Further Questions Arise on Ghouta Attack
There has been quite a rush to assign blame to the Syrian government for the August 21 chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta area of greater Damascus. Perhaps more than any other piece of evidence, the fact that the two rocket trajectories the UN report described cross inside a Syrian military base has prompted people to jump to that conclusion. However, as I have pointed out, the UN report itself does not state directly that the two rockets for which trajectories were described actually tested positive for sarin. That is a very important point, since we know that conventional shelling of the attack site, from the base identified by the rocket flight paths, continued in the days between the chemical weapon attack and the arrival of the UN inspection team.
I had seen suggestions that some of the video evidence on which the US based its huge estimate of the death toll from the attack may have been staged. Below is a video compiled by Global Research that summarizes much of the case calling those videos into question. The video raises several important points. First, we learn here that at least one of the regions of the attack had actually been abandoned by citizens prior to August 21 because the area had been rendered unlivable by repeated shelling. The video also suggests that a large number of kidnapped Alawite women and children may have been transported to the attack site to serve as the victims of the attack. A number of faces of male victims of this kidnapping appear to be matched from pre-August 21 videos to those same faces showing up among the dead after the attack.
I don’t profess to know the truth of who carried out this brutal attack with sarin, but the questions raised in this video are just as worthy of pursuing fully as those raised by the folks who already assume Assad gave the order for this attack.
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzLVfdrQRsY’]
Hi,
Perhaps you or EW could explain the discrepancies in the nuns actual report which is located here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/STUDY_THE_VIDEOS_THAT_SPEAKS_ABOUT_CHEMICALS_BETA_VERSION.pdf
Here’s another one
http://friendsofsyria.co/2013/09/19/children-in-syria-chemical-attack-video-moved-between-locations-before-staged-filming/
One additional point I would mention from this report is the footage of what appears to be a group of rebels firing a rocket from a launcher that appears to be large enough to fire at least the smaller of the two described in the UN report. Further, the rocket being launched carries what looks like an improvised warhead that could carry a chemical agent. Recall that the conventional wisdom (which I am guilty of parroting in some of the previous posts) is that the rebels don’t possess launchers capable of handling the size rockets involved in Ghouta.
@Jim White: Oh. And that prompts the observation that if we posit rebel-launched rockets delivering the sarin, maybe we have two launch sites. That fits since the rockets described by the UN are such different sizes. It is possible to place two launch sites just outside the government military base but along the projected flight paths that still intersect inside the base.
If, as seems possible, this “attack” was staged and that, in order to fabricate a video, for media use and public consumption in “western” nations, the victims of kidnappings by allies of the United States and Israel, were murdered in the making of the video, we are dealing with a degree of depravity in our society which reaches depths rarely plumbed before.
The blame can hardly be laid at the feet of the demented sadistic fanatics who carry out such acts when they cannot act without the encouragement and sponsorship of member states of the UN. Crimes of the sort which are known to have been carried out by “rebel” forces are the responsibility not only of the governments which supply them but also of the media which choreographs their propaganda coups into a narrative justifying war.
Thank you for being a source to flesh out the numerous holes in the information.
I continue to be perplexed at the relatively good condition of the shells (presuming those had sarin traces – good catch) shown which might tend to support the idea that the shells were placed and packages detonated or, incoming from Syrian sources might have “found” a chemical weapons cache, as small as it might be.
The relatively narrow focus of the UN mandate introduces the idea that the administration has informational parts they wish to hide.
The very interesting thing is that once Syrian chemical weapons are certified as destroyed by the OPCW, there is little question where chemical weapons attacks are coming from. That in itself deters further chemical attacks.
There is time enough later to sort out responsibility and bring folks to the ICC. That is, if international law still exists.
Next agenda is to get the administration to come to agreement with Iran.
And take the “stalemate” comment as a hint to bring negotiations to the Syrian civil war to permit, as Jim White pointed out, a ceasefire that allows the source chemicals to exit the country (likely through Damascus and Lebanon) for out-of-country destruction. While the mixing equipment and production equipment are being certified as destroyed.
Please look at the date of this article:
http://web.archive.org/web/20130129213824/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html
I sincerely hope that an independent investigation commences and the truth comes out.
@b4real: clicked on your link and the Mail story comes up for a few seconds and then an error screen says address not valid. numerous attempts same result. Thank you Jim White
@bluejeansntshirt: That’s probably because of this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-2311199/Britam-Defence-David-Goulding-Philip-Doughty.html
Daily Mail retracted the article about a false flag and paid “substantial damages”.
For those who want the original story, it appears to be here in a stable copy:
http://2012thebigpicture.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/cached-copy-of-scrubbed-article-confirming-us-and-uk-backed-chemical-weapons-in-syria/
@Jim White: Whew, thanks again Jim. That headline definitely raised my bp for a bit.
EW readers: it feels really good to hit the donate button and support the tremendous work in this particular corner of the internets.
I’m outta here (POOF)
You can lead a horse to water….
Don’t know what to make of this Global Research video. Didn’t click through the links at their site, and don’t know anything about them/their rep.
Would note though that the report you RT’d from Kaszeta yesterday points out that while he’s convinced it’s sarin, he’s mighty confused by the very low frequency of miosis among victims as well as other syptoms that are, in his words, “out of proportion”. So, he seems to be saying, it’s sarin, but it’s not acting like classic sarin. So now we have weird sarin being delivered by weird rockets. “weird” meaning non-standard.
http://strongpointsecurity.co.uk/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/D-Kaszeta-Comments-on-UN-Report.pdf
One other crazy thought Jim, since we’re way out here at the end of the diving board:
What if the attack really did originate completely from Syrian forces, but was actually a coup attempt against Assad?