Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military” of the strike, which he
provides no source for, which supposedly states “a series of
secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud
that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the
fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement”.
He describes the symptoms seen in victims as “consistent with the
release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the
organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic
effects similar to those of sarin.” Here it is worth pointing
out that organophosphates are used as pesticides, not fertilizers,
and it’s unclear if this error is from Hersh himself or his
anonymous source. This is not the only factual error in the report,
with Hersh stating an SU-24 was used in the attack, not an SU-22 as
claimed by every other source, including the US government.
Despite
Hersh’s apparent belief Sarin was not used in the attack, other
sources disagree, not least the OPCW, tasked to investigate the
attack. On April 19th 2017 the OPCW published
a statement by Director-General,
Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü describing the results of the analysis of
samples taken from victims of the attack, both living and dead,
stating:
“The results of these analyses from four OPCW designated laboratories indicate exposure to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance. While further details of the laboratory analyses will follow, the analytical results already obtained are incontrovertible.”
A later
report from the OPCW,
dated May 19th, provided further analysis of samples from the site,
including dead animals recovered from the site, and environmental
samples. Signs of Sarin or Sarin-like substances were detected in
many samples, as well as Sarin degradation products, and at least two
samples which state Sarin itself was detected.
These
results are also consistent with intelligence
published by the French government,
which describes the following:
“The analyses carried out by French experts on the environmental samples collected at one of the impact points of the chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017 reveal the presence of sarin, of a specific secondary product (diisopropyl methylphosphonate – DIMP) formed during synthesis of sarin from isopropanol and DF (methylphosphonyl difluoride), and hexamine. Analysis of biomedical samples also shows that a victim of the Khan Sheikhoun attack, a sample of whose blood was taken in Syria on the very day of the attack, was exposed to sarin.”
Based
on this and other reports, multiple sources state Sarin was used in
the attack, despite Hersh’s narrative of an accidental chemical
release. The fact Hersh does not refer to any of these reports seems
to, at best, overlook key information about the nature of the attack,
and at worst, purposely ignores information that contradicts the
narrative he’s attempting to build.
Going
back to the attack site, this ignoring or ignorance of contradictory
information is also apparent. Open source material from the day of
the attack, as well as satellite imagery analysis by various sources
(including this
excellent piece by
the New York Times) consistently point to the same impact sites, one
of which is the specific crater claimed to be the source of Sarin
released on the day of the attack. None of these point to the
structure described by Hersh, nor is there any evidence of a site as
described by Hersh being attacked. Journalists visited the town soon
after the attack, and made no mention of the site as described by
Hersh.
One
might argue that all the individuals and groups on the ground, all
the doctors treating the victims, and every single person spoken to
by the journalists visiting the site failed to mention the site
described by Hersh, but there’s a very simple way to clear up this
matter. Anyone can access satellite imagery of the town before and
after the date of the attack thanks
to the imagery available on Terraserver,
all Hersh’s source has to do is provide the coordinates of the
building attacked and anyone with an internet connection will be able
to look at that exact location, and see the destroyed building. A
simple way for both Hersh and Welt to preserve their reputations.
Scott
Ritter who was demonised in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion
of Iraq for saying that were no weapons of mass destruciton knows weapons of mass destruction like no other person on the
planet – certainly better than Bellingcat!
Ex-Weapons Inspector: Trump’s Sarin Claims Built on ‘Lie’
Scott Ritter takes on White House Syria attack claims.
By SCOTT
RITTER
Sarin
gas victim in Syria, as reported in April 2017. | Ninian
Reid / Flickr
29
June, 2017
On
the night of June 26, the White House Press Secretary released a
statement, via Twitter, that, “the United States has
identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack
by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of
civilians, including innocent children.” The tweet went on to
declare that, “the activities are similar to preparations the
regime made before its April 4 chemical weapons attack,” before
warning that if “Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack
using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”
A
Pentagon spokesman backed up the White House tweet, stating that U.S.
intelligence had observed “activity” at a Syrian air base that
indicated “active preparation for chemical weapons use” was
underway. The air base in question, Shayrat, had been
implicated by the United States as the origin of aircraft and
munitions used in an alleged chemical weapons attack on the village
of Khan Sheikhun on April 4. The observed activity was at an
aircraft hangar that had been struck by cruise missiles fired by U.S.
Navy destroyers during a retaliatory strike on April 6.
The
White House statement comes on
the heels of the publication of an article by
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in a
German publication, Die
Welt,
which questions, among many things, the validity of the intelligence
underpinning the allegations leveled at Syria regarding the events of
April 4 in and around Khan Sheikhun. (In the interests of full
disclosure, I had assisted Mr. Hersh in fact-checking certain aspects
of his article; I was not a source of any information used in his
piece.) Not surprisingly, Mr. Hersh’s article has come under
attack from many circles, the most vociferous of these being a
UK-based citizen activist named Eliot Higgins who, through
his Bellingcat blog,
has been widely cited by media outlets in the U.S. and UK as a source
of information implicating the Syrian government in that alleged
April chemical attack on Khan Sheikhun.
Neither
Hersh nor Higgins possesses definitive proof to bolster their
respective positions; the latter draws upon assertions made by
supposed eyewitnesses backed up with forensic testing of materials
alleged to be sourced to the scene of the attack that indicate the
presence of Sarin, a deadly nerve agent, while the former relies upon
anonymous sources within the U.S. military and intelligence
establishments who provide a counter narrative to the official U.S.
government position. What is clear, however, is that both cannot be
right—either the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons
attack on Khan Sheikhun, or it didn’t. There is no middle
ground.
The
search for truth is as old as civilization. Philosophers throughout
the ages have struggled with the difficulties of rationalizing the
beginning of existence, and the relationships between the one and the
many. Aristotle approached this challenge through what he called the
development of potentiality to actuality, which examined truth in
terms of the causes that act on things. This approach is as relevant
today as it was two millennia prior, and its application to the
problem of ascertaining fact from fiction regarding Khan Sheikhun
goes far in helping unpack the White House statements regarding
Syrian chemical preparations and the Hersh-Higgins debate.
According
to Aristotle, there were four causes that needed to be examined in
the search for truth — material, efficient, formal and final.
The material causerepresents the element out of which an
object is created. In terms of the present discussion, one could
speak of the material cause in terms of the actual
chemical weapon alleged to have been used at Khan Sheikhun. The odd
thing about both the Khan Sheikhun attack and the current White House
statements, however, is that no one has produced any physical
evidence of there actually having been a chemical weapon, let alone
what kind of weapon was allegedly employed. Like a prosecutor trying
a murder case without producing the actual murder weapon, Syria’s
accusers have assembled a case that is purely circumstantial —
plenty of dead and dying victims, but nothing that links these
victims to an actual physical object.
Human
Rights Watch (HRW), drawing upon analysis of images brought to them
by the volunteer rescue organization White Helmets, of fragments
allegedly recovered from the scene of the attack, has claimed that
the material cause of the Khan Sheikhun event is a Soviet-made
KhAB-250 chemical bomb, purpose-built to deliver Sarin nerve agent.
There are several issues with the HRW assessment. First and foremost,
there is no independent verification that the objects in question are
what HRW claims, or that they were even physically present at Khan
Sheikhun, let alone deposited there as a result of an air attack by
the Syrian government. Moreover, the KhAB-250 bomb was never
exported by either the Soviet or Russian governments, thereby making
the provenance of any such ordinance in the Syrian inventory highly
suspect.
Sarin
is a non-persistent chemical agent whose military function is to
inflict casualties through direct exposure. Any ordnance intended to
deliver Sarin would, like the KhAB-250, be designed to disseminate
the agent in aerosol form, fine droplets that would be breathed in by
the victim, or coat the victim’s skin. In combat, the aircraft
delivering Sarin munitions would be expected to minimize its exposure
to hostile fire, flying low to the target at high speed. In order to
have any semblance of military utility, weapons delivered in this
fashion would require an inherent braking mechanism, such as
deployable fins or a parachute, which would retard the speed of the
weapon, allowing for a more concentrated application of the nerve
agent on the intended target.
Chemical
ordnance is not intended for precise strikes against point targets,
but rather delivery of the agent to an area. For this reason, they
are not dropped singly, but rather in large numbers. (The ab-250, for
instance was designed to be delivered by a TU-22 bomber dropping 24
weapons on the same target.) The weapon itself is not complex—a
steel bomb casing with a small high explosive tube—the burster
charge—running down its middle, equipped with a nose fuse designed
to detonate on contact with the ground or at a pre-determined
altitude.
Once detonated, the burster charge causes the casing to
break apart, disseminating fine droplets of agent over the target.
The resulting explosion is very low order, a pop more than a
bang—virtually none of the actual weapon would be destroyed as a
result, and its component parts, readily identifiable as such, would
be deposited in the immediate environs. In short, if a KhAB-250, or
any other air delivered chemical bomb, had been used at Khan
Sheikhun, there would be significant physical evidence of that fact,
including the totality of the bomb casing, the burster tube, the tail
fin assembly, and parachute. The fact that none of this exists belies
the notion that an air-delivered chemical bomb was employed by the
Syrian government against Khan Sheikhun.
Continuing
along the lines of Aristotle’s exploration of the relationship
between the potential and actual, the efficient
cause represents the means by which the object is created.
In the context of Khan Shiekhun, the issue (i.e., object) isn’t the
physical weapon itself, but rather its manifestation on the ground in
terms of cause and effect. Nothing symbolized this more than the
disturbing images that emerged in the aftermath of the alleged
chemical attack of civilian victims, many of them women and children.
(It was these images that spurred President Trump into ordering the
cruise missile attack on Shayrat air base.) These images were
produced by the White Helmet organization as a byproduct of the
emergency response that transpired in and around Khan Sheikhun on
April 4. It is this response, therefore, than can be said to
constitute the efficient cause in any examination of
potential to actuality regarding the allegations of the use of
chemical weapons by the Syrian government there.
The White
Helmets came
into existence in the aftermath of the unrest that erupted in Syria
after the Arab Spring in 2012. They say they are neutral, but they
have used their now-global platform as a humanitarian rescue unit to
promote anti-regime themes and to encourage outside intervention to
remove the regime of Bashar al-Assad. By White Helmet’s own
admission, it is well-resourced,
trained and funded by western NGOs and governments,
including USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), which
funded the group $23 million as of 2016.
A
UK-based company with strong links to the British Foreign Office, May
Day Rescue, has largely managed the actual rescue aspects of the
White Helmet’s work. Drawing on a budget of tens of millions of
dollars donated by foreign governments, including the U.S. and UK,
May Day Rescue oversees a comprehensive training program designed to
bring graduates to the lowest standard—”light,” or Level
One—for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR). Personnel and units trained
to the “light” standard are able to conduct surface search and
rescue operations—they are neither trained nor equipped to rescue
entrapped victims. Teams trained to this standard are not qualified
to perform operations in a hazardous environment (such as would exist
in the presence of a nerve agent like Sarin).
The
White Helmets have made their reputation through the dissemination of
self-made videos ostensibly showing them in action inside Syria,
rescuing civilians from bombed out structures, and providing
life-saving emergency medical care. (It should be noted that the
eponymously named Oscar-nominated documentary showing the White
Helmets in action was filmed entirely by the White Helmets
themselves, which raises a genuine question of journalistic ethics.)
To the untrained eye, these videos are a dramatic representation of
heroism in action. To the trained professional (I can offer my own
experience as a Hazardous Materials Specialist with New York Task
Force 2 USAR team), these videos represent de facto evidence of
dangerous incompetence or, worse, fraud.
The
bread and butter of the White Helmet’s self-made reputation is the
rescue of a victim—usually a small child—from beneath a pile of
rubble, usually heavy reinforced concrete. First and foremost,
as a “light” USAR team, the White Helmets are not trained or
equipped to conduct rescues of entrapped victims. And yet the White
helmet videos depict their rescue workers using excavation equipment
and tools, such as pneumatic drills, to gain access to victims
supposedly pinned under the weight of a collapsed building. The
techniques used by the White Helmets are not only technically wrong,
but dangerous to anyone who might actually be trapped—the
introduction of excavators to move debris, or the haphazard drilling
and hammering into concrete in the immediate vicinity of a trapped
victim, would invariably lead to a shifting if the rubble pile,
crushing the trapped victim to death. In my opinion, the videos are
pure theater, either staged to impress an unwitting audience, or
actually conducted with total disregard for the wellbeing of any real
victims.
Likewise,
the rescue of victims from a hazardous materials incident, especially
one as dangerous as one involving a nerve agent as lethal as Sarin,
is solely the purview of personnel and teams specifically equipped
and trained for the task. “Light” USAR teams receive no hazardous
materials training as part of their certification, and there is no
evidence or even claim on the part of the White Helmets that they
have undergone the kind of specialist training needed to effect a
rescue in the case of an actual chemical weapons attack.
This
reality comes through on the images provided by the White Helmets of
their actions in and around Khan Sheikhun on April 4. From the
haphazard use of personal protective equipment (either non-existent
or employed in a manner that negates protection from potential
exposure) to the handling of victims and so-called decontamination
efforts, everything the White Helmets did was operationally wrong and
would expose themselves and the victims they were ostensibly treating
to even greater harm. As was the case with their “rescues” of
victims in collapsed structures, I believe the rescue efforts of the
White Helmets at Khan Sheikhun were a theatrical performance
designed to impress the ignorant and ill-informed.
I’m
not saying that nothing happened at Khan Sheikhun—obviously
something did. But the White Helmets exploited whatever
occurred, over-dramatizing “rescues” and “decontamination” in
staged theatrics that were captured on film and rapidly disseminated
using social media in a manner designed to influence public opinion
in the West. We don’t see the actual rescue at the scene of
the event—bodies pulled from their homes, lying in the streets.
What we get is grand theater as bodies arrive at the field hospital,
with lots of running to and fro and meaningless activity that would
actually worsen the condition of the victims and contaminate the
rescuers.
Through
their actions, however, the White Helmets were able to breathe life
into the overall narrative of a chemical weapons attack, distracting
from the fact that no actual weapon existed and thus furthering
the efficient cause by which the object—the
non-existent chemical weapon—was created.
Having
defined the creation of the object (the non-existent chemical weapon)
and the means by which it was created (the flawed theatrics of the
White Helmets), we move on to the third, or formal cause,
which constitutes the expression of what the object
is. In the case of Khan Sheikhun, this is best expressed by the
results of forensic testing of samples allegedly taken from victims
of the chemical attack, and from the scene of the attack itself. The
organization responsible for overseeing this forensic testing was the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW.
Through its work, the OPCW has determined that the nerve agent Sarin,
or a “Sarin-like substance,” was used at Khan Sheikhun, a result
that would seemingly compensate for both the lack of a bomb and the
amateurish theatrics of the rescuers.
The
problem, however, is that the OPCW is in no position to make the
claim it did. One of the essential aspects of the kind of forensic
investigation carried out by organizations such as the OPCW—namely
the application of scientific methods and techniques to the
investigation of a crime—is the concept of “chain of custody”
of any samples that are being evaluated. This requires a seamless
transition from the collection of the samples in question, the
process of which must be recorded and witnessed, the sealing of the
samples, the documentation of the samples, the escorted
transportation of the samples to the laboratory, the confirmation and
breaking of the seals under supervision, and the subsequent
processing of the samples, all under supervision of the OPCW.
Anything less than this means the integrity of the sample has been
compromised—in short, there is no sample.
The
OPCW acknowledges that its personnel did not gain access to Khan
Sheikhun at any time. However, the investigating team states that it
used connections with “parties with knowledge of and connections to
the area in question,” to gain access to samples that were
collected by “non governmental organizations (NGOs)” which also
provided representatives to be interviewed, and videos and images for
the investigating team to review. The NGO used by the OPCW was none
other than the White Helmets.
The
process of taking samples from a contaminated area takes into
consideration a number of factors designed to help create as broad
and accurate a picture of the scene of the incident itself as well as
protect the safety of the person taking the sample as well as the
integrity of the crime scene itself (i.e., reduce contamination).
There is no evidence that the White Helmets have received this kind
of specialized training required for the taking of such samples.
Moreover, the White Helmets are not an extension of the OPCW—under
no circumstances could any samples taken by White Helmet personnel
and subsequently turned over to the OPCW be considered viable in
terms of chain of custody. This likewise holds true for any
biomedical samples evaluated by the OPCW—all such samples were
either taken from victims who had been transported to Turkish
hospitals, or provided by non-OPCW personnel in violation of chain of
custody.
Lastly,
there is Aristotle’s final cause, which represents
the end for which the objectis—namely, what
was the ultimate purpose of the chemical weapons
attack on Khan Sheikhun. To answer this question, one must remain
consistent with the framework of examination of potential to
actuality applied herein. In this, we find a commonality between the
four causes whose linkage cannot be ignored when assessing the truth
of what happened at Khan Sheikhun, namely the presence of a single
entity—the White Helmets.
There
are two distinct narratives at play when it comes to what happened in
Khan Sheikhun. One, put forward by the governments of the United
States, Great Britain, France, and supported by the likes
of Bellingcat and the White Helmets, is that the
Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons attack using a single
air-delivered bomb on a civilian target. The other, put forward by
the governments of Russia and Syria, and sustained by the reporting
of Seymour Hersh, is that the Syrian air force used conventional
bombs to strike a military target, inadvertently releasing a toxic
cloud from substances stored at that facility and killing or injuring
civilians in Khan Sheikhun. There can be no doubt that the very
survival of the White Helmets as an organization, and the cause they
support (i.e., regime change in Syria), has been furthered by the
narrative they have helped craft and sell about the events of April 4
in and around Khan Sheikhun. This is the living manifestation of
Aristotle’s final cause, the end for which this entire
lie has been constructed.
The
lack of any meaningful fact-based information to back up the claims
of the White Helmets and those who sustain them, like the U.S.
government andBellingcat, raises serious questions about the
viability of the White House’s latest pronouncements on Syria and
allegations that it was preparing for a second round of chemical
attacks. If America has learned anything from its painful history
with Iraq and the false allegations of continued possession of
weapons of mass destruction on the part of the regime of Saddam
Hussein, it is that to rush into military conflict in the Middle East
based upon the unsustained allegations of an interested regional
party (i.e., Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress) is a
fool’s errand.
It
is up to the discerning public to determine which narrative about the
events in Syria today they will seek to embrace—one supported by a
Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who has made a career
out of exposing inconvenient truths, from My Lai to Abu Ghraib and
beyond, or one that collapses under Aristotle’s development of
potentiality to actuality analysis, as the manufactured story line
promoted by the White Helmets demonstratively does.
Scott
Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in
the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the
Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing
the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of “Deal of the
Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War” (Clarity Press,
2017).
Jonathan Cook is an ex-journalist for the Guardian now resident on the West Bank and writes from a Left perspective.
After Hersh Investigation, Media Connive in Propaganda War on Syria
by JONATHAN
COOK
Nazareth.
20
June, 2017
If
you wish to understand the degree to which a supposedly free western
media are constructing a world of half-truths and deceptions to
manipulate their audiences, keeping us uninformed and pliant, then
there could hardly be a better case study than their treatment of
Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
All
of these highly competitive, for-profit, scoop-seeking media outlets
separately took identical decisions: first to reject Hersh’s latest
investigative report, and then to studiously ignore it once it was
published in Germany last Sunday. They have continued to maintain an
absolute radio silence on his revelations, even as over the past few
days they have given a great deal of attention to two stories on the
very issue Hersh’s investigation addresses.
These
two stories, given such prominence in the western media, are clearly
intended to serve as “spoilers” to his revelations, even though
none of these publications have actually informed their readers of
his original investigation. We are firmly in looking-glass territory.
So
what did Hersh’s investigation reveal?
His sources in the US intelligence establishment – people who have
helped him break some of the most important stories of the past few
decades, from the Mai Lai massacre by American soldiers during the
Vietnam war to US abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004 –
told him the official narrative that Syria’s Bashar Assad had
dropped deadly sarin gas on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 was
incorrect. Instead, they said, a Syrian plane dropped a bomb on a
meeting of jihadi fighters that triggered secondary explosions in a
storage depot, releasing a toxic cloud of chemicals that killed
civilians nearby.
It
is an alternative narrative of these events that one might have
assumed would be of intense interest to the media, given that Donald
Trump approved a military strike on Syria based on the official
narrative. Hersh’s version suggests that Trump acted against the
intelligence advice he received from his own officials, in a highly
dangerous move that not only grossly violated international law but
might have dragged Assad’s main ally, Russia, into the fray. The
Syrian arena has the potential to trigger a serious confrontation
between the world’s two major nuclear powers.
But,
in fact, the western media were supremely uninterested in the story.
Hersh, once considered the journalist’s journalist, went hawking
his investigation around the US and UK media to no avail. In the end,
he could find a home for his revelations only in Germany, in the
publication Welt am Sonntag.
There
are a couple of possible, even if highly improbable, reasons all
English-language publications ignored Hersh’s story. Maybe they had
evidence that his inside intelligence was wrong. If so, they have yet
to provide it. A rebuttal would require acknowledging Hersh’s
story, and none seem willing to do that.
Or
maybe the media thought it was old news and would no longer interest
their readers. It would be difficult to sustain such an
interpretation, but at least it has an air of plausibility – except
for everything that has happened since Hersh published last Sunday.
His
story has spawned two clear “spoiler” responses from those
desperate to uphold the official narrative. Hersh’s revelations may
have been entirely uninteresting to the western media, but strangely
they have sent Washington into crisis mode. Of course, no US official
has addressed Hersh’s investigation directly, which might have
drawn attention to it and forced western media to reference it.
Instead Washington has sought to deflect attention from Hersh’s
alternative narrative and shore up the official one through
misdirection. That alone should raise the alarm that we are being
manipulated, not informed.
The
first spoiler, made in the immediate wake of Hersh’s story, were
statements from the Pentagon and White House warning that the US had
evidence Assad was planning yet another chemical attack on his people
and that Washington would respond extremely harshly if he did so.
The US said on Tuesday that it had observed preparations for a possible chemical weapons attack at a Syrian air base allegedly involved in a sarin attack in April following a warning from the White House that the Syrian regime would ‘pay a heavy price’ for further use of the weapons.
And
then on Friday, the second spoiler emerged. Two unnamed diplomats
“confirmed”
that a report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) had found that some of the victims from Khan Sheikhoun
showed signs of poisoning by sarin or sarin-like substances.
There
are obvious reasons to be mightily suspicious of these stories. The
findings of the OPCW were already known and had been discussed for
some time – there was absolutely nothing newsworthy about them.
There
are also well-known problems with the findings. There was no “chain
of custody” – neutral oversight – of the bodies that were
presented to the organisation in Turkey, as Scott Ritter, a former
weapons inspector in Iraq, has noted. Any
number of interested parties could have contaminated the bodies
before they reached the OPCW. For that reason, the OPCW has not
concluded that the Assad regime was responsible for the traces of
sarin. In the world of real news, only such a finding – that Assad
was responsible – should have made the OPCW report interesting
again to the media.
Similarly,
by going public with their threats against Assad, the Pentagon and
White House did not increase the deterrence on Assad, making it less
likely he would use gas in the future. That could have been achieved
much more effectively with private warnings to the Russians, who have
massive leverage over Assad. These new warnings were meant not for
Assad but for western publics, to bolster the official narrative that
Hersh’s investigation had thrown into doubt.
In
fact, the US threats increase, rather than reduce, the chances of a
new chemical weapons attack. Other, anti-Assad actors now have a
strong incentive to use chemical weapons in false-flag operation to
implicate Assad, knowing that the US has committed itself to
intervention. On any reading, the US statements were reckless – or
malicious – in the extreme and likely to bring about the exact
opposite of what they were supposed to achieve.
But
beyond this, there was something even more troubling about these two
stories. That these official claims were published so unthinkingly in
major outlets is bad enough. But what is unconscionable is the
media’s continuing blackout of Hersh’s investigation when it
speaks directly to the two latest news reports.
No
serious journalist could write up either story, according to any
accepted norms of journalistic practice, and not make reference to
Hersh’s claims. They are absolutely relevant to these stories. In
fact, more than that, the intelligence sources he cites are are not
only relevant but are the reason these two stories have been suddenly
propelled to the top of the news agenda.
Any
publication that has covered either the White House-Pentagon threats
or the rehashing of the OPCW report and has not mentioned Hersh’s
revelations is writing nothing less than propaganda in service of a
western foreign policy agenda trying to bring about the illegal
overthrow the Syrian government. And so far that appears to include
every single US and UK mainstream newspaper and TV station.
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