Met de dag wordt het gekker, de berichten uit de VS en dan m.n. die uit Washington. Zo meldden Radio1 en BNR vanmorgen, dat de VS heeft gezien, dat Syrië bezig is met de voorbereiding van een gifgasaanval, te vergelijken met die op Khan Sheikhoun in april dit jaar........
Die aanval met gifgas is niet door Syrië gedaan, dat is intussen overduidelijk, toevallig bracht Anti-Media daar gisteren weer een artikel over, een artikel dat u verderop terugvindt en dat uit en te na wijst op de belachelijkheid van de VS aanname dat Syrië dit zou hebben gedaan, er bestaat zelfs grote twijfel of er wel een gifgasaanval plaatsvond (zie het artikel....).....
Wel is intussen duidelijk dat de VS (deels toegegeven door de VS) witte fosfor heeft gebruikt bij bombardementen van dichtbevolkt stedelijk gebied namelijk in Mosul en Raqqa, respectievelijk in Irak en Syrië...... Ongelofelijk trouwens, dat de reguliere 'onafhankelijke' mediaorganen hier amper of geen aandacht aan hebben besteed, terwijl ze op de kop stonden door de zogenaamde Syrische gifgasaanval op Khan Sheikhoun.....
De laatste leugen van de VS, dat Syrië bezig is een gifgasaanval voor te bereiden, is een teken dat de VS weer bezig is een enorme oorlogsmisdaad te begaan, tegen het reguliere Syrische leger en daarmee zal testen of Rusland nu wel in zal grijpen (iets dat de VS op de plek van Rusland al lang had gedaan.....)....
Hoe is het mogelijk dat het westen de VS laat begaan, zeker in de EU zou men keihard aan de VS bel moeten trekken, immers wij zijn het eerste doel van Rusland, als er een kernoorlog uitbreekt tussen de VS en Rusland. Logisch daar wij zo ongelofelijk dom zijn, dat we de VS hebben toegestaan hier kernraketten/bommen op te slaan en zelfs lanceerinstallaties hebben laten inrichten.......... Uiteraard is de houding van de reguliere westerse (massa-) media helemaal een onbegrijpelijke, het lijkt godverdomme wel of men daar blij zal zijn, als er morgen een kernoorlog uitbreekt.......
Seymour
Hersh: US Lied About Syrian Chemical Attack Then Bombed Them Anyway
June
26, 2017 at 11:12 am
(ANTIMEDIA) — Never
one to accept the U.S. government’s official
explanation of events without
question, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has
investigated Donald Trump’s decision to strike the al-Shayat
Airbase in Syria in April of this year, which the president launched
amid widespread allegations that the Syrian government committed a
chemical weapons attack.
In
a report entitled “Trump’s
Red Line,” published Sunday in the daily German newspaper Die
Welt,
Hersh asserts that President Donald Trump ignored important
intelligence reports when he made the decision to attack Syria after
pictures emerged of dying children in the war-torn country.
For
those of us without goldfish memories, Hersh’s recent investigation
is reminiscent of his previous examination of the alleged chemical
weapons attacks in 2013, detailed in an article entitled “Whose
Sarin?” That article was published in
the London
Review of Books.
The
official White House explanation for the events in April of this year
was that Donald Trump was moved
by the suffering of
“beautiful” Syrian babies – the same Syrian babies he doesn’t
want to set foot in the United States – and decided to punish the
Syrian government for the attack two days after it allegedly
occurred. This punishment came in the form of an airstrike despite
the lack of a thorough investigation regarding what took place that
fateful day in April and who was ultimately culpable (though the
Trump administration insisted they
were certain that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to blame).
In
that context, it should come as no surprise that Trump acted rashly
without consideration of the facts on the ground. However, what is
most disturbing about Hersh’s account is the fact that, according
to his source, Trump was well aware that the U.S. had no solid
intelligence linking the Syrian government to a chemical weapons
attack — and that’s because, according to Hersh’s article, it’s
doubtful a chemical weapons attack occurred at all.
Hersh
reports:
“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.”
“None
of this makes any sense,” one
officer reportedly told colleagues upon learning of the decision to
bomb Syria, according to Hersh. “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.”
According
to Hersh, Trump “could not be swayed” by 48 hours worth of
intense briefings and decision-making following the initial reports
of the alleged chemical weapons attack. Hersh, who reportedly
reviewed transcripts of real-time communications, explains that there
is a “total disconnect” between the president and his military
advisers and intelligence officials.
As
is the case with Syrian military operations, Russia gave the U.S.
details of the carefully planned attack on a meeting in Khan
Sheikhoun, according to Hersh’s admittedly anonymous sources.
The Russians had employed a drone to the area days before the attack
to develop the intelligence necessary to coordinate it.
According
to Hersh’s sources, the United States and its Russian counterpart
routinely share information regarding planned attacks in order to
avoid collisions. However, they also permit “coordination,” a
practice that involves giving the other side a “hot tip about a
command and control facility,” which then helps the other side
carry out their attack.
Therefore,
there was no surprise chemical weapons attack, as the Trump
administration alleged. In fact, Russia had actually warned its
American counterpart on the off-chance that there were any CIA assets
on the ground who should have been forewarned of an impending attack.
“They
[the Russians] were playing the game right,” a
senior adviser told Hersh.
Hersh
continues:
“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.”
Hersh
confirms Russia’s account of
the incident, in which Russian authorities alleged that the Syrian
Air Force bombed a “terrorist warehouse,” and that secondary
bombings dispersed dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere.
Strangely, if Hersh’s reporting is accurate, it is not clear why
Russia didn’t give the detailed account at the time — and why the
Russians didn’t emphasize that they had shared information with the
U.S. military well in advance of the attack, as this would have cast
further doubt on the official U.S. narrative. In that context, Russia
could have provided proof of any prior communications that took place
within the so-called deconfliction channel. It also doesn’t explain
why Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, appeared to endorse two
competing theories behind
the events at Khan Sheikhoun.
However,
Hersh continues:
“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.”
Hersh
is not the first high-profile investigator to cast major doubts on
the Trump administration’s official narrative regarding the events
at Khan Sheikhoun. MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol, who
previously worked as a former
scientific advisor to
the U.S. military’s Chief of Naval Operations, poked major holes in
the claims that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons
attack at Khan Sheikhoun, noting the “politicization” of
intelligence findings (you can access all of his reports here).
Postol
argued that there was no possible way U.S. government officials could
have been sure Assad was behind the attack before they launched their
strike, even though they claimed to be certain. Postol took the
conversation even further, asserting that the available evidence
pointed to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground,
not from an aircraft. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter had
similar concerns regarding
the White House’s conclusions, as did former U.K. ambassador to
Syria Peter
Ford.
The mainstream media paid almost zero attention to these reports, a
slight that exposes the media’s complicity in allowing these acts
of war to go ahead unquestioned.
According
to Hersh’s source, within hours of viewing the footage of the
‘attack’ and its aftermath, Trump ordered his national defense
apparatus to plan for retaliation against the Syrian government.
Hersh explains that despite the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence
Agency) having no evidence that Syria even had sarin, let alone that
they used it on the battlefield, Trump was not easily persuaded once
he had made up his mind.
“Everyone
close to him knows his proclivity for acting
precipitously when he does not know the facts,” the
adviser told Hersh. “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.”’ [emphasis
added]
At
a meeting on April 6, 2017, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida,
Trump spoke with his national security officials regarding the best
way to move forward. The meeting was not to decide what to do, Hersh
explains, but how best to do it (and how to keep Trump as happy as
possible).
Trump
was given four options. The first one was dismissed at the outset
because it involved doing nothing. The second one was the one that
was decided upon: a minimal show of force (with advance warning to
Russia). The third option was the strike package that Obama was
unable to implement in 2013 in the face of mounting
public opposition and
Russia’s threats
of intervention.
This plan was Hillary Clinton’s ultimate fantasy considering she
was encouraging it
moments before Trump’s lone strike actually took place. However,
this would have involved extensive air strikes on Assad’s airfields
and would have drawn in the Russian military to a point of no return.
The
fourth option involved the direct assassination of the Syrian
president by bombing his palaces, as well as his underground bunkers.
This was not considered, either.
As
we all witnessed in April, the second option was adopted, and the
airbase Trump struck was up
and running again in
less than 24 hours, making it a very symbolic and empty show of
force.
Hersh’s
insight into the way Trump is conducting his foreign policy does not
bode well for the future of the Syrian conflict (or anywhere else in
the world, for that matter). Trump was not interested in the
intelligence or the facts on the ground — if he had been, he would
have waited until an investigation had determined culpability before
ordering a strike.
Missing
from Hersh’s account, however, is the fact that it was newly
appointed national security advisor General H.R. McMaster who laid
out the military strike proposals to
the president at his resort on April 6. McMaster replaced former
national security advisor Michael Flynn after the latter was forced
to resign due
to leaks from
within the intelligence community. Due to Flynn’s alleged ties to
Russia, it seems unlikely he would have proposed such a strike on
Russia’s close ally to begin with.
Those
commentators who can review these startling revelations but still
condone Trump’s actions with a lazy ‘Assad
is still a bad guy and must be overthrown’
mindset argument are being intellectually dishonest, with themselves
and others. As was
the case in 2013,
there is still very
little evidence that
Assad has ever
used chemical weapons — particularly
in the attacks that the U.S. has tried to pin on him — yet this is
the standard by which the corporate media and our respective
governments have instructed us to judge Assad. Even without this
conclusive evidence, shortly after the April events, U.S. ambassador
to the U.N. Nikki Haley stated Assad
will fall from power.
Hersh’s
investigation bolsters many claims that
the U.S. acted rashly without first conducting or ordering an
impartial inquiry regarding what happened in April of this year.
Hersh’s report also serves as a reminder to the world of
the warpath
we are continuing down,
spearheaded by an impulsive and reckless megalomaniac who has no
interest in ascertaining fact from fiction.
Remember
that Donald J. Trump has the nuclear codes; it is hard to
think of a worse candidate to be entrusted with the fate of humanity.
