Posts
"No
Nerve Agents" In Douma: OPCW Report Demolishes White House Sarin
Narrative
7
July, 2018
A
preliminary report published Friday by the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no
traces of any nerve agent at
the site of a suspected chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma.
The OPCW report states this unambiguously
as follows:
"No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties."
Compare the newly
published official OPCW findings with the 5-page WhiteHouse assessment released
on April 13th, just days after the alleged attack. Now contradicted
by the new OPCW
findings, the
White House asserted
that sarin was used at Douma,
A significant body of information points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.
Yes,
a real headline: CNN screenshot of coverage of the alleged chemical
attack in April 2018 which we
discussed here.
Firebrand British MP
George Galloway responded as follows moments
after the OPCW's findings were made public:
Was that, was that the news? What about Douma? The chemical weapons attack? The nerve agent bombs that rained down on Douma that took us to the brink of World War 3?
The OPCW have just reported, well two hours ago... There was no nerve gas attack on Douma. There was no nerve agent deployed on Douma. We were taken to World War 3’s brink on a crock. A crock of vile propaganda. Ring any bells?
No Nerve
Agents, Concludes OPCW Report
The
April 7th alleged chemical attack, widely blamed by Western countries
and the media on Assad's forces, resulted in massive US-led
retaliatory airstrikes mostly concentrated on suspected chemical
production facilities in Damascus.
Though at the time both
UN and OPCW officials urged caution in
the rush to blame "animal
Assad" for "using
nerve agents" as
many world headlines breathlessly concluded a
mere moments after videos purporting to show scores of chemical
attack victims first surfaced (and though CW experts themselves
warned that not
a single neutral observer was on the ground to
verify such claims when it happened), the
latest OPCW report flatly contradicts the narrative that quickly
solidified in the mainstream.
#OPCW report on #Douma
"No organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties"opcw.org/news/article/o…#Syria
1/
(Tanya P.)
Nerve
agents like sarin were quickly associated in headlines with
unverified allegations of a chlorine attack, for example in the
following major UK headline a day after the incident: Syrian
government accused
of using nerve agents as
death toll from Douma 'chemical weapons attack' rises.
The pro-opposition Ghouta Media Centre alleged that a helicopter had dropped a barrel bomb containing sarin, and another organisation claimed that a hospital had been hit by a chlorine bomb.
With images of women and children foaming from the mouth and nose circulating on social media, the death toll from Saturday evening’s attack on the town was said to have risen to at least 49, with some observers saying more than 150 people have been killed.
This as the White House
said it had "very high confidence" the Syrian government
carried out the attack, basing its assessment, as MSNBC reported at
the time, in part on
the following: "blood
and urine samples obtained by the U.S. from victims of the chemical
strike tested positive for chlorine gas and
a nerve agent."
The 5-page White House
assessment released on April 13th asserted that sarin was used at
Douma, something
now contradicted by the OPCW:
A significant body of information points to the regime using chlorine in its bombardment of Duma, while some additional information points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.
Media
Headlines Debunked
Throughout April and
subsequent months, journalists and pundits continued to
connect the suffering of victims in Douma with the deadly sarin nerve
agent,
as one NPR piece with the emotionally gripping headline, Syrian
7-Year-Old: 'I Want To Be A Doctor So I Can Help In A Chemical
Attack',
suggested: "The
U.S. says it's highly confident that evidence points to the use of
chlorine and possibly a
nerve agent, perhaps sarin."
The White House began
building its case against Assad upon this
mysterious blood and urine "data",
ultimately leading to President Trump unleashing over
100 tomahawk missiles on Damascus, was nowhere
to be found in the OPCW's findings released Friday.
Here's CNN
reporting in the days after events at Douma:
CNN's @drsanjaygupta: Sarin gas acts like a "pesticide on humans ... this is something that is extremely lethal, something that works really fast" cnn.it/2Hz6hhs
But
again, Friday's OPCW preliminary report, which unlike most others
among its assessments included a verified
full OPCW chain of custody for most
samples as its investigators actually studied the site (notably, the
April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun alleged CW attack
site was never visited
by investigators), reads as
follows:
OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.
You remember straight after Skripal attack a huge neo-con push to bomb Syria due to alleged nerve agent attack on jihadi held Douma? Before Robert Fisk arrived and found it untrue? Now OPCW confirm no nerve agent. Some chlorine compounds found but origin and significance unclear.
"Chlorinated
Organic Chemicals" But No Chlorine Confirmation
Interestingly, headlines
are now making much of the mention of "various chlorinated
organic chemicals" — with Reuters for
example emphasizing, Chemical
weapons agency finds 'chlorinated' chemicals in Syria's Douma.
The word "chlorine"
is only used twice in the
OPCW interim report,
both in characterizations of social media and does not contain any
declaration "confirming" chlorine allegations, in spite of
current media reports wrongly suggesting the OPCW has found victims
at Douma that died from chlorine exposure.
Apparently
both Reuters and
the BBC were
forced to quickly correct their reporting of Friday's OPCW document,
as both initially claimed that OPCW investigators confirmed chlorine
used at Douma, whereas the document reads various
chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two
sites (Reuters
issued the
following correction: Corrects
to “various chlorinated organic chemicals” instead of chlorine;
and the BBC changed
its headline from
"chlorine gas" to "possible chlorine").
The "various chlorinated organic chemicals" are unsurprising. Chlorine is widely used for water purification and cleaning and "chlorinated organic chemicals" will be found in any household.
In the technical notes of the OPCW report note that one of its laboratory found "Dichloroacetic acid", "trichloroacetic acid", "chloral hydrate", "trichlorophenol" and "chlorphenol" in some of the samples its fact finding mission took at the claimed incident sites. These are all substances that are no surprise in any upbuild environment and especially within any home. Dichloroacetic acid" is for example "a trace product of the chlorination of drinking water". Chloral hydrate is likewise "a minor side-product of the chlorination of water when organic residues such as humic acids are present". The other substances are also not uncommon and of various household uses.
And
importantly, the interim report does not include indications of
quantities or concentrations in which these common substances were
found, making it impossible to conclude further whether they were
part of a chemical attack or were weaponized.
Instead, listed
repeatedly throughout the
technical notes of samples taken is "No
chemicals relevant to CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention] have been
found."
interim OPCW Fact Finding Mission report is outopcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW…
Multiple tables, two lines shown below. All sample negative: "No nerve agent related chemicals detected." "No chemicals relevant to CWC have been found".
US-UK-Fr claims about sarin appear to be fraudulent.
The
OPCW report for example, concludes of a separate alleged chemical
attack site in
the same report: "the
FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] cannot
confidently determine whether or not a specific chemical was used as
a weapon in the
incidents that took place in the neighbourhood of Al-Hamadaniyah and
in the area of Karm al-Tarrab."
"Non-persistant,
irritating substance"
The report did have this
interesting line, however: "The
FFM noted that the persons affected in the reported incidents may, in
some instances, have been exposed
to some type of non-persistent, irritating substance."
This appears consistent
with sources we highlighted in Famed
War Reporter Robert Fisk Reaches Syrian 'Chemical Attack' Site,
Concludes "They Were Not Gassed" —
sources which suggested, as one doctor interviewed by Robert Fisk in
Douma testified, that "the
patients... were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation" due
to conventional weapons landing on or near an underground shelter in
which civilians were hiding.
Fisk identified the
doctor by name — Dr. Assim Rahaibani — which is notable
given the fact that all early reporting from Douma typically relied
on "unnamed doctors" and anonymous opposition sources for
early claims of a chlorine gas attack (which had quickly morphed
into an unverified "mixed" chlorine-and-sarin attack).
Fisk detailed the Syrian
doctor's testimony for The
Independent. The
doctor was adamant in his emphasis that civilians were suffocating en
masse, and
were not gassed:
“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night–but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia–not gas poisoning.”
Major
pro-rebel outlet said 'mass asphyxiation' after shelter collapse
The doctor's testimony
was consistent with that of the
well-known Syrian opposition group Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights (SOHR), which
initially reported based on its own pro-rebel sourcing that
heavy government bombardment of Douma city resulted in the
collapse of homes and underground shelters, causing civilians in
hiding to suffocate.
According to SOHR,
which has long been a key go-to source for mainstream media over the
course of the war, "70
of them [women and children] have suffered suffocation as a result of
the demolition of home basements over them due to the heavy and
intense shelling."
Though outlets from The
Guardian to The
Washington Post to The
New York Times had
quoted SOHR on a near daily basis throughout the pior six years of
war, the anti-Assad opposition outlet's reporting of
mass asphyxiation due to collapse of shelters remained notably
absent from the same publications.
Though
the mass asphyxiation theory is speculation at this point (we weren't
there and neither were the hundreds of journalists claiming while
writing from hundreds or thousands of miles outside Syria that "Assad
gassed his own people"), it will be interesting to see what the
future full and complete OPCW report includes.
But at least at this
still somewhat early point in what will likely be a continued lengthy
investigation, we
have absolute scientific confirmation from the OPCW that the White
House once again lied us into bombing yet another Middle East country
based on spurious "nerve agent" claims.
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