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View Full Version : Where's the Proof? -- Trump Withholds Syria-Sarin Evidence




charrob
04-12-2017, 10:19 PM
Exclusive: Despite President Trump’s well-known trouble with the truth, his White House now says “trust us” on its Syrian-sarin charges while withholding the proof that it claims to have, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

After making the provocative and dangerous charge that Russia is covering up Syria’s use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration withheld key evidence to support its core charge that a Syrian warplane dropped sarin on a northern Syrian town on April 4.

A four-page white paper, prepared by President Trump’s National Security Council staff and released by the White House on Tuesday, claimed that U.S. intelligence has proof that the plane carrying the sarin gas left from the Syrian military airfield that Trump ordered hit by Tomahawk missiles on April 6.

The paper asserted that “we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence,” but then added that “we cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods.”

I’m told that the key evidence was satellite surveillance of the area, a body of material that U.S. intelligence analysts were reviewing late last week even after the Trump-ordered bombardment of 59 Tomahawk missiles that, according to Syrian media reports, killed seven or eight Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children.

Yet, it is unclear why releasing these overhead videos would be so detrimental to “sources and methods” since everyone knows the U.S. has this capability and the issue at hand – if it gets further out of hand – could lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

In similarly tense situations in the past, U.S. Presidents have released sensitive intelligence to buttress U.S. government assertions, including John F. Kennedy’s disclosure of U-2 spy flights in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan revealing electronic intercepts after the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983.

Yet, in this current case, as U.S.-Russian relations spiral downward into what is potentially an extermination event for the human species, Trump’s White House insists that the world must trust it despite its record of consistently misstating facts.

In the case of the April 4 chemical-weapons incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which reportedly killed scores of people including young children, I was told that initially the U.S. analysts couldn’t see any warplanes over the area in Idlib province at the suspected time of the poison gas attack but later they detected a drone that they thought might have delivered the bomb.

A Drone Mystery

According to a source, the analysts struggled to identify whose drone it was and where it originated. Despite some technical difficulties in tracing its flight path, analysts eventually came to believe that the flight was launched in Jordan from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebels, the source said, adding that the suspected reason for the poison gas was to create an incident that would reverse the Trump administration’s announcement in late March that it was no longer seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.

If indeed that was the motive — and if the source’s information is correct — the operation would have been successful, since the Trump administration has now reversed itself and is pressing Russia to join in ousting Assad who is getting blamed for the latest chemical-weapons incident.

Presumably, however, the “geospatial intelligence” cited in the four-page dossier could disprove this and other contentions if the Trump administration would only make its evidence publicly available.

The dossier stated, “Our information indicates that the chemical agent was delivered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing aircraft that took off from the regime-controlled Shayrat Airfield. These aircraft were in the vicinity of Khan Shaykhun approximately 20 minutes before reports of the chemical attack began and vacated the area shortly after the attack.”

So, that would mean – assuming that the dossier is correct – that U.S. intelligence analysts were able to trace the delivery of the poison gas to Assad’s aircraft and to the airfield that Trump ordered attacked on April 6.

Still, it remains a mystery why this intelligence assessment is not coming directly from President Trump’s intelligence chiefs as is normally the case, either with an official Intelligence Estimate or a report issued by the Director of National Intelligence.

The White House photo released late last week showing the President and a dozen senior advisers monitoring the April 6 missile strike from a room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was noteworthy in that neither CIA Director Mike Pompeo nor Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was in the frame.

Now, it is the White House that has released the four-page dossier supposedly summing up the assessment of the “intelligence community.”

An Argumentative Dossier

The dossier also seems argumentative in that it assumes that Russian officials – and presumably others – who have suggested different possible explanations for the incident at Khan Sheikdoun did so in a willful cover-up, when any normal investigation seeks to evaluate different scenarios before settling on one.

It is common amid the “fog of war” for people outside the line of command – and even sometimes inside the line of command – to not understand what happened and to struggle for an explanation.

On April 6, before Trump’s missile strike, I and others received word from U.S. military intelligence officials in the Middle East that they, too, shared the belief that the poison gas may have resulted from a conventional bombing raid that ruptured containers stored by the rebels, who – in Idlib province – are dominated by Al Qaeda’s affiliate and its allies.

Those reports were cited by former U.S. intelligence officials, including more than two dozen who produced a memo to President Trump urging him to undertake a careful investigation of the incident before letting this crisis exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations.

The memo said “our U.S. Army contacts in the area” were disputing the official story of a chemical weapons attack. “Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died,” the memo said.

In other words, to suggest possible alternative scenarios is not evidence of a “cover-up,” even if the theories are later shown to be erroneous. It is the normal process of sorting through often conflicting initial reports.

Even in the four-page dossier, Trump’s NSC officials contradicted what other U.S. government sources have told The New York Times and other mainstream news outlets about the Syrian government’s supposed motive for launching the chemical-weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

According to the earlier accounts, the Syrian government either was trying to terrorize the population in a remote rebel-controlled area or was celebrating its impunity after the Trump administration had announced that it was no longer seeking Assad’s removal.

But the dossier said, “We assess that Damascus launched this chemical attack in response to an opposition offensive in northern Hamah Province that threatened key infrastructure.” Although Khan Sheikhoun was not near the fighting, the dossier presented the town as an area of support for the offensive.

Assuming this assessment is correct, does that mean that the earlier explanations were part of a cover-up or a propaganda operation? The reality is that in such complex situations, the analyses should continue to be refined as more information becomes available. It should not be assumed that every false lead or discarded theory is proof of a “cover-up,” yet that is what we see here.

“The Syrian regime and its primary backer, Russia, have sought to confuse the world community about who is responsible for using chemical weapons against the Syrian people in this and earlier attacks,” the dossier declared.

But the larger point is that – given President Trump’s spotty record for getting facts straight – he and his administration should go the extra mile in presenting irrefutable evidence to support its assessments, not simply insisting that the world must “trust us.”

[In a separate analysis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Postol, a national security specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concluded that the White House claims were clearly bogus, writing:

“I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

“In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4. This conclusion is based on an assumption made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin release and the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White House.”]


https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/12/trump-withholds-syria-sarin-evidence/

Brian4Liberty
04-12-2017, 10:45 PM
Proof will be hard to find in the midst of many players, all with a history of lying, where false flags, accidents, exaggerations, fictional stories and straight forward attacks all have about the same probability.

The truth is out there, but the fact is that we, the vast majority of people, will never, ever know the truth. Lies can be uncovered, but that would still not mean that the truth is revealed.

For example, imagine that a couple of local teenagers conducted a science experiment of their own, and only they know the truth. You can guarantee that the rest of the world would be positive of their erroneous, and usually agenda serving explanations.

shakey1
04-13-2017, 05:56 AM
Proof???... we don't need no stinking proof.;)

Jan2017
04-13-2017, 10:10 AM
Proof???... we don't need no stinking proof.;)

Just saw this . . . I guess one would go to CNN for the fake news (?)

US intelligence officials have intercepted communications that feature Syrian soldiers preparing for last week's chemical attack
that left 86 people dead, including at least 27 children.

The Syrian government forces were caught on the intercepts consulting chemical experts just hours before the sarin nerve agent attack
on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, a senior US official told CNN.

The official explained the US did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4408292/US-intercepted-Syrian-communications-gas-attack.html

merkelstan
04-13-2017, 10:16 AM
From people who have never lied anyone into war? haha?

klamath
04-13-2017, 10:19 AM
Just saw this . . . I guess one would go to CNN for the fake news (?)

US intelligence officials have intercepted communications that feature Syrian soldiers preparing for last week's chemical attack
that left 86 people dead, including at least 27 children.

The Syrian government forces were caught on the intercepts consulting chemical experts just hours before the sarin nerve agent attack
on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, a senior US official told CNN.

The official explained the US did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4408292/US-intercepted-Syrian-communications-gas-attack.html


Where are the transcripts???????????? Someone telling us they intercepted something doesn't cut it. Powell told us they intercepted the Iraqis talking about WMDs as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jan2017
04-13-2017, 10:50 AM
Someone telling us they intercepted something doesn't cut it. Powell told us they intercepted the Iraqis talking about WMDs as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trust the MIC-run government about 'as far as' you could throw them.

Zippyjuan
04-13-2017, 11:19 AM
China breaks its support of Russia on Syria by not vetoing resolution condemning Syrian gas attack. Until this week, China had consistently joined Russia in vetoing any resolutions on Syria. Russia was the lone veto. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/12/un-draft-resolution-on-syria-attack-vote-fails-with-russia-veto-china-abstains.html China urging political solution to Syrian crisis. Permanent members of the Security Council have veto power.


UN draft resolution on Syria attack: Vote fails with Russia veto, China abstains

A vote by the U.N. Security council on a draft resolution to condemn the chemical weapon attack in Syria failed Wednesday with a veto by Russia, but fellow member China abstained, a sign that talks with President Trump last week may have had an effect on the superpower.

The draft resolution by Britain, France and the United States called for those responsible for the attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 to be identified and brought to justice.

The resolution garnered 10 votes in favor, Russia and Bolivia against, and China, Kazakhstan and Ethiopia abstaining.

"With its veto, Russia said no to accountability," said U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

"Russia once again has chosen to side with Assad, even as the rest of the world, overwhelmingly comes together to condemn this murderous regime," she added.

At a press conference with secretary-general of NATO, President Donald Trump praised China for abstaining from the U.N. resolution. China usually sides with Russia in the Security Council, so the move to abstain represented a significant shift for Beijing.

Trump said it was "wonderful" that China abstained and the U.S. was "honored by that vote," which came after he met last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the two spoke by phone Tuesday night.

The president said he's "very impressed" with Xi, adding he thought he means well and wants to help.

Trump added that it was "certainly possible but probably unlikely," that Russia knew in advance of Syrian chemical weapons attack.

The final draft of the resolution included a paragraph that the Russians objected to last week, which stressed Syria's requirement to provide investigators with flight plans and information about air operations on April 4 when Khan Sheikhoun was attacked, names of helicopter squadron commanders, and immediate access to air bases where they believe an attack may have been launched.

CaptUSA
04-13-2017, 11:41 AM
UN Draft Resolutions are really, really, really Strongly Worded Letters.

CPUd
04-13-2017, 04:05 PM
It was Assad, believe me!

dannno
04-13-2017, 04:08 PM
China breaks its support of Russia on Syria by not vetoing resolution condemning Syrian gas attack. Until this week, China had consistently joined Russia in vetoing any resolutions on Syria. Russia was the lone veto. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/12/un-draft-resolution-on-syria-attack-vote-fails-with-russia-veto-china-abstains.html China urging political solution to Syrian crisis. Permanent members of the Security Council have veto power.

Who do you think carried out the chemical weapons attack?

Dr.3D
04-13-2017, 04:12 PM
It was Assad, believe me!
Well, of course, they keep telling us that on the television. We know the people on the television never lie.

charrob
04-13-2017, 04:29 PM
MIT Rocket Scientist: White House Claims on Syria Chemical Attack “Cannot Be True” (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/66712.html)

One of the world’s leading rocket scientists, national security advisor and MIT Professor Theodore Postol, who has won awards for debunking claims about missile defense systems and has been a scientific adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations, says today in a nine-page report (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Vs2rjE9TdwR2F3NFFVWDExMnc/view)that a four-page report released by the Trump administration yesterday intended to blame the recent chemical attack in Syria on the Syrian government “does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack”.

Postol notes the “only source the document cites as evidence that the attack was by the Syrian government is the crater” left by a munition.

Postol located the crater via satellite and examined it himself, concluding it reveals “absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a munition designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft”.

The “data cited by the White House”, he says, “is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane.” He says the evidence indicates that a tube of chemical agent was placed on the ground in the al Qaeda held area and then an explosive was placed on top of that and detonated, dispersing the chemical agent.

Trump’s claim that a chemical weapon was dropped from a plane is “erroneous”, and “no competent analyst” could avoid that conclusion.

Regarding a similar chemical attack in 2013, Postol notes the “Obama White House also issued an intelligence report containing obvious inaccuracies” (which are detailed in the report). While Obama initially blamed Assad for the attack, he received a briefing casting doubt on Assad’s guilt and, unlike Trump, refrained from launching an illegal attack at that time (though he continued illegally supporting proxy forces).

Postol notes that both the initial report blaming Assad made by the Obama White House and the one today by the Trump White House are “obviously false, misleading and amateurish” and may reflect politicization, similar, says Postol, to the way the W. Bush administration politicized ‘intelligence’ that was used to falsely claim ‘certainty’ that Saddam Husssein was stockpiling WMD in Iraq.

Award-winning journalist Robert Parry has noted evidence (https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/where-was-cias-pompeo-on-syria/) that Trump, like W. Bush, is simply excluding from meetings people he knows have information he doesn’t want to hear.


That made me wonder whether perhaps my original source did know something. The claim was that CIA Director Pompeo had briefed Trump personally on the analysts’ assessment that Assad’s forces were not responsible, but – then with Pompeo sidelined – Trump conveyed his own version of the intelligence to his senior staff.

In other words, the other officials didn’t get the direct word from Pompeo but rather received a second-hand account from the President, the source said. Did Trump choose to rely on the smug certainty from the TV shows and the mainstream news media that Assad was guilty, rather than the contrary view of U.S. intelligence analysts?

After the attack, Secretary of State Tillerson, who is not an institutional intelligence official and has little experience with the subtleties of intelligence, was the one to claim that the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.

While Tillerson’s comment meshed with Official Washington’s hastily formed groupthink of Assad’s guilt, it is hard to believe that CIA analysts would have settled on such a firm conclusion so quickly, especially given the remote location of the incident and the fact that the initial information was coming from pro-rebel (or Al Qaeda) sources.

Thus, a serious question arises whether President Trump did receive that “high degree of confidence” assessment from the intelligence community or whether he shunted Pompeo aside to eliminate an obstacle to his desire to launch the April 6 rocket attack.

If so, such a dangerous deception more than anything else we’ve seen in the first two-plus months of the Trump administration would be grounds for impeachment – ignoring the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community so the President could carry out a politically popular (albeit illegal) missile strike that killed Syrians.

Postol concludes his report by noting this is a “very serious matter” and “what the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true”.



The following is the report by MIT Rocket Scientist Theodore A. Postol: (http://www.unz.com/article/the-nerve-agent-attack-in-khan-shaykhun-syria/)



Dear Larry:

I am responding to your distribution of what I understand is a White House statement claiming intelligence findings about the nerve agent attack on April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria. My understanding from your note is that this White House intelligence summary was released to you sometime on April 11, 2017.

I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.

This conclusion is based on an assumption made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin release and the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White House.

However, if one assumes, as does the White House, that the source of the sarin was from this location and that the location was not tampered with, the most plausible conclusion is that the sarin was dispensed by an improvised dispersal device made from a 122 mm section of rocket tube filled with sarin and capped on both sides.

The only undisputable facts stated in the White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve agent occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria on that morning. Although the White House statement repeats this point in many places within its report, the report contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft. In fact, the report contains absolutely no evidence that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this atrocity.

The report instead repeats observations of physical effects suffered by victims that with very little doubt indicate nerve agent poisoning.

The only source the document cites as evidence that the attack was by the Syrian government is the crater it claims to have identified on a road in the North of Khan Shaykhun.

I have located this crater using Google Earth and there is absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a munition designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft.

The Google Earth map shown in Figure 1 at the end of this text section shows the location of that crater on the road in the north of Khan Shaykhun, as described in the White House statement.

The data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane. This conclusion assumes that the crater was not tampered with prior to the photographs. However, by referring to the munition in this crater, the White House is indicating that this is the erroneous source of the data it used to conclude that the munition came from a Syrian aircraft.

Analysis of the debris as shown in the photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin.

Since time appears to be of the essence here, I have put together the summary of the evidence I have that the White House report contains false and misleading conclusions in a series of figures that follow this discussion. Each of the figures has a description below it, but I will summarize these figures next and wait for further inquiries about the basis of the conclusions I am putting forward herein.

Figure 1 shows a Google Earth image of the northeast corner of Khan Shaykhun where the crater identified as the source of the sarin attack and referred to in the White House intelligence report is located.

Also shown in the Google Earth image is the direction of the wind from the crater. At 3 AM the wind was going directly to the south at a speed of roughly 1.5 to 2.5 m/s. By 6 AM the wind was moving to the southeast at 1 to 2 m/s. The temperature was also low, 50 to 55°F near the ground. These conditions are absolutely ideal for a nerve agent attack.

When the temperature near the ground is low, and there is no sun and very slow winds, the dense cool air stays close to the ground and there is almost no upward motion of the air. This condition causes any particles, droplets, or clouds of dispersed gas to stay close to the ground as the surrounding air moves over the ground. We perceive this motion as a gentle breeze on a calm morning before sunrise.

One can think of a cloud of sarin as much like a cloud of ink generated by an escaping octopus. The ink cloud sits in the water and as the water slowly moves, so does the cloud. As the cloud is moved along by the water, it will slowly spread in all directions as it moves. If the layer of water where the ink is embedded moves so as to stay close to the ocean floor, the cloud will cover objects as it moves with the water.

This is the situation that occurs on a cool night before sunrise when the winds move only gently.

Figures 5 and 6 show tables that summarize the weather at 3 hour intervals in Khan Shaykun on the day of the attack, April 4, the day before the attack, April 3, and the day after the attack, April 5. The striking feature of the weather is that there were relatively high winds in the morning hours on both April 3 and April 5. If the gas attack were executed either the day before or the day after in the early morning, the attack would have been highly ineffective. The much higher winds would have dispersed the cloud of nerve agent and the mixing of winds from higher altitudes would have caused the nerve agent to be carried aloft from the ground. It is therefore absolutely clear that the time and day of the attack was carefully chosen and was no accident.

Figure 2 shows a high quality photograph of the crater identified in the White House report as the source of the sarin attack. Assuming that there was no tampering of evidence at the crater, one can see what the White House is claiming as a dispenser of the nerve agent.

The dispenser looks like a 122 mm pipe like that used in the manufacture of artillery rockets.

As shown in the close-up of the pipe in the crater in Figure 3, the pipe looks like it was originally sealed at the front end and the back end. Also of note is that the pipe is flattened into the crater, and also has a fractured seam that was created by the brittle failure of the metal skin when the pipe was suddenly crushed inward from above.

Figure 4 shows the possible configuration of an improvised sarin dispersal device that could have been used to create the crater and the crushed carcass of what was originally a cylindrical pipe. A good guess of how this dispersal mechanism worked (again, assuming that the crater and carcass were not staged, as assumed in the White House report) was that a slab of high explosive was placed over one end of the sarin-filled pipe and detonated.

The explosive acted on the pipe as a blunt crushing mallet. It drove the pipe into the ground while at the same time creating the crater. Since the pipe was filled with sarin, which is an incompressible fluid, as the pipe was flattened the sarin acted on the walls and ends of the pipe causing a crack along the length of the pipe and also the failure of the cap on the back end. This mechanism of dispersal is essentially the same as hitting a toothpaste tube with a large mallet, which then results in the tube failing and the toothpaste being blown in many directions depending on the exact way the toothpaste skin ruptures.

If this is in fact the mechanism used to disperse the sarin, this indicates that the sarin tube was placed on the ground by individuals on the ground and not dropped from an airplane.

Figure 8 shows the improvised sarin dispenser along with a typical 122 mm artillery rocket and the modified artillery rocket used in the sarin attack of August 21, 2013 in Damascus.

At that time (August 30, 2013) the Obama White House also issued an intelligence report containing obvious inaccuracies. For example, that report stated without equivocation that the sarin carrying artillery rocket used in Damascus had been fired from Syrian government controlled areas. As it turned out, the particular munition used in that attack could not go further than roughly 2 km, very far short of any boundary controlled by the Syrian government at that time. The White House report at that time also contained other critical and important errors that might properly be described as amateurish. For example, the report claimed that the locations of the launch and impact of points of the artillery rockets were observed by US satellites. This claim was absolutely false and any competent intelligence analyst would have known that. The rockets could be seen from the Space-Based Infrared Satellite (SBIRS) but the satellite could absolutely not see the impact locations because the impact locations were not accompanied by explosions. These errors were clear indicators that the White House intelligence report had in part been fabricated and had not been vetted by competent intelligence experts.

This same situation appears to be the case with the current White House intelligence report. No competent analyst would assume that the crater cited as the source of the sarin attack was unambiguously an indication that the munition came from an aircraft. No competent analyst would assume that the photograph of the carcass of the sarin canister was in fact a sarin canister. Any competent analyst would have had questions about whether the debris in the crater was staged or real. No competent analyst would miss the fact that the alleged sarin canister was forcefully crushed from above, rather than exploded by a munition within it. All of these highly amateurish mistakes indicate that this White House report, like the earlier Obama White House Report, was not properly vetted by the intelligence community as claimed.

I have worked with the intelligence community in the past, and I have grave concerns about the politicization of intelligence that seems to be occurring with more frequency in recent times – but I know that the intelligence community has highly capable analysts in it. And if those analysts were properly consulted about the claims in the White House document they would have not approved the document going forward.

I am available to expand on these comments substantially. I have only had a few hours to quickly review the alleged White House intelligence report. But a quick perusal shows without a lot of analysis that this report cannot be correct, and it also appears that this report was not properly vetted by the intelligence community.

This is a very serious matter.

President Obama was initially misinformed about supposed intelligence evidence that Syria was the perpetrator of the August 21, 2013 nerve agent attack in Damascus. This is a matter of public record. President Obama stated that his initially false understanding was that the intelligence clearly showed that Syria was the source of the nerve agent attack. This false information was corrected when the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, interrupted the President while he was in an intelligence briefing. According to President Obama, Mr. Clapper told the President that the intelligence that Syria was the perpetrator of the attack was “not a slamdunk.”

The question that needs to be answered by our nation is how was the president initially misled about such a profoundly important intelligence finding? A second equally important question is how did the White House produce an intelligence report that was obviously flawed and amateurish that was then released to the public and never corrected? The same false information in the intelligence report issued by the White House on August 30, 2013 was emphatically provided by Secretary of State John Kerry in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee!

We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report.

The Congress and the public have been given reports in the name of the intelligence community about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, technical evidence supposedly collected by satellite systems that any competent scientists would know is false, and now from photographs of the crater that any analyst who has any competence at all would not trust as evidence.

It is late in the evening for me, so I will end my discussion here.

I stand ready to provide the country with any analysis and help that is within my power to supply. What I can say for sure herein is that what the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true and the fact that this information has been provided in this format raises the most serious questions about the handling of our national security.

Sincerely yours,

Theodore A. Postol

Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: postol@mit.edu
Cell Phone: 617 543-7646

Click here to link to above article showing all the additional diagrams, figures, appendices, and addendums as described above and which further explain the professor's work.
(http://www.unz.com/article/the-nerve-agent-attack-in-khan-shaykhun-syria/)

DamianTV
04-13-2017, 04:47 PM
Proof will be hard to find in the midst of many players, all with a history of lying, where false flags, accidents, exaggerations, fictional stories and straight forward attacks all have about the same probability.

The truth is out there, but the fact is that we, the vast majority of people, will never, ever know the truth. Lies can be uncovered, but that would still not mean that the truth is revealed.

For example, imagine that a couple of local teenagers conducted a science experiment of their own, and only they know the truth. You can guarantee that the rest of the world would be positive of their erroneous, and usually agenda serving explanations.

+Rep

Every major conflict in the 20th century started with a False Flag, and it is only discovered later that they were.

Lusatania, Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11, do these ring any bells?

charrob
04-13-2017, 06:12 PM
Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute:



Why won't the U.S. release the signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence proving that this fighter [jet] had a chemical bomb in it that it dropped? Why won't they put forth this evidence? Instead it relies on what they call "social media" and "observers on the ground". Well that part of Syria is controlled by al qaeda and the observers they are talking about are the "White Helmets" which is an extraordinarily dubious organization funded by the United States Government. --Hardly objective.

[...]

It looks like 'Amateur Hour' for the U.S.: The U.S. is the 800 pound bully that is going around wrecking things. You don't change policy on a dime over an event that you can't provide any proof that even occurred.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB-XiKHJIds



At minute 6:43 in the above video the RT Reporter states:



"Another sticking point on Syria that remains is Tillerson steadfast on knowing the Syrian government was responsible for that alleged chemical weapon's attack in Idlib province last week despite no evidence being revealed to support that conclusion. On this Sergey Lavrov re-asserted that there was no U.N. investigation results to support this claim as yet."

Tillerson: [...]

Lavrov: "I can only confirm, once again, that just like with so-called Russian hackers, we'd like to get factual evidence regarding "chemical incidents" in Syria without numerous claims."


In the following video which contains the entire Tillerson/Lavrov Press Conference, the Russian translator translated Lavrov's last statement a little differently, instead saying:


Lavrov: "I can only say, once again, that just like the case of the so-called Russian hackers, with the chemical incidents in Syria -- we would very much like to get some concrete evidence -- not just words. So far we have not seen any facts."



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-El3F_1xDz8

If you don't want to listen to the entire press conference in the above video, here is the part of the video where that last line plays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-El3F_1xDz8&t=48m13s

This proves without any doubt that Tillerson, in his visit to Putin/Lavrov in Moscow, shared no U.S. "evidence" that confirms Assad was behind the chemical attack. Tillerson gave the Russians nothing but words.

Here's one more part of the press conference which may be worth noting:



Above video at minute 21:58: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-El3F_1xDz8&t=21m58s

Lavrov:
"All the accusations against the Syrian Arab Republic's Government of having used the chemical weapons, all these accusations are based on the so-called remote evidence provided by some [NGOs] - the White Helmets that have discredited themselves on many occasions. They have been found to be guilty of fraud."

"Now as for all the evidence we've got of chemical weapons having been used, in the territory under the control of the opposition. I can say that on many occasions both the Russian armed forces and the Syrian government have provided physical evidence including samples required to conduct an investigation to the OPCW. These were not some "remote evidence"; these were pieces of physical evidence. The study of this material evidence has been dragging on for quite some time. I'm not trying to level accusations at anyone, nor are we trying to exonerate anyone. We just insist that there should be an investigation into what has happened. [...] We believe there should be an international, unbiased and frank investigation into this incident. A group of professionals -- unbiased experts -- has to be dispatched to the place where chemical weapons were used as well as to the airport where --as our American partners say-- was used as the starting point from which took off the planes delivering the chemical weapons."

charrob
04-13-2017, 08:06 PM
Mattis: "Assad Never Used Sarin Gas/Nerve Agent on His People Before Now"

According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3148621/, the Chemical Weapons [CW] agents used in warfare are classified into 7 categories:


Nerve agents
Vesicants (blistering agents)
Bloods agents (cyanogenic agents)
Choking agents (pulmonary agents)
Riot-control agents (tear gases)
Psychomimetic agents
Toxins


Sarin Gas is classified as a 'Nerve Agent'. Chlorine is not a nerve agent, but rather classified as a 'Choking Agent'.

This is important because the MSM (and Trump) continues to blame Assad for the Sarin Attack in East Gouta in 2013 (ie. Obama's "red line"), despite there being volumes of evidence that dispute that claim and which proves the "rebels", backed by Turkish Intelligence, had perpetrated that attack. With this video we have, on record, Mattis stating that Assad had not attacked his own people (prior to the current charge) with a nerve agent such as Sarin. And since the 2013 East Gouta attack (Obama's red line) was an attack perpetrated by specifically using Sarin, this is therefore indirectly an acknowledgement by Mattis that that East Gouta attack had not been perpetrated by Assad. Which completely negates what Trump endlessly wails about regarding 'Obama's red line'.

So in this video, Mattis is completely contradicting his boss, Trump:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slk1eziTcj0

pcosmar
04-13-2017, 09:56 PM
Who do you think carried out the chemical weapons attack?

operatives of the Saudi and Israeli governments (ISIS),, likely with Turkish help.

merkelstan
04-14-2017, 06:00 AM
Did you notice Tillerson, in the photo-ops, kept pulling putin's arm towards his side (symbolic gesture of dominance?)

Galileo Galilei
04-14-2017, 06:01 AM
Anyone who questions the truth in this matter is cozying up to conspiracy theory and puts the entire Ron Paul movement in jeopardy of ridicule.

Jan2017
04-14-2017, 08:29 AM
http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg (http://s1380.photobucket.com/user/81501/media/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)

UN Ambassador Sacha Llorenti of Bolivia at emergency United Nations meeting Friday April 7, 2017
with photo reminder to the council of what transpired on February 5,2003.

osan
04-14-2017, 11:16 AM
Proof will be hard to find in the midst of many players, all with a history of lying, where false flags, accidents, exaggerations, fictional stories and straight forward attacks all have about the same probability.

BINGO.


The truth is out there, but the fact is that we, the vast majority of people, will never, ever know the truth. Lies can be uncovered, but that would still not mean that the truth is revealed.

BINGO^2

My latest understanding is that the Pentagon released the flight path of the plane that administered the gas. Whether this is true, I don't know. Whether what the Pentagon is alleged to have released is true, I am equally in the dark.

That all said, we have no business in that business.

That said, there is a practical reason for doing what Trump has done. It is not pretty and normatively speaking it is abhorrent, but may still be necessary if certain outcomes are to be avoided.

Obama left us in horrible shape in terms of foreign policy. One would have thought he could not have brought us any lower than Bush^2 had, and yet the talented gay hooker from Indonesia managed to surprise the rational men of the world. Trump inherits the stink of Obama and has a choice to make in the face of a world whose first priority will be to poke and prod the new president to test his mettle. Trump, therefore, has a choice: show the world he has a pair or not. While I prefer the latter, I am not sure it is the wisest choice.

The positive world is not out normative world. It is shit.

charrob
04-14-2017, 02:02 PM
Proof will be hard to find in the midst of many players, all with a history of lying, where false flags, accidents, exaggerations, fictional stories and straight forward attacks all have about the same probability. [...] The truth is out there, but the fact is that we, the vast majority of people, will never, ever know the truth. Lies can be uncovered, but that would still not mean that the truth is revealed.
BINGO.
BINGO^2


I also agree with Brian that we may never know the truth. The reason i created the thread was just to get all the current information i could find out there before people forget about it. There possibly could be additional things to add to this thread if future whistleblowers come forth or anything is learned by the U.N. investigation. And it was important to get on record that Mattis actually admitted before this current alleged attack by Assad, that Assad had not before used Sarin or a nerve agent on his own people.


My latest understanding is that the Pentagon released the flight path of the plane that administered the gas. Whether this is true, I don't know. Whether what the Pentagon is alleged to have released is true, I am equally in the dark.

This is an important point. I also read this a few days ago. However what the article i read pointed out was that while the satellite imaging/geospatial analysis can show the flight path of a plane and/or it's rockets/missiles, it does not have the capability of identifying whether or not there is a chemical weapon being carried by that plane/rocket/missile. I don't know what the U.S. geospatial capabilities are, and the government isn't telling us anything. Do you know if the U.S. actually has the capability of telling whether a rocket contains chemical weapons?




That all said, we have no business in that business.

That's exactly how i feel. Even if Assad did this my view is to point blank stop all U.S. intervention overseas. It is the U.S. intervention with the endless U.S. military/cia training of jihadists, U.S. giving weapons to jihadists [Al Qaeda Is Attacking Major Syrian Cities with US Weapons — but You Wouldn't Know That from the Media (http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/tahrir-al-sham-al-qaeda-syria-hama-damascus-media#.WOBAVIYjLWQ.twitter)], and U.S. funding of jihadists that has caused Syria to break apart and hundreds of thousands of innocents to lose their lives. Additionally there was no ISIS in Syria before the U.S. intervened. According to Kucinich who wrote an article on the RonPaulInstitute site, __90__ countries are now fighting inside Syria, [I've read previously that this includes thousands of Chinese Uighers and Chechens who are living in the previous homes of Syrians who have escaped the country and are now refugees]. What the U.S. has done to that country is sick.

Nevertheless with regard to Assad, with seemingly no solid proof given to us by the U.S. government, it can't harm, and may help, by just trying to accumulate and compile any new facts and understandings of the attack that come about. There's nothing that angers me more than a witch hunt and masses of the stupid populace jumping on the MSM/U.S. government witch-hunt train because it's the easy choice rather than doing the hard work of a thorough honest investigation.

Also, the endless lies being spewed by the MSM and Sean Spicer that chemical weapons have not been used since WW1 is sickening. The U.S. and Reagan sold Saddam chemical weapons even after Reagan knew Saddam gassed and killed 5,000 kurds with those weapons: Reagan's excuse? "We have to kill the Iranians."





How Did Iraq Get Its WMD? - We Sold Them To Saddam
By Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
The Sunday Herald - UK
9-6-2

The US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.

Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.

The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.

The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.

Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.'

Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.

It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.sundayherald.com/27572

link: http://rense.com/general29/wesold.htm





That said, there is a practical reason for doing what Trump has done. It is not pretty and normatively speaking it is abhorrent, but may still be necessary if certain outcomes are to be avoided. Obama left us in horrible shape in terms of foreign policy. One would have thought he could not have brought us any lower than Bush^2 had, and yet the talented gay hooker from Indonesia managed to surprise the rational men of the world. Trump inherits the stink of Obama and has a choice to make in the face of a world whose first priority will be to poke and prod the new president to test his mettle. Trump, therefore, has a choice: show the world he has a pair or not. While I prefer the latter, I am not sure it is the wisest choice. The positive world is not out normative world. It is $#@!.

I agree Obama left U.S. foreign policy a mess. But i would argue it is far more courageous in fighting the deep state (like Tulsi Gabbard is doing despite people like Howard Dean insisting she resign) than dropping bombs on people. Dropping bombs on people is yellow and weak and irresponsible and lazy. It takes hard work to solve crisis without force.

osan
04-14-2017, 06:40 PM
I also agree with Brian that we may never know the truth. The reason i created the thread was just to get all the current information i could find out there before people forget about it.

In a world closer to rational I would call it an appropriate effort. In a world gone mad, I am not so sure. Make no mistake about it, the mean world taken as a whole, is gone right 'round the bend.


There possibly could be additional things to add to this thread if future whistleblowers come forth or anything is learned by the U.N. investigation. And it was important to get on record that Mattis actually admitted before this current alleged attack by Assad, that Assad had not before used Sarin or a nerve agent on his own people.


To what end? Look at the explosive things Wikileaks released. About the most it accomplished, if we can even credit such information with the result, was the defeat of Hillary Clinton. The world has changed no iota, save perhaps to have gone further into perilous insanity, and Trump remains a question mark. It is remains early, but I am seeing no indication of even the barest movement away from the course heading prior to Jan. 20.


This is an important point. I also read this a few days ago. However what the article i read pointed out was that while the satellite imaging/geospatial analysis can show the flight path of a plane and/or it's rockets/missiles, it does not have the capability of identifying whether or not there is a chemical weapon being carried by that plane/rocket/missile. I don't know what the U.S. geospatial capabilities are, and the government isn't telling us anything. Do you know if the U.S. actually has the capability of telling whether a rocket contains chemical weapons?

I would be surprised if they didn't have the means of reading a weapon's chemical signature, once deployed. Explosives, certainly. Chemical weapons... perhaps through elimination? Given that on which I have myself worked for a year, almost anything claimed in the way of capability should be taken at least as provisionally plausible. There is a nightmare out there of which most people are wholly unaware. Why it remains "black", I am not certain. Perhaps the automation or other perfection of central control eludes Themme. Were I to guess, it is control that is central to successful use of such tech. All the weaponry in the world avails one nothing if it cannot be controlled properly. If super-duper weapons exist but the people who'd be tasked with their use cannot be trusted to be on board with your apparent political agenda, those weapons become not just useless, but a threat because of the potential for turning them against yourself. This is why AI is so endlessly critical to Theire ultimate success: it can be programmed to perfect obedience. Once that is perfected as well as the hardware for making it effective in the real world, liberty will be 100% defeated. It will no longer matter what survived in men's hearts; perfectly obedient machinery will be their watchers.

But I digress.


That's exactly how i feel. Even if Assad did this my view is to point blank stop all U.S. intervention overseas.

That is my normative position. I am not sure of my practical view precisely because of my deep ignorance of the reality. I trust nothing from media, MSM or otherwise. My little brother knows shit we all wish we knew, but cannot speak of it. Despite his state of immense connectedness into all of the world's top intelligence, I am not convinced he has the full and true picture of the politics. Anyone can be fooled, even him.


Nevertheless with regard to Assad, with seemingly no solid proof given to us by the U.S. government, it can't harm, and may help,

That's the bit of which I am not sure.


There's nothing that angers me more than a witch hunt and masses of the stupid populace jumping on the MSM/U.S. government witch-hunt train because it's the easy choice rather than doing the hard work of a thorough honest investigation.

Repworthy-doubleplus.


Also, the endless lies being spewed by the MSM and Sean Spicer that chemical weapons have not been used since WW1 is sickening. The U.S. and Reagan sold Saddam chemical weapons even after Reagan knew Saddam gassed and killed 5,000 kurds with those weapons: Reagan's excuse? "We have to kill the Iranians."

It all boggles the mind. I think people go into mental overload and revert into simplistic mode as matters of pure survival.



I agree Obama left U.S. foreign policy a mess. But i would argue it is far more courageous in fighting the deep state (like Tulsi Gabbard is doing despite people like Howard Dean insisting she resign) than dropping bombs on people. Dropping bombs on people is yellow and weak and irresponsible and lazy. It takes hard work to solve crisis without force.

Courage may not be what is needed here. I am not sure what is, but I suspect there are elements in play that render our normative solutions unfeasible.

Great is the mess into which some of us have dragged the world. It reminds me of a lyric fragment from Genesis' "Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". The track "Back In NYC" quips: "this is your mess I'm stuck in, I really don't belong". I suspect there is a vast multiplicity of humans who feel this way. I am one of them, and this is precisely why warrior culture is so necessary, because it is the ONLY thing that stands the least chance of holding at bay the statistical forces that drive humanity to Empire, which is the very definition of tyranny. People in government need to face pain of death or other, even worse horrors as reward for violating the rights of those whom they ostensibly serve. Freedom loving people MUST be warriors or they stand no chance of surviving, much less flourishing. Mine is a VERY unpopular view on such matters, some people thinking those such as myself deserving of prison and death for so much as suggesting such things, but unless we are prepared to kill in cold blood those who violate us without authority, we stand no hope of being anything even remotely resembling free. This is among the costs to be free - the will to kill other men in defense of one's liberty. We as a people have allowed ourselves to be turned away from this attitude, having been taught that it is wrong in a voice even more strident that that against child-rape. It's the voice that tells us that "government" is God. It is the voice of the devil himself and we are dancing to his song for all we are worth.

charrob
04-15-2017, 03:00 PM
Courage may not be what is needed here. I am not sure what is, but I suspect there are elements in play that render our normative solutions unfeasible.

Great is the mess into which some of us have dragged the world. It reminds me of a lyric fragment from Genesis' "Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". The track "Back In NYC" quips: "this is your mess I'm stuck in, I really don't belong". I suspect there is a vast multiplicity of humans who feel this way. I am one of them, and this is precisely why warrior culture is so necessary, because it is the ONLY thing that stands the least chance of holding at bay the statistical forces that drive humanity to Empire, which is the very definition of tyranny. People in government need to face pain of death or other, even worse horrors as reward for violating the rights of those whom they ostensibly serve. Freedom loving people MUST be warriors or they stand no chance of surviving, much less flourishing. Mine is a VERY unpopular view on such matters, some people thinking those such as myself deserving of prison and death for so much as suggesting such things, but unless we are prepared to kill in cold blood those who violate us without authority, we stand no hope of being anything even remotely resembling free. This is among the costs to be free - the will to kill other men in defense of one's liberty. We as a people have allowed ourselves to be turned away from this attitude, having been taught that it is wrong in a voice even more strident that that against child-rape. It's the voice that tells us that "government" is God. It is the voice of the devil himself and we are dancing to his song for all we are worth.

I agree, it is the voice of the devil himself and we are dancing to his song for all we are worth. There needs to be a distinction between the warrior culture created by government (U.S. military, CIA-- many of which are mindless flag-waving dupes or evil enablers of empire) and the warrior culture (if it exists) of Americans unaffiliated with government. Like you, "this is the mess I'm stuck in, and I really don't belong". It's refreshing that you feel that there's a vast multiplicity of humans who feel this way. I am surrounded in life by flag-waving dupes who endlessly thank the U.S. military for their 'service' and cheer every war that comes along. I pray that my surroundings of family and, even extended family down to second cousins and nephews, is not the normal American experience. The jingoism is thick like quicksand and is difficult to escape from. I hope you are right, that there's many other realities out there in America that differ.

One area I would fight for would be the breakup of this country into say 5 or 6 countries. Too many people with differing agendas are trying to live under one country's rules and few are happy about it. It makes sense to split up and choose to live in a country where ones ideals are respected and implemented and self-determination of that country's inhabitants (so long as force on others is prohibited) is the ultimate goal.

Thanks for your thoughtful, and kind, responses.

osan
04-15-2017, 08:56 PM
There needs to be a distinction between the warrior culture created by government (U.S. military, CIA-- many of which are mindless flag-waving dupes or evil enablers of empire) and the warrior culture (if it exists) of Americans unaffiliated with government.

There IS no "government" warrior culture. At best, it is a soldier's culture. The chasm between a warrior and a soldier is vast. Typical American armed forces are soldiers. They blindly follow orders almost no matter how criminal because that is what soldiers are about: obedience. That they go to foreign lands and kill on command does not make the warriors. Very much the opposite, in fact. One can be a warrior without ever having drawn a weapon in anger. Tesshu was such a man. For anyone interested in learning more of this difference, "Sword Of No Sword" is a good place to begin. Several copies are available here (https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=&tn=&kn=tesshu&isbn=). Tesshu was a penultimate warrior, yet never once in his life drew his sword in combat. He died in zazen, testament to his warrior spirit.


Like you, "this is the mess I'm stuck in, and I really don't belong". It's refreshing that you feel that there's a vast multiplicity of humans who feel this way. I am surrounded in life by flag-waving dupes who endlessly thank the U.S. military for their 'service' and cheer every war that comes along.

Can it really be called "service", to willingly aid and abet the invasion of another land and the wholesale murder of its people? Perhaps it can and I am simply too stupid to see it.


I pray that my surroundings of family and, even extended family down to second cousins and nephews, is not the normal American experience. The jingoism is thick like quicksand and is difficult to escape from. I hope you are right, that there's many other realities out there in America that differ.

I will not excuse such miserable ignorance and attitudes, but it pays to understand it. Are these basically good people? Do not forget that if this is all they know, how can they be held overly responsible for their narrowly simplistic views? The basic assumptions under which most of us labor throughout our lives are often so tacit and deeply embedded that we cannot even see them. I have devoted a goodly chunk of my life uncovering my own and in doing so have learned much. For me the key in all this is the attitude of willingness to embark on such discovery. Few are willing.

And as I wrote previously, for many the stresses and complexities of today's reality drive them to retreat into the darkness of simplistic thinking as a matter of mental survival. This world is hard on a man, especially if he dares think beyond the end of his nose, however petit it may be. It's a shitty and very dark world in which we live. We are so deeply marinating in outright evil that we can no longer see it, the majority of us.

I also see a great conflict in people. On the gross, overt side of things, it seems most people want the glitz and trickery of the modern world - the tech, the porno-sex, the absence of accountability for basically anything, and so forth. On the other side, the internal world of the average man has a terrible time coping with all the stresses and other strings that attach to this life. Subconsciously, they want simpler living. Basically, they want their cake and eat it too, which drives them to simplistic thought and opinion. They think they can have it all, but they cannot. Ignorance has a deep and destructive price, not just to oneself, but to all those around him.

I could write several books on this aspect of contemporary humanity, but what a convoluted and Gordian a knot into which all the elements and aspects are woven.


One area I would fight for would be the breakup of this country into say 5 or 6 countries.

Non-solution. As I wrote elsewhere a week or two ago, it would only result in that many smaller but equally vicious tyrannies. The problem lies not in the form of government, but the form of human thought and attitude. There is NOTHING wrong with our form of governance in sé, but with us. Consider that drugs and even firearms end up in the hands of inmates in maximum security prisons. Is the administrative architecture of such places faulty? No. Human nature tends to the brands of corruption that leads to such results. Therefore, one can design the perfect prison and it will still fail so long as people are as we currently find their habits.

As things stand at the time of this typing, the race of men is unequivocally, absolutely, and unarguably hopeless. We have no future as anything better than slaves due to the corruptions of fear, avarice, ignorance, and lassitude that we choose to rule our lives. It is as simple as that. There is nothing more to the story than this. Choose the warrior life, assuming the risks and acting pursuant to the greater truths, come what may, and the world would be greatly improved. But people are not interested in such things, preferring the low-rent comfort and ease that going along to get along buys. Talk about the tyranny of low expectations... Nothing is more appalling in the human animal than this.



Too many people with differing agendas are trying to live under one country's rules and few are happy about it. It makes sense to split up and choose to live in a country where ones ideals are respected and implemented and self-determination of that country's inhabitants (so long as force on others is prohibited) is the ultimate goal.


True, but it behooves us to identify and understand the root causes of this. Most people seem incapable or unwilling to go there. Too much work for people too corrupted with lassitude.

The Four Necessities have been expertly cultivated in Americans, as well as most of the rest of the people of this world. In fact, the people of places like Europe, Asia, Australia, and so forth are far worse than the average American. Sadly, that says not much anymore because the mean American is now well past the thresholds of corruption such that hope for better times approaches vanishing.

We have chosen this for ourselves. You have. I have. Every last one, save for the few that usually end up in body bags. Remember the Freemen? Most don't, nor could they care less. Our state of existence is pitiful, mostly because we are too timid, greedy, and lazy to aspire to something better. We have been dictated a menu of virtues - that for which someone else tells us we should aspire; the house, the BMW, trophy wives, wealthy husbands and every other vapidity that is set before us and after which we salivate as so many Pavlovian dogs. To bear witness to the length and breadth and depth of the absence of self-possession in the average man is to be staggered where one stands. Such men are the wholly-owned bitches of interests whose faces they shall never know, all the while fancying themselves "their own men".

There is no solution to this, save to stop dead in one's tracks and through a persistent act of supreme will decide that this condition shall no longer stand in one's life. I see virtually zero interest in such endeavors. In this we are much like the filthy boozer and drug addict who beats his chest, professing how he can quit any time he wants to. It is a lie. He cannot because he will not. The buzz is always better than reality, no matter how wretched one's condition. It is all at once sad, pitiful, and despicable.

Pray for a reset-event, for it is the only hope that remains to us.

Todd
04-18-2017, 08:03 AM
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/14/an-assessment-of-the-white-house-intelligence-report-about-the-nerve-agent-attack-in-khan-shaykhun-syria/




Professor Theodore Postol is Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report.

The Congress and the public have been given reports in the name of the intelligence community about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, technical evidence supposedly collected by satellite systems that any competent scientists would know is false, and now from photographs of the crater that any analyst who has any competent at all would not trust as evidence.

phill4paul
04-18-2017, 08:13 AM
"fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q

Jan2017
04-18-2017, 08:51 AM
We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report.

http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg (http://s1380.photobucket.com/user/81501/media/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)

shakey1
04-18-2017, 09:03 AM
https://media.makeameme.org/created/i-call-bs-2hn84l.jpg

Todd
04-18-2017, 09:25 AM
https://media.makeameme.org/created/i-call-bs-2hn84l.jpg

I never rule out the possibility it could be, but professor Postol at least took an effort to actually look into the matter, study, assess and offer what looks like a reasonable scientific assessment of the attack.

.....which is more than anyone can say for the Zero effort the US intelligence community put into their effort to sell the public this shit.

Some people believe who they wish to believe.

shakey1
04-18-2017, 09:38 AM
I never rule out the possibility it could be, but professor Postol at least took an effort to actually look into the matter, study, assess and offer what looks like a reasonable scientific assessment of the attack.

.....which is more than anyone can say for the Zero effort the US intelligence community put into their effort to sell the public this $#@!.

Some people believe who they wish to believe.

agreed... the WH has demonstrated very little credibility in the past... not much has changed since.

Todd
04-20-2017, 09:46 AM
Here's some follow up. 3 alleged attacks in the last week in Mosul area by possible ISIS led rebels. And a third assessment by Dr. Postol.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/17042017

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/04/20/518741/Iraq-Mosul-Daesh-chemical-attack-US-Joseph-Martin

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/67102.html#more-67102

charrob
04-20-2017, 01:32 PM
There IS no "government" warrior culture. At best, it is a soldier's culture. The chasm between a warrior and a soldier is vast. Typical American armed forces are soldiers. They blindly follow orders almost no matter how criminal because that is what soldiers are about: obedience. That they go to foreign lands and kill on command does not make the warriors. Very much the opposite, in fact. One can be a warrior without ever having drawn a weapon in anger. Tesshu was such a man. For anyone interested in learning more of this difference, "Sword Of No Sword" is a good place to begin. Several copies are available here (https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=&tn=&kn=tesshu&isbn=). Tesshu was a penultimate warrior, yet never once in his life drew his sword in combat. He died in zazen, testament to his warrior spirit.

Interesting distinction... and i agree. Osan you are an incredible writer and thinker!



Can it really be called "service", to willingly aid and abet the invasion of another land and the wholesale murder of its people? Perhaps it can and I am simply too stupid to see it.

I agree and don't consider it service as it only serves greed and power of both the forces and those who they work for. Overall, currently and historically, it harms the security of ordinary U.S. citizens because of blowback created by our military's endless and unnecessary aggression and U.S. debt.



I will not excuse such miserable ignorance and attitudes, but it pays to understand it. Are these basically good people? Do not forget that if this is all they know, how can they be held overly responsible for their narrowly simplistic views? The basic assumptions under which most of us labor throughout our lives are often so tacit and deeply embedded that we cannot even see them. I have devoted a goodly chunk of my life uncovering my own and in doing so have learned much. For me the key in all this is the attitude of willingness to embark on such discovery. Few are willing.

And as I wrote previously, for many the stresses and complexities of today's reality drive them to retreat into the darkness of simplistic thinking as a matter of mental survival. This world is hard on a man, especially if he dares think beyond the end of his nose, however petit it may be. It's a $#@!ty and very dark world in which we live. We are so deeply marinating in outright evil that we can no longer see it, the majority of us.

I wish i could understand it; yes they are basically good people but this is not all they know as I have attempted to give them alternative viewpoints and upon doing so, I only receive anger, loud voices, and red faces in return. They are not open to anything except what they want to believe.



I also see a great conflict in people. On the gross, overt side of things, it seems most people want the glitz and trickery of the modern world - the tech, the porno-sex, the absence of accountability for basically anything, and so forth. On the other side, the internal world of the average man has a terrible time coping with all the stresses and other strings that attach to this life. Subconsciously, they want simpler living. Basically, they want their cake and eat it too, which drives them to simplistic thought and opinion. They think they can have it all, but they cannot. Ignorance has a deep and destructive price, not just to oneself, but to all those around him.

I agree and believe one day this country will pay the price for its endless foreign aggression. I may be wrong but empires don't last forever and if we are not brought down by blowback from anger at our aggression, we will most likely be brought down from the debt that having an empire created.

charrob
04-20-2017, 01:34 PM
Professor Postol has expanded his research for a FOURTH time on the Sarin Attack... Here is his latest report:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-19/mit-scientist-debunks-false-flag-nerve-agent-attack-did-not-occur

AZJoe
04-20-2017, 01:37 PM
There IS no "government" warrior culture. At best, it is a soldier's culture. The chasm between a warrior and a soldier is vast. Typical American armed forces are soldiers. They blindly follow orders almost no matter how criminal because that is what soldiers are about: obedience. That they go to foreign lands and kill on command does not make the warriors. Very much the opposite, in fact. One can be a warrior without ever having drawn a weapon in anger.

I'm stealing this.

Jan2017
04-20-2017, 02:22 PM
Professor Postol has expanded his research for a FOURTH time on the Sarin Attack... Here is his latest report:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-19/mit-scientist-debunks-false-flag-nerve-agent-attack-did-not-occur

Thanks . . . good pictures of the crater site in the road intersection that I haven't seen.
But, I noticed wind direction is reported in the weather report as the opposite direction of his arrows in his analysis (?)
Wind direction at 9am is E(ast) 4mph . . . his arrow is instead towards the east, and those areas/hamlets of the village,
which is where villagers came from (mostly, as in other reports - Reuters) and towards this intersection coming upon some dead.

Looking more or less from east-southeast side of street . . . shadow would be before noon

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater02a_zpsrtefaowf.jpg (http://[URL="http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/crater02a_zpsrtefaowf.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater02a_zpsrtefaowf.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL")


http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)


So, if I read the weather data as stated -
in the opposite direction of the above photo is the intersection shown from jpg taken on the northern-ish side of the crater of Reuters' photo,
and that is upwind and how rebels could escape out of town from a sarin attack at this street corner.


http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/bolivia14a_zpspttfsahz.jpg (http://s1380.photobucket.com/user/81501/media/bolivia14a_zpspttfsahz.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/bolivia14a_zpspttfsahz.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)

jllundqu
04-20-2017, 02:28 PM
Mattis: "Assad Never Used Sarin Gas/Nerve Agent on His People Before Now"

According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3148621/, the Chemical Weapons [CW] agents used in warfare are classified into 7 categories:


Nerve agents
Vesicants (blistering agents)
Bloods agents (cyanogenic agents)
Choking agents (pulmonary agents)
Riot-control agents (tear gases)
Psychomimetic agents
Toxins


Sarin Gas is classified as a 'Nerve Agent'. Chlorine is not a nerve agent, but rather classified as a 'Choking Agent'.

This is important because the MSM (and Trump) continues to blame Assad for the Sarin Attack in East Gouta in 2013 (ie. Obama's "red line"), despite there being volumes of evidence that dispute that claim and which proves the "rebels", backed by Turkish Intelligence, had perpetrated that attack. With this video we have, on record, Mattis stating that Assad had not attacked his own people (prior to the current charge) with a nerve agent such as Sarin. And since the 2013 East Gouta attack (Obama's red line) was an attack perpetrated by specifically using Sarin, this is therefore indirectly an acknowledgement by Mattis that that East Gouta attack had not been perpetrated by Assad. Which completely negates what Trump endlessly wails about regarding 'Obama's red line'.

So in this video, Mattis is completely contradicting his boss, Trump:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slk1eziTcj0

Taken a step further, it also lends credence to the very real possibility that the 'rebels' were in possession of such chemicals in the past, and used them... which would favor the Russian/Assad line of thinking in the recent attack

charrob
04-22-2017, 07:41 PM
Taken a step further, it also lends credence to the very real possibility that the 'rebels' were in possession of such chemicals in the past, and used them... which would favor the Russian/Assad line of thinking in the recent attack


Good Point...

charrob
04-22-2017, 09:01 PM
Thanks . . . good pictures of the crater site in the road intersection that I haven't seen.
But, I noticed wind direction is reported in the weather report as the opposite direction of his arrows in his analysis (?)
Wind direction at 9am is E(ast) 4mph . . . his arrow is instead towards the east, and those areas/hamlets of the village,
which is where villagers came from (mostly, as in other reports - Reuters) and towards this intersection coming upon some dead.

Looking more or less from east-southeast side of street . . . shadow would be before noon

You're right. I missed that. If anyone had been affected by an E or SE wind, it should have been people in areas to the N or NW of the crater. The dead goat was lying to the SE of the crater, so that would also negate the 'rebels' argument regarding the goat (unless they physically moved the goat).







http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater02a_zpsrtefaowf.jpg (http://[URL="http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/crater02a_zpsrtefaowf.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater02a_zpsrtefaowf.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL")


http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)


So, if I read the weather data as stated -
in the opposite direction of the above photo is the intersection shown from jpg taken on the northern-ish side of the crater of Reuters' photo,
and that is upwind and how rebels could escape out of town from a sarin attack at this street corner.


Sorry, i don't understand what you are saying here.




http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/bolivia14a_zpspttfsahz.jpg (http://s1380.photobucket.com/user/81501/media/bolivia14a_zpspttfsahz.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/bolivia14a_zpspttfsahz.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)





Overall, i think the following are his main points in his latest 4th paper on this:


He indicates the earliest photo he could find of an individual standing by the sarin-release crater where the alleged release occurred. He says the "photo was posted on April 4 and the shadow indicates the time of day was around 10:50 AM. Thus the individual was standing by the crater roughly 4 hours after the dispersal event. If the dispersal event was from this crater, the area where this unprotected individual is standing would be toxic and this individual would be subjected to the severe and possibly fatal effects of sarin poisoning. As a result, this throws substantial suspicion on the possibility that the crater identified by WHR would be the source of the sarin release."


He writes: "The wind conditions at the time of the release, which would have been at about 7 AM on April 4, would have carried the plume across an empty field to an isolated Hamlet roughly 300 m downwind from the crater." But as you pointed out, the original weather report indicates the wind was coming from the E / SE, so this doesn't make sense.


He indicates that the area where the casualties were shown in the many videos could not be the same area in Syria near to where the crater exists because the rock formations shown around where the victims were lying are not part of the geography near the town of Khan Shaykhun: "The last collection of 18 video frames is from the area where mass casualties were piled on the ground haphazardly dead or dying. Among these casualties were infants as well as men and women. This scene clearly could not have been at the location of the Hamlet as one can see that the walls surrounding the area are carved out of rock. Thus, this scene could not possibly have been at the Hamlet."


He complains that there is not enough of a data sample from videos of victims to satisfactorily make conclusions: "These video frames were generated by reviewing*hundreds*of videos posted on YouTube plus additional videos and video frames found on Twitter. Among the hundreds of videos reviewed there seems to be no more than 50 to 60 seconds of actual original scenes like those laid out in the collection of 18 videos below. The vast majority of time in the videos contains the same repeated sequences of the same dead and injured infants and adults that could all be collected into less than a couple of minutes of independent scenes. This raises a serious question about how much real data has been supplied that would indicate an actual significant nerve agent attack."

Jan2017
04-24-2017, 10:20 AM
Sorry, i don't understand what you are saying here.


Wind blowing from the south,
so direction to escape after a rebel sarin surface-to-surface missile or ground explosion would be south down that intersection.
A missile-launching truck (as used before in Syria) fires then heads farther south down that road (?)


UN commission on Syria not ruling out various sources of ‘chemical agent release’ in Idlib

The UN commission investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria says it cannot yet say for certainty what the source of the gas allegedly used in Idlib really was. The body says the release of gas coincided with airstrikes in the area.

“Between 6:40 and 7:00am on April 4, a series of airstrikes [hit] the town of Khan Shaykhun. This is a consensus.
These airstrikes coincided with the release of a chemical agent, likely sarin or a sarin-like [substance],” the commission’s chair,
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, told journalists during a Friday press briefing.

Pinheiro was presenting preliminary results of the investigation in the chemical incident at a closed UN Security Council meeting.

“The commission continues to explore all avenues and theories… there are so many… regarding the release of this nerve agent
and all other incidents in Khan Sheykhun on that day,” he said.

“We weren’t able to identify which air force conducted the attacks. We have just concluded that [the attacks] have occurred.”

Answering a question about a US report on the issue, he said that the commission has read all the available documents,
but “we are not in a position to reach a conclusion yet.”

Pinheiro admitted that the commission has not conducted any investigation on the ground, instead relying on information
shared by “several countries,” sources in the rebel-held Syrian town as well as photographic and video evidence.

“We are conducting interviews with eyewitnesses, medical professionals, military, chemical weapons experts while simultaneously
collecting and analyzing photos, videos, satellite imagery and other materials checking all of them for credibility and reliability,”
Pinheiro said.

“We also asked several countries to share their reports about the incident.”

https://www.rt.com/news/385658-un-commission-syria-chemical-versions/

charrob
04-24-2017, 07:52 PM
Wind blowing from the south,
so direction to escape after a rebel sarin surface-to-surface missile or ground explosion would be south down that intersection.
A missile-launching truck (as used before in Syria) fires then heads farther south down that road (?)


Right, the wind is blowing toward the N / NW so escaping the sarin cloud would require moving upwind to the S / SE. Here is an updated document written by Professor Postol:



IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/67182.html)

IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO
The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur:
Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the Alleged Nerve Agent Attack at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria

Introduction

This report corrects an important error in the earlier report released on April 18, 2017 titled The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur: Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the Alleged Nerve Agent Attack at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.

In my earlier report released on April 18, 2017 I misinterpreted the wind-direction convention which resulted in my estimates of plume directions being exactly 180° off in direction. This document corrects that error and provides very important new analytic results that follow from that error.

When the error in wind direction is corrected, the conclusion is that if there was a significant sarin release at the crater as alleged by the White House Intelligence Report issued on April 11, 2017 (WHR), the immediate result would have been significant casualties immediately adjacent to the dispersion crater.

The fact that there were numerous television journalists reporting from the alleged sarin release site and there was absolutely no mention of casualties that would have occurred within tens to hundreds of meters of the alleged release site indicates that the WHR was produced without even a cursory low-level review of commercial video data from the site by the US intelligence community. This overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the WHR identification of the crater as a sarin release site should have been accompanied with an equally solid identification of the area where casualties were caused by the alleged aerosol dispersal. The details of the crater itself unambiguously show that it was not created by the alleged airdropped sarin dispersing munition.

These new details are even more problematic because the WHR cited commercial video as providing information that it used to derive its conclusions that there was a sarin attack from an airdropped munition at this location.

As can be seen by the corrected wind patterns in the labeled photographs on the next page, the predicted direction of the sarin plume would take it immediately into a heavily populated area. The area immediately adjacent to the north northwest of the road is may not be populated, as there was likely heavy damage to those homes facing the road from a bombing attack that occurred earlier at a warehouse to the direct east of the crater (designated on map below). However, houses that were immediately behind those on the road would have been substantially shielded from shock waves that could have caused heavy damage to those structures.

Since the reported wind speeds were very low, and the area is densely packed with buildings, a sarin dispersal would certainly not have simply followed a postulated plume direction as shown with the blue lines in the map below. Sarin aerosol and gas would have been dispersed both laterally and downwind by building fronts and would also have been dispersed downward and upward as the gases and aerosols were gently carried by winds modified by the presence of walls, space ways and other structures. A purely notional speculation on how a sarin plume might be dispersed by the structures as prevailing winds push the aerosol and gas through the structures is shown in the figure at the bottom of page 4.

The complicated wind pattern inside the densely populated living area would have resulted in sarin accumulating in basements and rooms that are roughly facing into the wind. There would also have been areas in spaces between buildings where sarin densities were much higher or much lower as the gentle prevailing winds moved around corners and created pockets of high and low density sarin concentrations.

In addition, the crater-area where the alleged sarin release was supposed to have occurred was close enough to the densely populated downwind area that significant amounts of sarin that would have fallen near the crater during the initial aerosol release would have resulted in a persistent plume of toxic sarin being carried into this populated area as the liquid on the ground near the crater evaporated during the day.

The close proximity to the crater would have certainly led to high casualties within the populated area.

http://i1374.photobucket.com/albums/ag411/carol_green2/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-1_zpswx2kkohz.jpg (http://s1374.photobucket.com/user/carol_green2/media/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-1_zpswx2kkohz.jpg.html)

http://i1374.photobucket.com/albums/ag411/carol_green2/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-2_zpsn9mukwam.jpg (http://s1374.photobucket.com/user/carol_green2/media/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-2_zpsn9mukwam.jpg.html)

The images on page 4 are taken from two different videos published on YouTube by the same crew of journalists who reported in detail on the site of the alleged sarin attack. Additional video frames from these two videos are shown on pages five and six.

In one of the video reports the journalist takes the observer on a short walk to the location of a dead goat. A close-up of the dead goat suggests that the animal was foaming at its mouth and nose as it died.

Video taken from a drone at high-altitude operated by the television crew shows the location of the dead goat, which is clearly well up wind of the sarin release point. Under all but implausible conditions, the wind would have carried sarin away from the goat and it would not have been subjected to a significant dose of sarin had largely been within the area where it was found.

If one instead guesses that the goat might have been wandering around and had wandered into the path of the newly dispersed sarin, the goat should have been found on the ground near the release point as the sarin dose within the plume would have killed it very quickly.

Other images from the video report are of two examples of dead birds. Neither of these video images can be connected to the crater scene as there was no continuity of evidence from the movement of the cameras.

This assessment with corrected wind directions leads to a powerful new set of questions – why were the multiple sets of journalists who were filming at the crater where the alleged sarin release occurred not showing the numerous victims of the alleged release who would have been immediately next to the area?

It is now clear that the publicly available evidence shows exactly where the mass nerve agent poisoning would have occurred if in fact there was an event where significant numbers of people were poisoned by a nerve agent release. This does not rule out the possibility of a nerve agent release somewhere else in the city. However, this completely discredits the WHR’s claims that they knew where the nerve agent release occurred and that they knew the nerve agent release was the result of an airdropped munition.

http://i1374.photobucket.com/albums/ag411/carol_green2/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-3_zpszcitsn3x.jpg (http://s1374.photobucket.com/user/carol_green2/media/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-3_zpszcitsn3x.jpg.html)

http://i1374.photobucket.com/albums/ag411/carol_green2/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-4_zpslu1it7kk.jpg (http://s1374.photobucket.com/user/carol_green2/media/My%20Public%20Album/2017-04-23%20Prof%20Postol%20Correction-4_zpslu1it7kk.jpg.html)


See here (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/67182.html) for additional images/photos and discussion by Professor Postol.

charrob
04-24-2017, 08:12 PM
UN commission on Syria not ruling out various sources of ‘chemical agent release’ in Idlib[/B]

The UN commission investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria says it cannot yet say for certainty what the source of the gas allegedly used in Idlib really was. The body says the release of gas coincided with airstrikes in the area.

“Between 6:40 and 7:00am on April 4, a series of airstrikes [hit] the town of Khan Shaykhun. This is a consensus.
These airstrikes coincided with the release of a chemical agent, likely sarin or a sarin-like [substance],” the commission’s chair,
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, told journalists during a Friday press briefing.

Pinheiro was presenting preliminary results of the investigation in the chemical incident at a closed UN Security Council meeting.

“The commission continues to explore all avenues and theories… there are so many… regarding the release of this nerve agent
and all other incidents in Khan Sheykhun on that day,” he said.

“We weren’t able to identify which air force conducted the attacks. We have just concluded that [the attacks] have occurred.”

Answering a question about a US report on the issue, he said that the commission has read all the available documents,
but “we are not in a position to reach a conclusion yet.”

Pinheiro admitted that the commission has not conducted any investigation on the ground, instead relying on information
shared by “several countries,” sources in the rebel-held Syrian town as well as photographic and video evidence.

“We are conducting interviews with eyewitnesses, medical professionals, military, chemical weapons experts while simultaneously
collecting and analyzing photos, videos, satellite imagery and other materials checking all of them for credibility and reliability,”
Pinheiro said.

“We also asked several countries to share their reports about the incident.”

https://www.rt.com/news/385658-un-commission-syria-chemical-versions/


Thanks for the update.

It's difficult to understand why the UN investigators have waited this long to actually travel to the area, talk with people living in the area, and investigate from there. I realize the area is controlled by al qaeda rebels, however, if these rebels want the U.S. to invade Syria and overthrow Syria's government, I would think they would welcome the UN investigators (if indeed Syria's government was responsible for the sarin attack).

charrob
04-24-2017, 08:59 PM
Russia upset over being blocked from Syria chemical weapons investigation (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/23/russia-upset-over-being-blocked-from-syria-chemical-weapons-investigation.html)

Russia has protested the U.S.’ refusal to allow its inspectors to participate in a formal investigation into a chemical weapons attack that struck the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhan in northern Idlib, Syria, earlier this month.

According to Reuters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discussed the matter in a phone call on Friday, with Tillerson reinforcing his backing of the current investigative system carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

As it stands, OPCW – an independent international watchdog – is probing the source of the attack and is expected to issue a report within the next two weeks.

Despite predictions that Trump’s election to the White House would usher in a new era of strong ties between the two countries, the President said last week that relations with Russia “may be at an all-time low.”

U.S officials have unequivocally blamed the Syrian government for the chemical attacks, in which the use of the nerve agent sarin is suspected. Yet Moscow has staunchly defended its Damascus allies, instead pointing the finger at rebels battling the regime.

After sarin struck other opposition-controlled areas outside of Damascus in 2013, igniting international outrage, Syrian President Bashar Assad – while denying responsibility – agreed to declare and dispose of its some 1,300 tons of chemical weapons – including sarin, VX and mustard gas. Under the guise of Russian leadership, the entire stockpile was said to have been destroyed.

However, various violations have since been reported and Israel defense officials last week cautioned that Assad’s forces still possess up to 3 tons of such toxic weapons. Former Brig. Gen. Zaher al-Sakat also told Fox News that he believed the government had retained much of its chemical arsenal despite the agreement, with some of it in the offshore protection of allies Iran and the Lebanese Shia militia, Hezbollah.

And while peace seems a far-fetched ideal in war-ravaged Syria and Moscow-Washington ties are less than stellar, Russia has agreed to participate in talks with the U.S and the United Nations in Geneva this week in yet another effort to bring an effort to the more than six-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced up to half its population.


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/04/23/russia-upset-over-being-blocked-from-syria-chemical-weapons-investigation.html

charrob
04-25-2017, 12:36 AM
Why is US Media Ignoring Prof. Postol's Study on Syria Chemical Weapons Attack? (http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/april/24/why-is-us-media-ignoring-prof-postols-study-on-syria-chemical-weapons-attack/)




The Trump Administration announced today that it was placing 271 Syrian scientists under sanctions for what it claimed was their work on producing chemical weapons for the Assad government. As with the chemical attack in Idlib earlier this month, for which the US blamed Assad, there was no proof provided. RPI Director Daniel McAdams joined RT today to discuss the current state of US policy toward Syria and the double standards when it comes to reporting and investigating civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZOvjtte9dM





Airwars: U.S.-Led Coalition Airstrikes Killed 17 Syrian Civilians in Tabqa
Apr 26, 2017

The journalistic monitoring group Airwars says 17 civilians, including nine children, reportedly died in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on the Syrian city of Tabqa in Raqqa province on Monday. The victims reportedly included the 6-month-old baby Abd al-Salam and the toddler Ali Abu Aish, along with their entire family. The local journalistic group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently says the civilians were killed when coalition warplanes bombed their cars and then attacked them with machine gun fire as they were trying to flee the besieged city.



US Airstrike Kills Family of Eight Fleeing Syria Fighting
Five Children Among Slain in Attack Outside Tabqa
April 24, 2017

US officials have made much of Kurdish YPG forces attacking the town of Tabqa, which is at least somewhat under ISIS control. Locals are trying to flee the fighting, however, and that seems to be where the US is most involved, attacking and killing a family of eight outside of Tabqa as they tried to get away.

Reports from multiple local groups say that the family of eight, including five children aged 15 or under, were in a vehicle fleeing the town, and that the US attacked and destroyed the vehicle, killing all within. The Pentagon has yet to comment on the killings.

Usually, when the US blows up a vehicle full of unidentified people, the victims are labeled “suspects,” whether or not there were children among them. This appears to be difficult in this case, with multiple NGOs that had been documenting ISIS abuses in the area unwilling to keep silent on the incident.

Civilian deaths have been soaring in recent months in the US air war in both Iraq and Syria, though the official Pentagon count is virtually unchanged, with officials admitting to less than 10% of the civilians slain in cases documented by NGOs. Most such incidents aren’t even investigated by the Pentagon, which dismisses them out of hand as “not credible.”

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/24/us-airstrike-kills-family-of-eight-fleeing-syria-fighting/




Report: US Attack on Syrian Mosque Full of Civilians ‘Likely Unlawful’
Pentagon Failed to Analyze Target Before Attack
April 18, 2017

On March 16, US warplanes attacked a crowded mosque in Aleppo Province, killing at least 38 people during a religious lecture. Human Rights Watch (HRW), having conducted their own investigation into the matter, says the attack was “likely unlawful.”

The US has promised their own investigation into the matter but so far haven’t offered much of anything, jumping between conflicting claims that it was an al-Qaeda target, that it wasn’t a mosque at all, and speculating that the Syrian military might’ve coincidentally attacked the mosque during an active US airstrike, despite pieces of US munitions being found inside the mosque.
HRW attributed this to a lack of target analysis ahead of the attack, saying that officials were unaware that the site was a mosque and unaware that they attacked during the start of evening prayers, saying that even cursory analysis could’ve figured at least some of this out.

HRW went on to advise the US to “do its homework” before launching such strikes. The Pentagon, however, is always interested in being able to deny incidents, irrespective of the lack of credibility of such a denial, and claiming they didn’t know it was a mosque, because they didn’t check, might ultimately be enough for the Pentagon to keep the incident out of their official toll of civilians killed, despite killing a number of civilians in the process.

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/18/report-us-attack-on-syrian-mosque-full-of-civilians-likely-unlawful/




Airwars: Dozens of Iraqi Civilians Reportedly Killed in Airstrikes Last Week
Apr 18, 2017

The journalistic monitoring group Airwars says dozens of Iraqi civilians were reportedly killed last week in airstrikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition or the U.S.-backed Iraqi Air Force. Much of the bombing occurred in Mosul’s Yarmouk neighborhood. On April 10, airstrikes there reportedly killed more than 30 civilians, including children. The following day, as many as 13 civilians were reported killed in airstrikes that destroyed homes in the same neighborhood. Six more civilians were reportedly killed in airstrikes in Anbar province that same day.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/18/headlines/airwars_dozens_of_iraqi_civilians_reportedly_kille d_in_airstrikes_last_week




Airwars: Up to 20 Syrian Civilians Reportedly Killed by U.S. Airstrikes Last Week
Apr 18, 2017

Meanwhile, in Syria, Airwars says as many as 20 civilians reportedly died in multiple U.S.-coalition airstrikes carried out in Raqqa governorate early last week. On April 10, up to 10 civilians, including at least two children, were killed in a series of alleged U.S.-coalition airstrikes on two separate villages. That same day, local media reported an alleged U.S.-led coalition airstrike killed members of two families, including at least one child, when a home was bombed.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/18/headlines/airwars_up_to_20_syrian_civilians_reportedly_kille d_by_us_airstrikes_last_week




Under Trump, U.S. Military Has Allegedly Killed Over 1,000 Civilians in Iraq, Syria in March

U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria may have already killed 1,484 civilians in just Iraq and Syria this month alone, more than three times the number killed in President Barack Obama’s final full month in office, according to British monitoring group Airwars. For the first time, the number of alleged civilian casualties*in events carried out by the U.S.-led coalition has exceeded the death toll of attacks launched by Russia.

The U.S. military said Saturday that a U.S.-led coalition strike hit an area in the Islamic-State-held Iraqi city of Mosul where officials on the ground said around 200 civilians may have been killed. Those figures would make it one of the deadliest-to-citizens*U.S.-led bombings in 25 years.

Amnesty International has asserted that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the city and questioned the legality of the attacks.

“Evidence gathered on the ground in East Mosul points to an alarming pattern of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes which have destroyed whole houses with entire families inside,” said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International, who carried out field investigations in Mosul.

“The high civilian toll suggests that coalition forces leading the offensive in Mosul have failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis responded Monday by insisting that coalition troops “always do everything humanly possible to reduce the loss of life or injury among innocent people. The same cannot be said for our adversaries.”

Reports of high civilian death tolls under Trump’s command have persisted since his first days in office. A week after entering the White House, Trump green-lighted a raid in Yemen that cost the life of a U.S. Navy Seal and reportedly killed at least 25 civilians. The Pentagon’s insistence that significant intelligence had been obtained has been widely disputed.

A U.S.-led airstrike was similarly said to be responsible for the deaths of 30 civilians in Syria’s Raqqa Province last week. A few days earlier, the U.S. military confirmed it had conducted airstrikes in an area of northern Syria where local reports say a mosque was struck, killing more than 40 people. The military denied bombing a mosque.

The total number reportedly killed in February was 455, while January, in which Trump took office, saw the number reach 613.

http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-war-civilian-deaths-syria-577353





Iraqi Officials: Last Month’s US Mosul Strike Killed Nearly 300 Civilians
Attack Was Single Deadliest US Strike of the War
April 05, 2017

On March 17, US warplanes attacked a handful of buildings in the city of Mosul, leveling the buildings and burying a massive number of civilians within. US officials have since admitted that they were “probably” responsible for the deaths of civilians in the attacks.

Estimates varied, and the Iraqi government has now offered some guidance on the matter, confirming they’ve recovered 278 civilian bodies from the rubble so far, and that there are still more to be found. This was at the higher end of estimates previously offered by third parties.
This confirmation of the toll, which is likely to keep rising as bodies are found, already makes this the single deadliest US strike of the entire ISIS war. It is also in the ballpark of the deadliest airstrikes in the history of modern warfare.
With Pentagon officials conceding at least “probable” blame, and Iraq providing specific death tolls, it remains to be seen how the Pentagon will handle this incident in next month’s report on civilian tolls. The Pentagon’s reports usually dramatically under count the number of civilians claimed, but the sheer size of this incident will make it difficult to bury.

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/04/05/iraqi-officials-last-months-us-mosul-strike-killed-nearly-300-civilians/




Al Qaeda Is Attacking Major Syrian Cities with US Weapons — but You Wouldn't Know That from the Media
Rebranded Syrian al-Qaeda, Tahrir al-Sham, has been leading offensives in Hama and Damascus while mainstream media whitewash it
March 22, 2017

Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, a military alliance that represents an attempt to rebrand Syria's original al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat Al-Nusra, initiated an assault near the city of Hama on March 21, in collaboration with fighters from the so-called Free Syrian Army, or FSA, which has for years been supported by the U.S. and its allies.

In the days before, the same al-Qaeda-linked group and another extremist Islamist militia, Ahrar al-Sham, launched two other attacks inside and on the outskirts of Syria’s capital, Damascus, targeting civilian areas under the control of the Syrian government.

In her coverage of the assault on Damascus, the Washington Post's Liz Sly provided a prime example of how this media whitewashing works: Sly did not even mention*Tahrir al-Sham's links to al-Qaeda, referring to the group simple as "extreme." She also described a U.S.-vetted FSA faction that was fighting alongside rebranded al-Qaeda, Faylaq al-Rahman, as "moderate."

Another disturbing development that has been virtually ignored by U.S. mainstream media are the videos of Tahrir al-Sham and the FSA-affiliated Jaish al-Izza, which is fighting alongside rebranded al-Qaeda in the Hama offensive, attacking the Syrian army with TOW anti-tank missiles, which were manufactured by the American weapons company Raytheon and supplied to CIA-vetted rebels.

Echoing Western governments' extensive support for armed rebels committed to overthrowing the Syrian government, Western media outlets have for years consistently downplayed the influence of extremists in the Syrian opposition.

Recent reports continue this trend. Headlines on the jihadist offensives in Hama and Damascus refer to sectarian extremist fighters ambiguously as "Syrian rebels," and articles bury the extremists' ties to al-Qaeda several paragraphs down in the story, where most readers, who simply skim headlines and leads, do not tread.

AlterNet analyzed numerous reports in major outlets and detailed how they have egregiously understated the role of al-Qaeda-linked militants in the recent attacks in Syria — while, at the same moment, fueling paranoia about infrequent attacks in the West.

[...]

http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/tahrir-al-sham-al-qaeda-syria-hama-damascus-media#.WOBAVIYjLWQ.twitter





More Than 1,000 Civilians Reportedly Killed by U.S.-Led Airstrikes as Trump Expands War on Terror
March 27, 2017

Details are emerging about U.S.-led coalition airstrikes that are believed to have killed over 200 people in a single day in Iraq. The U.S.-led coalition has admitted launching airstrikes on March 17 targeting a crowded neighborhood in Mosul. They are among the deadliest U.S. airstrikes in the region since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. According to some reports, one of these strikes destroyed houses where hundreds of people were taking refuge amid the city’s heavy fighting. Up to 80 civilians, including women and children, may have died in one house’s basement alone. This bombing is just one of an onslaught of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that has killed as many as 1,000 civilians in March alone, according to the journalistic project Airwars. For more, we speak with Chris Woods, founder of Airwars, a nonprofit group that monitors civilian deaths from international airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

[...]

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/27/more_than_1_000_civilians_killed




US Dropping 500 Bombs Per Week on Mosul so Far in March
Air Force Insists All Bombs Dropped 'In Support' of Iraqi Military
March 29, 2017

Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler, the deputy commander for the air war in Iraq and Syria, today offered details on the ever-growing scope of the air campaign over the massive, densely populated Iraqi city of Mosul, saying the US is in its “most kinetic” phase so far of the war.

In raw numbers, that means the US and its coalition partners are dropping an average of 500 bombs on the city of Mosul every single week so far in March. That number is growing, too, with the largest week seeing just over 600 bombs dropped.

Air Force officials insist all of the bombs being dropped on Mosul are being dropped “in support” of the Iraqi military’s ongoing invasion of the city. This increase in bombings is also leading to a substantial increase in the number of civilian deaths from US airstrikes as well, with several hundred civilians killed this month.

Isler insisted every single one of the 8,700 bombs dropped around Mosul since the invasion began was individually approved by an Iraqi general or a Kurdish Peshmerga figure. It is worth noting that Iraq has paused its Mosul offensive in recent days specifically because of the growing death toll of the US strikes, saying they could no longer conduct operations in the densely populated Old City under the current strategy.

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/03/29/us-dropping-500-bombs-per-week-on-mosul-so-far-in-march/




The U.S. military's stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported
February 2017

The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/airstrikes-unreported-syria-iraq-afghanistan-islamic-state-al-qaeda-taliban

charrob
04-25-2017, 12:59 AM
Former CIA officer Philip Giradi:



4/6/17 Philip Giraldi says IC-Military Doubt Assad Gas Narrative

Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, says that “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham,” instead endorsing the Russian narrative that Assad’s forces had bombed a storage facility. Giraldi’s intelligence sources are “astonished” about the government and media narrative and are considering going public out of concern over the danger of worse war there. Giraldi also observes that the Assad regime had no motive to do such a thing at this time.

https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/scotthortonshow/4617-philip-giraldi-says-ic-military-doubt-assad-gas-narrative/




Former CIA Officer: "The Intelligence Confirms The Russian Account On Syria"
Apr 8, 2017 11:15 PM

[...]

But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.

One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.

The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus.

[...]

Intelligence Uprising

Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.

Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.”

Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.

“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”

Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public.

“People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”

[...]



https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/07/trumps-wag-the-dog-moment/

charrob
04-25-2017, 01:07 AM
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:

Two dozen ex-U.S. intelligence officials urge President Trump to rethink his claims blaming the Syrian government for the chemical deaths in Idlib and to pull back from his dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia.

MEMORANDUM FOR:*The President
FROM:*Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)*
SUBJECT:*Syria: Was It Really “A Chemical Weapons Attack”?

1 – We write to give you an unambiguous warning of the threat of armed hostilities with Russia – with the risk of escalation to nuclear war.*The threat has grown after the cruise missile attack on Syria in retaliation for what you claimed was a “chemical weapons attack” on April 4 on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib Province.

2 – Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. *There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.”*Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died.

3 – This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened.

[...]


https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/11/trump-should-rethink-syria-escalation

charrob
04-25-2017, 01:22 AM
US Sanctions 271 Syrians, Freezes Their US Assets:

Two weeks after launching missile strikes on Syria, the U.S. Treasury announced it has sanctioned 271 employees of Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center in response to the alleged sarin attack conducted by the Assad regime on Kahn Sheikhoun. It's one of the largest sanction actions in U.S. history.

The action was announced in a statement by the Treasury Department, and Treasury Security Steve Mnuchin simultaneously briefed reporters at the White House.

The action - which takes place in lieu of a probe demanded by Russia and Syria to determine if Assad was indeed responsible for the recent sarin attack - freezes the individuals’ U.S. assets - which we doubt exist - and generally prohibits U.S. persons from dealing with them.

The sanctioned employees "have expertise in chemistry and related disciplines and/or have worked in support of SSRC’s chemical weapons program since at least 2012” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and added that "These sweeping sanctions target the scientific support center for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s horrific chemical weapons attack on innocent civilian men, women, and children."

On the surface, the move seeks impact by targeting officials with expertise needed for developing these weapons and those who may seek to travel and use financial system outside of Syria, according to administration official quoted by Bloomberg.

The new sanctions are the latest U.S. response to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons, most recently in rebel-held northern Idlib, in an attack that killed more than 80 civilians. The U.S. retaliated earlier this month by launching missiles against a Syrian airfield.



Full statement from the Treasury below:

Treasury Sanctions 271 Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center Staff in Response to Sarin Attack on Khan Sheikhoun

Action Targets Syrian Government Agency Responsible for Developing Chemical Weapons and the Means to Deliver Them

Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is taking action in response to the April 4, 2017 sarin attack on innocent civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, by the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. In one of the largest sanctions actions in its history, OFAC is designating 271 employees of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), the Syrian government agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and the means to deliver them. These 271 SSRC employees have expertise in chemistry and related disciplines and/or have worked in support of SSRC’s chemical weapons program since at least 2012.

“These sweeping sanctions target the scientific support center for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s horrific chemical weapons attack on innocent civilian men, women, and children. The United States is sending a strong message with this action that we will hold the entire Assad regime accountable for these blatant human rights violations in order to deter the spread of these types of barbaric chemical weapons,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “We take Syria’s disregard for innocent human life very seriously, and will relentlessly pursue and shut down the financial networks of all individuals involved with the production of chemical weapons used to commit these atrocities.”

Today’s action follows OFAC and the Department of State’s sanctions announced on January 12, 2017 against 18 senior regime officials and five branches of the Syrian military, along with entities associated with its chemical weapons program, in response to findings by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, that the Syrian regime was responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015.

Today’s designation, less than three weeks after the attack on Khan Sheikhoun, more than doubles in a single action the number of individuals and entities sanctioned by the United States pursuant to Syria-related Executive Orders (E.O.s). These sanctions are intended to hold the Assad regime and those who support it – directly or indirectly – accountable for the regime’s blatant violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention and UN Security Council Resolution 2118.

Today’s action was taken pursuant to E.O. 13582, which targets the Government of Syria and its supporters. The named individuals are designated for materially assisting, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, and having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of Syria. As a result of today’s action, any property or interest in property of the designated persons in the possession or control of U.S. persons or within the United States must be blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-24/us-sanctions-271-syrians-freezes-their-us-assets



For identifying information on the individuals designated today, click here:

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20170424.aspx

Ender
04-25-2017, 08:03 AM
For identifying information on the individuals designated today, click here:

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20170424.aspx

Mmmmmm........ how convenient........

Jan2017
04-25-2017, 12:40 PM
http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)



The View From Khan Shaykhun: A Syrian Describes The Attack's Aftermath

"Before reaching the town, just a few miles away, it became clear this was no ordinary strike.

Fellow activists in Khan Shaykhun, communicating via walkie-talkie, warned them that the bombs had released chemicals.
They heard the word "sarin" — a toxic nerve gas — and pulled over.

"We were afraid of inhaling the smoke. We didn't want to die, to be honest," he told NPR in a conversation over the WhatsApp messaging app.
They waited for about 15 minutes, until they saw the flood of victims being evacuated past them. Then they decided to venture in.

"I saw something I'd never seen in my life," Hussein said.
"Dozens of children, women, men and elderly people lying on the ground, getting hosed down with water, out in the cold.
Children trying to breathe a gasp of air, with saliva and foam coming out of their mouths and nostrils."

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/05/522093672/the-view-from-khan-shaykhun-a-syrian-describes-the-attacks-aftermath

Incontrovertible Laboratory Results Concluding Exposure to Sarin

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — 19 April 2017 —

"The bio-medical samples collected from three victims during their autopsy were analysed at two OPCW designated laboratories.
The results of the analysis indicate that the victims were exposed to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance. Bio-medical samples from seven individuals
undergoing treatment at hospitals were also analysed in two other OPCW designated laboratories.
Similarly, the results of these analyses indicate exposure to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance.

Director-General Üzümcü stated clearly: “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.”

In the meantime, the Fact-Finding Mission is continuing with interviews, evidence management and sample acquisition.
The Director-General reported that an FFM team is ready to deploy to Khan Sheikhun should the security situation permit."
https://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-director-general-shares-incontrovertible-laboratory-results-concluding-exposure-to-sarin/


http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/poisonsign2_zpshg74lvpf.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/poisonsign2_zpshg74lvpf.jpg.html)



http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/idlib05b_zps6tpkon8c.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/idlib05b_zps6tpkon8c.jpg.html)

Jamesiv1
04-25-2017, 01:00 PM
Whoever thinks it's wrong to nerve gas your own countrymen can get the hell out.

charrob
04-25-2017, 07:14 PM
http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/crater03a_zpsdvejaggp.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)


The View From Khan Shaykhun: A Syrian Describes The Attack's Aftermath

"Before reaching the town, just a few miles away, it became clear this was no ordinary strike.

Fellow activists in Khan Shaykhun, communicating via walkie-talkie, warned them that the bombs had released chemicals.
They heard the word "sarin" — a toxic nerve gas — and pulled over.

"We were afraid of inhaling the smoke. We didn't want to die, to be honest," he told NPR in a conversation over the WhatsApp messaging app.
They waited for about 15 minutes, until they saw the flood of victims being evacuated past them. Then they decided to venture in.

"I saw something I'd never seen in my life," Hussein said.
"Dozens of children, women, men and elderly people lying on the ground, getting hosed down with water, out in the cold.
Children trying to breathe a gasp of air, with saliva and foam coming out of their mouths and nostrils."

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/05/522093672/the-view-from-khan-shaykhun-a-syrian-describes-the-attacks-aftermath

Incontrovertible Laboratory Results Concluding Exposure to Sarin

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — 19 April 2017 —

"The bio-medical samples collected from three victims during their autopsy were analysed at two OPCW designated laboratories.
The results of the analysis indicate that the victims were exposed to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance. Bio-medical samples from seven individuals
undergoing treatment at hospitals were also analysed in two other OPCW designated laboratories.
Similarly, the results of these analyses indicate exposure to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance.

Director-General Üzümcü stated clearly: “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.”

In the meantime, the Fact-Finding Mission is continuing with interviews, evidence management and sample acquisition.
The Director-General reported that an FFM team is ready to deploy to Khan Sheikhun should the security situation permit."
https://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-director-general-shares-incontrovertible-laboratory-results-concluding-exposure-to-sarin/


http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/idlib05b_zps6tpkon8c.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/idlib05b_zps6tpkon8c.jpg.html)

Thanks for adding additional info. Based on your first image/picture which shows that it's 10:55 am on April 4, 2017, that would mean that the man that's standing there without a hazmat suit, no clothes, skin open to sarin exposure, should theoretically (as Dr. Postol states) be very ill from sarin. According to Dr. Postol, because of the temperature and wind speed, 4 hours after the initial sarin exposure inside the crater (at 6:55 am), the crater would still contain lethal amounts of sarin to any life standing near it. That would indicate that the crater could not be the place where the sarin exposure initiated. I agree with Dr. Postol, it's important for the UN investigators to find out exactly where the victims of sarin exposure were located on the morning of April 4. Were they near to that crater or somewhere else in Syria?

charrob
04-25-2017, 07:29 PM
The Chlorine Cases:




The chlorine-gas cases have resulted in only a few fatalities, which also undercuts the claims that the Assad government was responsible for them. Why would Assad risk more outside military intervention against his government by using a chemical weapon that has almost no military value, at least as allegedly deployed in Syria?

U.N. investigators – under intense pressure from the West to find something that could be pinned on Assad – agreed to blame him for a couple of the chlorine allegations coming from rebel forces and their civilian allies. But the U.N. team did not inspect the sites directly, relying instead on the testimony of Assad’s enemies.

In one of the chlorine cases, however, Syrian eyewitnesses came forward to testify that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the government. In that incident, the U.N. team reached no conclusion as to what had really happened, but neither did the investigators – now alerted to the rebels’ tactic of staging chemical attacks – apply any additional skepticism to the other cases.

In one case, the rebels and their supporters also claimed to know that an alleged “barrel bomb” contained a canister of chlorine because of the sound that it made while descending. There was no explanation for how that sort of detection was even possible.

Yet, despite the flaws in the rebels’ chlorine claims – and the collapse of the 2013 sarin case – the Times and other mainstream U.S. news outlets report the chlorine allegations as flat-fact, without reference to sourcing from the U.N. investigators whose careers largely depended on them coming up with conclusions that pleased the majority of the five-member Security Council – the U.S., Great Britain and France.

If this fuller history were understood, much greater skepticism would be warranted by the new allegations about Assad ordering a new sarin attack. While it’s conceivable that Assad’s military is guilty – although why Assad would take this risk at this moment is hard to fathom – it’s also conceivable that Al Qaeda’s jihadists – finding themselves facing impending defeat – chose to stage a sarin attack even if that meant killing some innocent civilians.

Al Qaeda’s goal would be to draw in the U.S. or Israeli military against the Syrian government, creating space for a jihadist counteroffensive. And, as we should all recall, it’s not as if Al Qaeda hasn’t killed many innocent civilians before.


https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/06/nyt-retreats-on-2013-syria-sarin-claims/

charrob
04-25-2017, 07:59 PM
New Syria Sanctions; Gas Attack Claims Still Unproven: (http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/april/25/new-syria-sanctions-gas-attack-claims-still-unproven/)

Apr. 25 - President Trump has yet to provide any credible evidence that the gas attack in Syria earlier this month was carried out by Assad, and in the meantime very serious questions about the veracity of White House claims are arising from very credible experts. Yet the Administration seems ever more determined now that it has done a 180 degree turn and demanded regime change for Syria. Late last week the White House announced sanctions on 271 Syrian scientists who Trump claims are working on chemical weapons. The proof? None. How to explain this sudden embrace of the neocon line on Syria and elsewhere? It might be telling that according to recent press reports the architect of the disastrous Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz, is lending advice on the Middle East to Defense Secretary Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. They have all apparently been friends for years. More in today's Liberty Report:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZhe3ktNfgA

Jan2017
04-27-2017, 05:22 PM
France confirms the same "sarin-signature" as used before in 2013 . . .
when rebels in Syria were determined by UN to have used surface-to-surface missiles in Ghouta, Syria.

6am winds were light from the south toward mountains for the heavier than air chemicals, and if I understand MIT prof analysis, casualties were off to right of the two-story buildings and towards the mountain foothills where gas migrated toward (?)

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/sarin073_zpscxyqcabj.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/sarin073_zpscxyqcabj.jpg.html)

charrob
04-27-2017, 07:24 PM
France confirms the same "sarin-signature" as used before in 2013 . . .
when rebels in Syria were determined by UN to have used surface-to-surface missiles in Ghouta, Syria.



Jan2017, thanks for adding info. Yes, I read the same: that France confirms Assad gassed his people in idlib recently because the "sarin-signature" used in the 2013 East Gouta attack is the same "sarin-signature" that was just used in Idlib, Syria.


"This method is the signature of the regime and it is what enables us to establish the responsibility of the attack. We know because we kept samples from previous attacks that we were able to use for comparison." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-intelligence-idUSKBN17S0RY

This is despite the many sources that have stated that the "rebels" in Syria were responsible for the 2013 "red line" East Gouta attack. These sources are:


Turkish parliamentarians gave court testimony (https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/11/the-syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson/) in Turkey that members of Turkish intelligence were behind the East Gouta attack.
Seymour Hersh's source for his article "The Red Line and the Rat Line" (https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line) which completely describes Turkish intelligence as supplying the sarin to "rebels".
James Clapper (DNI) told Obama (https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/10/neocons-red-faced-over-red-line/) during Obama's morning intelligence briefing that the evidence Assad was behind the 2013 sarin attack just wasn't there. Directly following this, Obama withdrew U.S. forces from attacking Syria.
James Mattis himself acknowledged in a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slk1eziTcj0) previously posted in this thread that except for the current alleged sarin attack in Idlib, Assad had never used a nerve agent/sarin on his own people.
United Nations now acknowledges they have no evidence Assad was behind that attack.
U.S. intelligence now agrees Seymour Hersh's narrative is correct: that they, U.S. intelligence, learned it was Turkish intelligence behind the attack after the attack occurred and U.S. intelligence intercepted Turkish intelligence congratulating each other on pulling off the attack.
MIT rocket scientists who proved the rocket that had sarin (https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/05/another-dangerous-rush-to-judgment-in-syria/) came from rebel territory, not a Syrian military base.
Even the New York Times retreated on their 2013 Syria-Sarin Claims. (https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/06/nyt-retreats-on-2013-syria-sarin-claims/)


It's difficult to understand how French "intelligence" can put out a statement that is so obviously inaccurate. If the current sample is the same "sarin-signature" as the sarin from 2013, that would seem to indicate that the sarin, once again, came from members inside the Turkish government.

charrob
04-27-2017, 07:33 PM
6am winds were light from the south toward mountains for the heavier than air chemicals, and if I understand MIT prof analysis, casualties were off to right of the two-story buildings and towards the mountain foothills where gas migrated toward (?)

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/sarin073_zpscxyqcabj.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/sarin073_zpscxyqcabj.jpg.html)


My understanding is that he believes the casualties would be behind the first row of buildings on the left on that road; i think he had information that the first row of buildings right on the road were bombed so probably not inhabited. Behind those buildings, however, was a large population that would have been affected.

charrob
04-27-2017, 08:27 PM
Here was the official declassified report from the White House on this:



WH report: The Assad regime's use of chemical weapons on 4 April 2017

The White House on Tuesday released a 4-page report, prepared by the National Security Council, which contains declassified U.S. intelligence on the 4 April chemical weapons attack in Syria. The document calls Russia’s claim that the source of the gas was a rebels’ storage facility a “false narrative,” accusing Russia of “shielding” a client state which has used weapons of mass destruction.

Senior White House officials, speaking to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity to discuss the declassified intelligence report, said Russia’s goal was to cover up the Syrian government’s responsibility for the chemical attack. The sources said that the Syrian government, lacking enough troops to respond to pressure from opposition forces around Syria, used the deadly sarin to target rebels who were threatening government-held territory.


Here is the released report in full:


The United States is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib Province on 4 April 2017. According to observers at the scene, the attack resulted in at least 50 and up to 100 fatalities (including many children), with hundreds of additional injuries.

We have confidence in our assessment because we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant body of credible open source reporting, that tells a clear and consistent story. We cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods, but the following includes an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s analysis of this attack.


Summary of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the 4 April attack

The Syrian regime maintains the capability and intent to use chemical weapons against the opposition to prevent the loss of territory deemed critical to its survival. We assess that Damascus launched this chemical attack in response to an opposition offensive in northern Hamah Province that threatened key infrastructure. Senior regime military leaders were probably involved in planning the attack.

A significant body of pro-opposition social media reports indicate that the chemical attack began in Khan Shaykhun at 6:55 a.m. local time on 4 April.

Our information indicates that the chemical agent was delivered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing aircraft that took off from the regime-controlled Shayrat Airfield. These aircraft were in the vicinity of Khan Shaykhun approximately 20 minutes before reports of the chemical attack began and vacated the area shortly after the attack. Additionally, our information indicates personnel historically associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program were at Shayrat Airfield in late March making preparations for an upcoming attack in Northern Syria, and they were present at the airfield on the day of the attack.

Hours after the 4 April attack, there were hundreds of accounts of victims presenting symptoms consistent with sarin exposure, such as frothing at the nose and mouth, twitching, and pinpoint pupils. This constellation of symptoms is inconsistent with exposure to a respiratory irritant tike chlorine — which the regime has also used in attacks — and is extremely unlikely to have resulted from a conventional attack because of the number of victims in the videos and the absence of other visible injuries. Open source accounts posted following the attack reported that first responders also had difficulty breathing, and that some lost consciousness after coming into contact with the victims — consistent with secondary exposure to nerve agent.

By 12:15 p.m.local time, broadcasted local videos included images of dead children of varying ages. Accounts of a hospital being bombed began to emerge at 1:10 p.m. local, with follow-on videos showing the bombing of a nearby hospital that had been flooded with victims of the sarin attack. Commercial satellite imagery from April 6 showed impact craters around the hospital that are consistent with open source reports of a conventional attack on the hospital after the chemical attack. Later on 4 April, local physicians posted videos specifically pointing out constricted pupils (a telltale symptom of nerve agent exposure), medical staff with body suits on, and treatments involving atropine, which is an antidote for nerve agents such as sarin.

We are certain that the opposition could not have fabricated all of the videos and other reporting of chemical attacks. Doing so would have required a highly organized campaign to deceive multiple media outlets and human rights organizations while evading detection. In addition, we have independently confirmed that some of the videos were shot at the approximate times and locations described in the footage.

Further, the World Health Organization stated on 5 April that its analysis of the victims of the attack in Syria showed they had been exposed to nerve agents, citing the absence of external injuries and deaths due to suffocation. Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontiéres; MSF) said that medical teams treating affected patients found symptoms to be consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin. And Amnesty International said evidence pointed to an air-launched chemical attack. Subsequent laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims detected signatures of the nerve agent sarin.


Refuting the false narratives

The Syrian regime and its primary backer, Russia, have sought to confuse the world community about who is responsible for using chemical weapons against the Syrian people in this and earlier attacks. Initially, Moscow dismissed the allegations of a chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, claiming the attack was a “prank of a provocative nature” and that all evidence was fabricated. It is clear, however, that the Syrian opposition could not manufacture this quantity and variety of videos and other reporting from both the attack site and medical facilities in Syria and Turkey while deceiving both media observers and intelligence agencies.

Moscow has since claimed that the release of chemicals was caused by a regime airstrike on a terrorist ammunition depot in the eastern suburbs of Khan Shaykhun. However, a Syrian military source told Russian state media on April 4 that regime forces had not carried out any airstrike in Khan Shaykhun, contradicting Russia’s claim. An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.

Moscow has suggested that terrorists had been using the alleged ammunition depot to produce and store shells containing toxic gas that they then used in Iraq, adding that both Iraq and international organizations have confirmed the use of such weapons by militants. While it is widely accepted that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has repeatedly used sulfur mustard on the battlefield, there are no indications that ISIS was responsible for this incident or that the attack involved chemicals in ISIS’s possession.

Moscow suggested this airstrike occurred between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. local time on April 4, disregarding that allegations first appeared on social media close to 7:00 a.m. local time that morning, when we know regime aircraft were operating over Khan Shaykhun. In addition, observed munition remnants at the crater and staining around the impact point are consistent with a munition that functioned, but structures nearest to the impact crater did not sustain damage that would be expected from a conventional high-explosive payload. Instead, the damage is more consistent with a chemical munition.

The Syrian regime has used other chemical agents in attacks against civilians in opposition held areas in the past, including the use of sulfur mustard in Aleppo in late 2016. Russia has alleged that video footage from 4 April indicated that victims from this attack showed the same symptoms of poisoning as victims in Aleppo last fall, implying that something other than a nerve agent was used in Khan Shaykhun. However, victims of the attack on 4 April displayed tell-tale symptoms of nerve agent exposure, including pinpoint pupils, foaming at the nose and mouth, and twitching, all of which are inconsistent with exposure to sulfur mustard.

Russia’s allegations fit with a pattern of deflecting blame from the regime and attempting to undermine the credibility of its opponents. Russia and Syria, in multiple instances since mid-2016, have blamed the opposition for chemical use in attacks. Yet similar to the Russian narrative for the attack on Khan Shaykhun, most Russian allegations have lacked specific or credible information. Last November, for instance, senior Russian officials used an image from a widely publicized regime chemical weapons attack in 2013 on social media platforms to publicly allege chemical weapons use by the opposition. In May 2016, Russian officials made a similar claim using an image from a video game. In October 2016, Moscow also claimed terrorists used chlorine and white phosphorus in Aleppo, even though pro-Russian media footage from the attack site showed no sign of chlorine use. In fact, our Intelligence from the same day suggests that neither of Russia ls accounts was accurate and that the regime may have mistakenly used chlorine on its own forces. Russia’s contradictory and erroneous reports appear to have been intended to confuse the situation and to obfuscate on behalf of the regime.

Moscow’s allegations typically have been timed to distract the international community from Syria’s ongoing use of chemical weapons—such as the claims earlier this week—or to counter the findings from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-United Nations (UN) Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), which confirmed in August and October 2016 reports that the Syrian regime has continued to use chemical weapons on multiple occasions long after it committed to relinquish its arsenal in 2013. Russia has also questioned the impartial findings of the JIM—a body that Russia helped to establish—and was even willing to go so far as to suggest that the Assad regime should investigate itself for the use of chemical weapons.

Moscow’s response to the April 4 attack follows a familiar pattern of its responses to other egregious actions; it spins out multiple, conflicting accounts in order to create confusion and sow doubt within the international community.


International condemnation and a time for action

The Assad regime’s brutal use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and poses a clear threat to the national security interests of the United States and the international community. Use of weapons of mass destruction by any actor lowers the threshold for others that may seek to follow suit and raises the possibility that they may be used against the United States, our allies or partners, or any other nation around the world.

The United States calls on the world community in the strongest possible terms to stand with us in making an unambiguous statement that this behavior will not be tolerated. This is a critical moment— we must demonstrate that subterfuge and false facts hold no weight, that excuses by those shielding their allies are making the world a more dangerous place, and that the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons will not be permitted to continue.

We must remember that the Assad regime failed to adhere to its international obligations after its devastating attacks on Damascus suburbs using the nerve agent sarin in August 2013, which resulted in more than one thousand civilian fatalities, many of whom were children. The regime agreed at that time to fully dismantle its chemical weapons program, but this most recent attack—like others before it—are proof that it has not done so. To be clear, Syria has violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the UN Charter, and no drumbeat of nonsensical claims by the regime or its allies can hide this truth. And while it is an embarrassment that Russia has vetoed multiple UN Security Council resolutions that could have helped rectify the situation, the United States intends to send a clear message now that we and our partners will not allow the world to become a more dangerous place due to the egregious acts of the Assad regime.



http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20170412-wh-report-the-assad-regimes-use-of-chemical-weapons-on-4-april-2017?page=0,0

CPUd
04-28-2017, 06:18 PM
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-gzi3QXUAAekBY.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-gzkGhXUAEua7-.jpg


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-gzhKyXkAEG11P.jpg

Jan2017
04-29-2017, 04:31 PM
Who Made the Sarin Used in Syria?
Scientific American September 2013

Some telltale signs could hint at the origins of the nerve poison

Clues to the source of the chemical poison that U.S. officials say killed more than 1,400 people in Syria last month (August 2013)
may come from the weapon casing, not the material itself.

It is for such reasons that some experts say examining pieces of the rockets that the sarin arrived in is likely to be more telling,
says Michael Kuhlman, chief scientist for national security at Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research group in Columbus, Ohio.
Fragments of the weapons will be on site in the same places where inspectors will be digging up soil samples for evidence of sarin.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-made-the-sarin/

The Su-22: The Plane That Dropped Chemical Weapons in Syria?
April 8, 2017

Powered by a Lyulka AL-21F-3 turbojet, the Su-22 travels at supersonic speeds even at low altitude . . .

The longer and heavier Su-22 fighter-bomber was originally armed as the Su-7, but can now carry twice the bomb load on its ten hardpoints, and additionally mount up to two short-range heat-seeking air-to-air missiles for self-defense.

Today, the Su-22 serves as the workhorse of the Syrian Air Force in its relentless aerial bombing campaign in Syria,
which as much aims to make life in rebel-held areas intolerable for the civilian population by hitting hospitals and bakeries, as to destroy rebel fighting positions.

Cluster bombs, thermobaric weapons, and S-8 and S-24 unguided rockets are commonly used in these attacks. Around fifty-three Su-22 two-seaters served in the Syrian Air Force at the start of the conflict, four of which have been lost, including at least one shot down by enemy fire. Around thirty aircraft are still operating in three squadrons, flying an estimated twenty-five combat sorties a day."
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-su-22-the-plane-dropped-chemical-weapons-syria-20084?page=2


http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/Su22fitter02a_zpsflgimje8.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/Su22fitter02a_zpsflgimje8.jpg.html)
http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/su22sarin_zpsb54xspw3.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/su22sarin_zpsb54xspw3.jpg.html)


The Sukhio [Sukhoi Design Bureau (OKB-51 - USSR) now, Sukhoi Aviation Military Industrial Combine (Sukhoi AIMC)]
Su-22 is 62 foot long flying at supersonic speeds . . . US radar probably has the speed it was flying from radar (?)

I can see a couple reasons how it is less plausible that the 3½ ft wide crater with missile fragment came from that aircraft -
rather than from modified missile trucks down the road as reportedly already used by al Nusra Front in Syria in 2013 :


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6CZtF6pGvQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6CZtF6pGvQ&feature=youtu.be

CPUd
04-29-2017, 05:56 PM
All the proof you need right here:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70sKyJ_aw70

enhanced_deficit
04-30-2017, 05:58 PM
http://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg (http://s1380.photobucket.com/user/81501/media/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg.html%5D%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i1380.photobucket.com/albums/ah180/81501/UNBolivia01b_zpsqx0o3vss.jpg%5B/IMG%5D%5B/URL)


Something strange is going on. Soon after Nimrata presented this "proof", she has been Colin Powelled/put on a leash:

https://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/lies.jpg?w=382&h=266

Nikki Haley needs State Department approval for future statements: Report
Apr 28, 2017
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wants U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to run her remarks by State Department officials "if they are on a high-profile issue such as Syria, Iran, Israel-Palestine, or the D.P.R.K." (Bryan R. Smith Pool Photo via AP)
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ni...rticle/2621599 (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nikki-haley-needs-state-department-approval-for-future-statements-report/article/2621599)

Jan2017
05-02-2017, 06:15 AM
April Nerve Gas Attack in Syria Appears to Be One in a Series

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Last month’s chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held Syrian town may have caught the world’s —
and President Trump’s — attention, but it was not the only recent suspected use of a nerve agent by Syrian government forces.

On three other occasions in the months leading up to th e attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, witnesses, doctors and human rights investigators say, government attacks left scores of people sickened with similar symptoms, like foaming at the mouth, shaking and paralysis —
including two attacks in December, little noticed at the time, that killed at least 64 people.

New information about the additional attacks appears in a Human Rights report released Monday, bolstering New York Times reporting on those episodes and placing Khan Sheikhoun in the context of wider evidence that the Syrian government continues to use chemical weapons despite its 2013 agreement to give them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/world/middleeast/april-nerve-gas-attack-syria.html

Syria: New Evidence Shows Pattern of Nerve-Agent Use

New evidence supports the conclusion that Syrian government forces have used nerve agents on at least four occasions in recent months: on April 4, 2017, in a chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed at least 92 people,
and on three other occasions in December 2016 and March 2017, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

In the April 4 use of a chemical agent, an eyewitness said they heard no explosion but saw smoke and dust rising from the area, consistent with the relatively small explosive charge in a chemical bomb.
Several people also confirmed that they saw people injured or heard reports of injuries immediately after the first fly-over.

A few minutes later, they said, a warplane dropped three or four high-explosive bombs on the town. Human Rights Watch identified 92 people, including 30 children, whom local residents and activists said died due to chemical exposure from this attack.
Medical personnel said the attack injured hundreds more.

One of the first photos of the crater, taken by first responders, shows what appears to be liquid on the asphalt.
That would be consistent with the use of a bomb containing sarin, which is in liquid form at room temperature.

The photos and videos of the crater show two remnants from the chemical weapon used:
a twisted thin metal fragment with green paint and a smaller circular metal object.
Green coloring is widely used on factory-produced weapons to signify that they are chemical.

https://article.wn.com/view/2017/05/02/Syria_New_Evidence_Shows_Pattern_of_NerveAgent_Use/


Death by Chemicals
The Syrian Government’s Widespread and Systematic Use of Chemical Weapon
All available evidence strongly suggests that on April 4, 2017, a Syrian government warplane attacked Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the northwestern governorate of Idlib, with a nerve agent, killing at least 92 people, 30 of them children. The death toll likely makes this the deadliest chemical attack since an attack killed hundreds in Ghouta, near Damascus, in August 2013.
The Khan Sheikhoun attack sparked international outrage, but the attack on Khan Sheikhoun was not the only recent chemical attack by the Syrian government. Three developments since late 2016 show that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons has become widespread and systematic:



Government warplanes appear to have dropped bombs with nerve agents on at least four occasions since December 12, including in Khan Sheikhoun;
The government’s use of helicopter-dropped chlorine-filled munitions has become more systematic;
Government or pro-government ground-forces have started using improvised ground-launched munitions containing chlorine.



Information from local residents in Khan Sheikhoun indicates that a warplane flew over the town twice around 6:45 a.m. on April 4, 2017. One resident said he saw the plane drop a bomb near the town’s central bakery in the northern neighborhood during the first fly-over.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/05/01/death-chemicals/syrian-governments-widespread-and-systematic-use-chemical-weapons


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVGDcReFz9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVGDcReFz9k

charrob
06-25-2017, 11:21 AM
Hersh: 'Intel Said No Sarin, Trump Attacked Anyway': (https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html)




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.

On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.

The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.

Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president's determination to ignore the evidence. "None of this makes any sense," one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. "We KNOW that there was no chemical attack ... the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth ... I guess it didn't matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.“

Within hours of the April 4 bombing, the world’s media was saturated with photographs and videos from Khan Sheikhoun. Pictures of dead and dying victims, allegedly suffering from the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning, were uploaded to social media by local activists, including the White Helmets, a first responder group known for its close association with the Syrian opposition.

The provenance of the photos was not clear and no international observers have yet inspected the site, but the immediate popular assumption worldwide was that this was a deliberate use of the nerve agent sarin, authorized by President Bashar Assad of Syria. Trump endorsed that assumption by issuing a statement within hours of the attack, describing Assad’s "heinous actions" as being a consequence of the Obama administration’s "weakness and irresolution" in addressing what he said was Syria’s past use of chemical weapons.

To the dismay of many senior members of his national security team, Trump could not be swayed over the next 48 hours of intense briefings and decision-making. In a series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect between the president and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4. In an important pre-strike process known as deconfliction, U.S. and Russian officers routinely supply one another with advance details of planned flight paths and target coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk of collision or accidental encounter (the Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian military). This information is supplied daily to the American AWACS surveillance planes that monitor the flights once airborne. Deconfliction’s success and importance can be measured by the fact that there has yet to be one collision, or even a near miss, among the high-powered supersonic American, Allied, Russian and Syrian fighter bombers.

Russian and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the carefully planned flight path to and from Khan Shiekhoun on April 4 directly, in English, to the deconfliction monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which was on patrol near the Turkish border, 60 miles or more to the north.

The Syrian target at Khan Sheikhoun, as shared with the Americans at Doha, was depicted as a two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town. Russian intelligence, which is shared when necessary with Syria and the U.S. as part of their joint fight against jihadist groups, had established that a high-level meeting of jihadist leaders was to take place in the building, including representatives of Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The two groups had recently joined forces, and controlled the town and surrounding area. Russian intelligence depicted the cinder-block building as a command and control center that housed a grocery and other commercial premises on its ground floor with other essential shops nearby, including a fabric shop and an electronics store.

"The rebels control the population by controlling the distribution of goods that people need to live – food, water, cooking oil, propane gas, fertilizers for growing their crops, and insecticides to protect the crops," a senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, told me. The basement was used as storage for 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. The meeting place – a regional headquarters – was on the floor above. “It was an established meeting place,” the senior adviser said. “A long-time facility that would have had security, weapons, communications, files and a map center.” The Russians were intent on confirming their intelligence and deployed a drone for days above the site to monitor communications and develop what is known in the intelligence community as a POL – a pattern of life. The goal was to take note of those going in and out of the building, and to track weapons being moved back and forth, including rockets and ammunition.

One reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the jihadist leadership was forewarned not to attend the meeting. I was told that the Russians passed the warning directly to the CIA. “They were playing the game right,” the senior adviser said. The Russian guidance noted that the jihadist meeting was coming at a time of acute pressure for the insurgents: Presumably Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were desperately seeking a path forward in the new political climate. In the last few days of March, Trump and two of his key national security aides – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley – had made statements acknowledging that, as the New York Times put it, the White House “has abandoned the goal” of pressuring Assad "to leave power, marking a sharp departure from the Middle East policy that guided the Obama administration for more than five years.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a press briefing on March 31 that “there is a political reality that we have to accept,” implying that Assad was there to stay.

Russian and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was special because of the high-value target. “It was a red-hot change. The mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked,” the senior adviser told me. “Every operations officer in the region" – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – “had to know there was something going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wingman.” The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given the highest possible score inside the American community.

The Execute Order governing U.S. military operations in theater, which was issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provide instructions that demarcate the relationship between the American and Russian forces operating in Syria. “It’s like an ops order – ‘Here’s what you are authorized to do,’” the adviser said. “We do not share operational control with the Russians. We don’t do combined operations with them, or activities directly in support of one of their operations. But coordination is permitted. We keep each other apprised of what’s happening and within this package is the mutual exchange of intelligence. If we get a hot tip that could help the Russians do their mission, that’s coordination; and the Russians do the same for us. When we get a hot tip about a command and control facility,” the adviser added, referring to the target in Khan Sheikhoun, “we do what we can to help them act on it." “This was not a chemical weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a weapon that people can run away from?”

The target was struck at 6:55 a.m. on April 4, just before midnight in Washington. A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian 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. According to intelligence estimates, the senior adviser said, the strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders, and an unknown number of drivers and security aides. There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have put the figure as high as 92. A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that “eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.” MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there “smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, 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.

The internet swung into action within hours, and gruesome photographs of the victims flooded television networks and YouTube. U.S. intelligence was tasked with establishing what had happened. Among the pieces of information received was an intercept of Syrian communications collected before the attack by an allied nation. The intercept, which had a particularly strong effect on some of Trump’s aides, did not mention nerve gas or sarin, but it did quote a Syrian general discussing a “special” weapon and the need for a highly skilled pilot to man the attack plane. The reference, as those in the American intelligence community understood, and many of the inexperienced aides and family members close to Trump may not have, was to a Russian-supplied bomb with its built-in guidance system. “If you’ve already decided it was a gas attack, you will then inevitably read the talk about a special weapon as involving a sarin bomb,” the adviser said. “Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria.”

At the UN the next day, Ambassador Haley created a media sensation when she displayed photographs of the dead and accused Russia of being complicit. “How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” she asked. NBC News, in a typical report that day, quoted American officials as confirming that nerve gas had been used and Haley tied the attack directly to Syrian President Assad. "We know that yesterday’s attack was a new low even for the barbaric Assad regime,” she said. There was irony in America's rush to blame Syria and criticize Russia for its support of Syria's denial of any use of gas in Khan Sheikhoun, as Ambassador Haley and others in Washington did. "What doesn't occur to most Americans" the adviser said, "is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?”

Trump, a constant watcher of television news, said, while King Abdullah of Jordan was sitting next to him in the Oval Office, that what had happened was “horrible, horrible” and a “terrible affront to humanity.” Asked if his administration would change its policy toward the Assad government, he said: “You will see.” He gave a hint of the response to come at the subsequent news conference with King Abdullah: “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies – babies, little babies – with a chemical gas that is so lethal ... that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line . ... That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. Big impact ... It’s very, very possible ... that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

Within hours of viewing the photos, the adviser said, Trump instructed the national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against Syria. “He did this before he talked to anybody about it. The planners then asked the CIA and DIA if there was any evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a nearby airport or somewhere in the area. Their military had to have it somewhere in the area in order to bomb with it.” “The answer was, ‘We have no evidence that Syria had sarin or used it,’” the adviser said. “The CIA also told them that there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian SU-24 bombers had taken off on April 4] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.” Everyone involved, except perhaps the president, also understood that a highly skilled United Nations team had spent more than a year in the aftermath of an alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria, removing what was said to be all chemical weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical weapons depots.

At this point, the adviser said, the president’s national security planners were more than a little rattled: “No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.” The intelligence made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead. And yet it was impossible for the experts to persuade the president of this once he had made up his mind. “The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity,” the senior adviser said. “It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’”

The national security advisers understood their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded. They were dealing with a man they considered to be not unkind and not stupid, but his limitations when it came to national security decisions were severe. "Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts," the adviser said. "He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: 'Do it.”’

On April 6, Trump convened a meeting of national security officials at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The meeting was not to decide what to do, but how best to do it – or, as some wanted, how to do the least and keep Trump happy. “The boss knew before the meeting that they didn’t have the intelligence, but that was not the issue,” the adviser said. “The meeting was about, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do,' and then he gets the options.”

The available intelligence was not relevant. The most experienced man at the table was Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who had the president’s respect and understood, perhaps, how quickly that could evaporate. Mike Pompeo, the CIA director whose agency had consistently reported that it had no evidence of a Syrian chemical bomb, was not present. Secretary of State Tillerson was admired on the inside for his willingness to work long hours and his avid reading of diplomatic cables and reports, but he knew little about waging war and the management of a bombing raid. Those present were in a bind, the adviser said. “The president was emotionally energized by the disaster and he wanted options.” He got four of them, in order of extremity. Option one was to do nothing. All involved, the adviser said, understood that was a non-starter. Option two was a slap on the wrist: to bomb an airfield in Syria, but only after alerting the Russians and, through them, the Syrians, to avoid too many casualties. A few of the planners called this the “gorilla option”: America would glower and beat its chest to provoke fear and demonstrate resolve, but cause little significant damage. The third option was to adopt the strike package that had been presented to Obama in 2013, and which he ultimately chose not to pursue. The plan called for the massive bombing of the main Syrian airfields and command and control centers using B1 and B52 aircraft launched from their bases in the U.S. Option four was “decapitation”: to remove Assad by bombing his palace in Damascus, as well as his command and control network and all of the underground bunkers he could possibly retreat to in a crisis.

“Trump ruled out option one off the bat,” the senior adviser said, and the assassination of Assad was never considered. “But he said, in essence: ‘You’re the military and I want military action.’” The president was also initially opposed to the idea of giving the Russians advance warning before the strike, but reluctantly accepted it. “We gave him the Goldilocks option – not too hot, not too cold, but just right.” The discussion had its bizarre moments. Tillerson wondered at the Mar-a-Lago meeting why the president could not simply call in the B52 bombers and pulverize the air base. He was told that B52s were very vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the area and using such planes would require suppression fire that could kill some Russian defenders. “What is that?” Tillerson asked. Well, sir, he was told, that means we would have to destroy the upgraded SAM sites along the B52 flight path, and those are manned by Russians, and we possibly would be confronted with a much more difficult situation. “The lesson here was: Thank God for the military men at the meeting,” the adviser said. "They did the best they could when confronted with a decision that had already been made."

Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were fired from two U.S. Navy destroyers on duty in the Mediterranean, the Ross and the Porter, at Shayrat Air Base near the government-controlled city of Homs. The strike was as successful as hoped, in terms of doing minimal damage. The missiles have a light payload – roughly 220 pounds of HBX, the military’s modern version of TNT. The airfield’s gasoline storage tanks, a primary target, were pulverized, the senior adviser said, triggering a huge fire and clouds of smoke that interfered with the guidance system of following missiles. As many as 24 missiles missed their targets and only a few of the Tomahawks actually penetrated into hangars, destroying nine Syrian aircraft, many fewer than claimed by the Trump administration. I was told that none of the nine was operational: such damaged aircraft are what the Air Force calls hangar queens. “They were sacrificial lambs,” the senior adviser said. Most of the important personnel and operational fighter planes had been flown to nearby bases hours before the raid began. The two runways and parking places for aircraft, which had also been targeted, were repaired and back in operation within eight hours or so. All in all, it was little more than an expensive fireworks display.

“It was a totally Trump show from beginning to end,” the senior adviser said. “A few of the president’s senior national security advisers viewed the mission as a minimized bad presidential decision, and one that they had an obligation to carry out. But I don’t think our national security people are going to allow themselves to be hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump had gone for option three, there might have been some immediate resignations.”

After the meeting, with the Tomahawks on their way, Trump spoke to the nation from Mar-a-Lago, and accused Assad of using nerve gas to choke out “the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many ... No child of God should ever suffer such horror.” The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war. Trump, who had campaigned as someone who advocated making peace with Assad, was bombing Syria 11 weeks after taking office, and was hailed for doing so by Republicans, Democrats and the media alike. One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word “beautiful” to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.” A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Five days later, the Trump administration gathered the national media for a background briefing on the Syrian operation that was conducted by a senior White House official who was not to be identified. The gist of the briefing was that Russia’s heated and persistent denial of any sarin use in the Khan Sheikhoun bombing was a lie because President Trump had said sarin had been used. That assertion, which was not challenged or disputed by any of the reporters present, became the basis for a series of further criticisms:


- The continued lying by the Trump administration about Syria’s use of sarin led to widespread belief in the American media and public that Russia had chosen to be involved in a corrupt disinformation and cover-up campaign on the part of Syria.

- Russia’s military forces had been co-located with Syria’s at the Shayrat airfield (as they are throughout Syria), raising the possibility that Russia had advance notice of Syria’s determination to use sarin at Khan Sheikhoun and did nothing to stop it.

- Syria’s use of sarin and Russia’s defense of that use strongly suggested that Syria withheld stocks of the nerve agent from the UN disarmament team that spent much of 2014 inspecting and removing all declared chemical warfare agents from 12 Syrian chemical weapons depots, pursuant to the agreement worked out by the Obama administration and Russia after Syria’s alleged, but still unproven, use of sarin the year before against a rebel redoubt in a suburb of Damascus.


The briefer, to his credit, was careful to use the words “think,” “suggest” and “believe” at least 10 times during the 30-minute event. But he also said that his briefing was based on data that had been declassified by “our colleagues in the intelligence community.” What the briefer did not say, and may not have known, was that much of the classified information in the community made the point that Syria had not used sarin in the April 4 bombing attack.

The mainstream press responded the way the White House had hoped it would: Stories attacking Russia’s alleged cover-up of Syria’s sarin use dominated the news and many media outlets ignored the briefer’s myriad caveats. There was a sense of renewed Cold War. The New York Times, for example – America’s leading newspaper – put the following headline on its account: “White House Accuses Russia of Cover-Up in Syria Chemical Attack.” The Times’ account did note a Russian denial, but what was described by the briefer as “declassified information” suddenly became a “declassified intelligence report.” Yet there was no formal intelligence report stating that Syria had used sarin, merely a "summary based on declassified information about the attacks," as the briefer referred to it.

The crisis slid into the background by the end of April, as Russia, Syria and the United States remained focused on annihilating ISIS and the militias of al-Qaida. Some of those who had worked through the crisis, however, were left with lingering concerns. “The Salafists and jihadists got everything they wanted out of their hyped-up Syrian nerve gas ploy,” the senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community told me, referring to the flare up of tensions between Syria, Russia and America. “The issue is, what if there’s another false flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.”

The White House did not answer specific questions about the bombing of Khan Sheikhoun and the airport of Shayrat. These questions were sent via e-mail to the White House on June 15 and never answered.

goldenequity
06-25-2017, 12:02 PM
Hersch's utter indictment of Trump bravado, the compounding of lies and false accusations
is on target as always. Disgusting irreverence for Truth and Human Life by the 'new' administration. :mad:

Galileo Galilei
06-25-2017, 02:12 PM
I know why Trump did it. This was a test by the New World Order as filtered into the mass media. The NWO wants to turn Trump into a weak one-term Jimmy Carter-style president who can be replaced with a warmonger. The gas attack was also designed to try to wreck havoc among the peace movement by turning themselves against each other over one measly bombing raid. Believe me, the military-industrial complex wants a lot more than a bombing raid. They wanted a big war with Russia.

Wake up!

Swordsmyth
06-25-2017, 02:54 PM
I know why Trump did it. This was a test by the New World Order as filtered into the mass media. The NWO wants to turn Trump into a weak one-term Jimmy Carter-style president who can be replaced with a warmonger. The gas attack was also designed to try to wreck havoc among the peace movement by turning themselves against each other over one measly bombing raid. Believe me, the military-industrial complex wants a lot more than a bombing raid. They wanted a big war with Russia.

Wake up!

So dump is playing Trans-dimensional chess?
If he is that is not much of a defense, why not just come out and tell the TRUTH to the public?

Galileo Galilei
06-25-2017, 03:14 PM
So dump is playing Trans-dimensional chess?
If he is that is not much of a defense, why not just come out and tell the TRUTH to the public?

Like Galileo, telling the truth does usually not work in the current mass media climate, you should know that by now. Once Trump is finished crushing them and upending the world order, telling the truth will be OK again. Galileo did it, now Trump has to do it.

Swordsmyth
06-25-2017, 03:26 PM
Like Galileo, telling the truth does usually not work in the current mass media climate, you should know that by now. Once Trump is finished crushing them and upending the world order, telling the truth will be OK again. Galileo did it, now Trump has to do it.

Killing people and starting unjustified wars OR Tell the people the truth. Hmmm What should I do?

goldenequity
06-25-2017, 03:34 PM
Killing people and starting unjustified wars OR Tell the people the truth. Hmmm What should I do?

zactly right... fuuck the 'chess'. :mad:

Galileo Galilei
06-25-2017, 04:11 PM
Killing people and starting unjustified wars OR Tell the people the truth. Hmmm What should I do?

Your strategy would lead to more death and destruction than the sophisticated anti-war strategy adopted by Trump. Your strategy was already tried by Jimmy Carter.

Zippyjuan
06-25-2017, 04:15 PM
Like Galileo, telling the truth does usually not work in the current mass media climate, you should know that by now. Once Trump is finished crushing them and upending the world order, telling the truth will be OK again. Galileo did it, now Trump has to do it.

Trump is Trump. You can't expect him to change.

He is part of the World Order. Did you notice who he has hired to work for him? Generals, heads of corporations, bank insiders, ex- governors. Not an outsider among them.


The NWO wants to turn Trump into a weak one-term Jimmy Carter-style president who can be replaced with a warmonger.

Well, he did say he was going to bomb the crap out of ISIS and that he knew more about them than the generals. He dropped the biggest bomb in our conventional arsenal on Afghanistan. He bombed Lybia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. He has made threats against Iran and North Korea. He wants more troops for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Glad he isn't a warmonger!

Swordsmyth
06-25-2017, 04:21 PM
Your strategy would lead to more death and destruction than the sophisticated anti-war strategy adopted by Trump. Your strategy was already tried by Jimmy Carter.

NO Carter did not tell the truth.

You are insane.

Galileo Galilei
06-25-2017, 05:42 PM
NO Carter did not tell the truth.

You are insane.

I was talking about military strategy. Obviously in the 1970s you could not tell the truth.

Galileo Galilei
06-25-2017, 05:44 PM
Trump is Trump. You can't expect him to change.

He is part of the World Order. Did you notice who he has hired to work for him? Generals, heads of corporations, bank insiders, ex- governors. Not an outsider among them.



Many held hostage for years by the New World Order have fled for freedom to Trump now that he is in power. You thought they were the NWO, but were really held hostage.

Swordsmyth
06-25-2017, 05:45 PM
I was talking about military strategy. Obviously in the 1970s you could not tell the truth.

Anything Carter said was commie propaganda, which is no more true than Neo-Con propaganda.
Most lies contain some truth, but they are still lies.

Galileo Galilei
06-25-2017, 05:45 PM
Trump is Trump. You can't expect him to change.

Well, he did say he was going to bomb the crap out of ISIS and that he knew more about them than the generals. He dropped the biggest bomb in our conventional arsenal on Afghanistan. He bombed Lybia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. He has made threats against Iran and North Korea. He wants more troops for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Glad he isn't a warmonger!

That is part of acting tough for the NWO, it means little in the long run for the military-industrial complex. No war with Russia means profits are down.

charrob
06-26-2017, 12:33 PM
Republicans Still Pushing False Flags In Syria And Cold War With Russia: (http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/june/26/republicans-still-pushing-false-flags-in-syria-and-cold-war-with-russia/)






Seymour Hersh's shocking new investigative report shows that US intelligence knew there was no Assad chemical attack in April, but that President Trump was so influenced by media images (which may have been faked) that he fired 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria anyway. Meanwhile, rank and file Democrat Members of Congress are growing frustrated over their leadership's continuing obsession with Russia as public opinion shifts on the issue. Republican Members are pushing for more Russia sanctions. Political shifts, on today's Liberty Report:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zca7yJqbMLQ



http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/june/26/republicans-still-pushing-false-flags-in-syria-and-cold-war-with-russia/

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 01:30 PM
Republicans Still Pushing False Flags In Syria And Cold War With Russia: (http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/june/26/republicans-still-pushing-false-flags-in-syria-and-cold-war-with-russia/)



That was a false-flag by some combination of British, French or Israeli intelligence. Trump is not pushing the false-flag. Mostly the media pushes false-flags these days. That is why Trump had to respond in some way.

bunklocoempire
06-26-2017, 01:37 PM
That was a false-flag by some combination of British, French or Israeli intelligence. Trump is not pushing the false-flag. Mostly the media pushes false-flags these days. That is why Trump had to respond in some way.

Had to or what?

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 01:56 PM
Had to or what?

Had to. Trump was tested by by the NWO.

bunklocoempire
06-26-2017, 01:59 PM
Had to. Trump was tested by by the NWO.

lol

Or what? He had to do something (respond) or what would happen?

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 02:07 PM
lol

Or what? He had to do something (respond) or what would happen?

I have already explained it. The NWO wants another big war. Short of that, they want to turn Trump into a weak one-term Jimmy Carter-style president and then replace him with a warmonger. So Trump had to have some sort of response. Otherwise the bad guys will re-take control in 2020.

Swordsmyth
06-26-2017, 02:17 PM
I have already explained it. The NWO wants another big war. Short of that, they want to turn Trump into a weak one-term Jimmy Carter-style president and then replace him with a warmonger. So Trump had to have some sort of response. Otherwise the bad guys will re-take control in 2020.
Even if that is true, it is the wrong move.
You can't beat the Devil playing his game.

bunklocoempire
06-26-2017, 02:44 PM
I have already explained it. The NWO wants another big war. Short of that, they want to turn Trump into a weak one-term Jimmy Carter-style president and then replace him with a warmonger. So Trump had to have some sort of response. Otherwise the bad guys will re-take control in 2020.

Respond with aggression based on lies-
Otherwise the bad guys will re-take control in 2020. Got it.

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 03:09 PM
Even if that is true, it is the wrong move.
You can't beat the Devil playing his game.

Trump is already beating the devil. Sorry devil. You lose.

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 03:10 PM
Respond with aggression based on lies-
Otherwise the bad guys will re-take control in 2020. Got it.

Trump is minimizing death and destruction. That is his goal.

Swordsmyth
06-26-2017, 03:16 PM
Trump is already beating the devil. Sorry devil. You lose.
The Truth will set you free, lies will only entangle you.

Zippyjuan
06-26-2017, 04:57 PM
Trump is minimizing death and destruction. That is his goal.

Is that why he chose to be the first president to use this weapon? http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/13/us-drops-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-ever-in-afghanistan.html


US drops largest non-nuclear bomb ever in Afghanistan


The Pentagon said U.S. military forces dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan on Thursday.

This is the first time the GBU-43 bomb, known as the "mother of all bombs," has ever been used in combat, according to Adam Stump, the Pentagon spokesman. The bomb contains 11 tons of explosives and is formally known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb.

"As ISIS-K's losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense," General John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement. "This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K."

Stump says the bomb was dropped on a cave complex believed to have Islamic State fighters according to the Associated Press.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a daily briefing on Thursday that ISIS fighters use the caves to "move around freely." He explained that in order to defeat the terrorist group, the U.S. must deny it operational space.

The press secretary declined to comment further on the bomb, referring requests to the Department of Defense.

President Donald Trump praised the U.S. military, calling the bombing a "very, very successful mission."

"Everybody knows exactly what happened and what I do is I authorize my military. We have the greatest military in the world and they've done their job as usual. So, we have given them total authorization," Trump said after meeting with first responders at the White House on Thursday.

Zippyjuan
06-26-2017, 05:02 PM
Related: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/24/politics/trump-pentagon-shift-war-power-military/index.html


How Trump is empowering the military -- and raising some eyebrows

Washington (CNN)In his first six months in office, President Donald Trump has overseen a steady transfer of power from the White House to the Pentagon, handing off several warfighting authorities that previously rested in his hands -- and those of past presidents of both parties -- to the Pentagon and the commanders overseeing the US' military campaigns.

The moves are intended to empower the military at a tactical level, bolstering the US' intensifying fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups to praise from several current and former military officials.

But those efforts have also raised concerns about whether Trump expects to face the same level of accountability for military decisions he has kicked down to the Pentagon and have drawn attention to the inherent risks of downsizing the White House's role in overseeing the US' escalating military campaign against ISIS and al-Qaeda and its offshoots.

Trump's most significant step in this direction came earlier this month when he empowered Defense Secretary James Mattis, a recently retired four-star general, to set troop levels in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon and the White House have downplayed the move by noting that Mattis can only act within the guardrails of the current US strategy in that country. But the move effectively empowers Mattis to send thousands more US troops into the warzone without the commander in chief's signoff for the first time in a 16-year war that has spanned three presidents.

In Yemen and Somalia, Trump has given US commanders waging the fight against terrorist groups there more freedom to launch raids and offensive airstrikes without the White House's OK by designating provinces in both countries as "areas of active hostilities," leading to a marked uptick in airstrikes in Yemen.

In Iraq and Syria, the President has also granted the Pentagon more freedom to manage troop levels.

Meanwhile, the White House's National Security Council -- which some at the Pentagon criticized as overbearing in the Obama administration -- has seen its power diminished, leaving Pentagon officials to describe a more streamlined decision-making process with fewer White House-crafted hoops to jump through on some military decisions.

The CIA, too, has been empowered by Trump, regaining the authority to conduct drone strikes against suspected terrorists -- actions President Barack Obama chose to personally authorize via the military.

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 05:10 PM
Is that why he chose to be the first president to use this weapon? http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/13/us-drops-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-ever-in-afghanistan.html

They were just testing an old weapon to see if it really worked.

Zippyjuan
06-26-2017, 05:23 PM
They were just testing an old weapon to see if it really worked.

I see. We haven't used nukes on anybody in a while. And they haven't been physically tested (even underground) for decades. Testing now is done on computers only. Maybe we need to pull out a couple of those too.

goldenequity
06-26-2017, 05:36 PM
Galileo... you have my respect.
You have managed to aggregate the entire (normally squabbling/fighting) RPF members against you.
That is not an E-Z task.
and
You have remained a gentleman through it all.
I totally disagree with you as well.

+ rep :D

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 07:25 PM
I see. We haven't used nukes on anybody in a while. And they haven't been physically tested (even underground) for decades. Testing now is done on computers only. Maybe we need to pull out a couple of those too.

I don't think it is safe to test nuclear weapons. JFK changed our policies on that.

Galileo Galilei
06-26-2017, 07:26 PM
Galileo... you have my respect.
You have managed to aggregate the entire (normally squabbling/fighting) RPF members against you.
That is not an E-Z task.
and
You have remained a gentleman through it all.
I totally disagree with you as well.

+ rep :D

Just trying to wake people up to the message of liberty. Liberty is a powerful message when wielded correctly.

CPUd
06-26-2017, 09:13 PM
http://i.imgur.com/7joue1v.jpg

CPUd
06-26-2017, 11:35 PM
879528793135878145
https://twitter.com/nikkihaley/status/879528793135878145

bunklocoempire
06-27-2017, 03:22 PM
Trump is minimizing death and destruction. That is his goal.

Thanks for the link.

Zippyjuan
06-27-2017, 05:50 PM
I don't think it is safe to test nuclear weapons. JFK changed our policies on that.

He limited but did not end our and Russian nuclear testing. The last one we blew off was in 1992. https://www.armscontrol.org/issuebriefs/No-Going-Back-20-Years-Since-the-Last-US-Nuclear-Test%20 Clinton then sought a global nuclear test ban treaty and it was signed in 1996. It has also been signed by 182 other nations and ratified by 157 of them.

AZJoe
06-27-2017, 08:41 PM
879528793135878145
https://twitter.com/nikkihaley/status/879528793135878145

So it isn't enough to falsely blame for attacks they did not do. Now the Nikki Haley needs to pre-blame Assad, Russia and Iran for her pre-predicted false flag er um pre-prediction longingly desired future accusation before they occur.

"Is this the White House’s way to incentivized Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda and ISIS to enlist the White Helmets’ expertise in staging yet another false flag (http://theduran.com/putin-calls-out-nato-syria-false-flag/) Syria chemical attack?"

(http://theduran.com/us-ambassador-to-the-un-nikki-haley-pre-warns-and-pre-blames-assad-russia-and-iran-for-future-chemical-weapons-attack/)And the twitter world sets the latest UN witch ablaze with truth (http://theduran.com/us-ambassador-to-the-un-nikki-haley-pre-warns-and-pre-blames-assad-russia-and-iran-for-future-chemical-weapons-attack/):

879603651374751746

879534610555817985

879542562066907136

879552866381217792

nikcers
06-27-2017, 08:42 PM
There is something in the air.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMVTB2aVUg0