21st Century Wire says…
It’s been over a week now since the alleged chemical attack out of Khan Shaykhun, Syria and the US government has yet to provide definitive proof of its claims.
(Photo Illustration 21WIRE)
US Chemical Report Lacks Evidence
In a declassified US intelligence report first published at the NY Times, the US cites a ‘pro-opposition’ group on social media as its primary source of the alleged chemical attack said to have occurred in Syria.
Moon of Alabama recently assessed the newly released US intelligence report’s chemical weapons claims. Here’s a portion of that article below:
“The Trump White House published three and a half pages of accusations against the governments of Syria and Russia. These are simple white pages with no header or footer, no date, no classification or declassification marks, no issuing agency and no signatures. It is indiscernible who has written them.
U.S. media call this a Declassified U.S. Report on Chemical Weapons Attack. It is no such thing.
It starts with “The United States is confident that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapon attack, …”
The U.S. “is confident”, it does not “know”, it does not have “proof” – it is just “confident”.
The whole paper contains only seven paragraphs that are allegedly a “Summary of the U.S. intelligence community assessment” on the issue. The seven paragraphs are followed by eight(!) paragraphs that try to refute the Russian and Syrian statements on the issue. Some political fluff makes up the sorry rest.
That “intelligence community assessment” chapter title is likely already a false claim. Even a fast tracked, preliminary National Intelligence Assessment, for which all seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies must be heard, takes at least two to three weeks to create. A “long track” full assessment takes two month or more. These are official documents issued by the Director of National Intelligence. The summary assessment the White House releases has no such heritage. It is likely a well massaged fast write up of some flunky in the National Security Council.”
‘QUESTIONS’ – The US government maintains that the highly toxic nerve agent Sarin was used in Syria. However, any skin exposure to the chemical compound would pose severe heath risks – even death. ( Image Source: eclinik.files.wordpress)
WMD Deception Again?
The US government’s chemical weapons report proclaims ‘certainty’ over images and videos largely supplied by the US-UK backed ‘NGO’ known as the White Helmets, a so-called ‘first responder’ group with a history of producing western-oriented war propaganda. In absurd fashion, the ‘ginned up’ chemical report attempts refute apparent ‘false narratives’ circulating around the alleged chemical weapons attack, suggesting that the ‘Syrian opposition’ could not manufacture or deceive Western intelligence and its media reporters on a large scale. Unfortunately for US leadership and their functionary agencies and media stenographers, on the ground reporting from Syria has already exposed the White Helmets imagery and videos as a fraud – while also outing the group’s links to terror. Here’s a look at a portion of the US chemical weapons report:
Additionally, in a report featured on RT news, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore Postol, directly challenged the US chemical weapons report, stating that there is no evidence. Here’s a passage from RT:
“The report “contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft,” wrote Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore Postol, who reviewed it and put together a 14-page assessment, which he provided to RT on Wednesday.”
“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,” wrote Postol.
Professor Postol also added the following:
“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,” as reported by RT.
Professor Postol’s examination does not support the US government’s claims. The award-winning MIT Professor wrote a 14-page document questioning US intelligence regarding the apparent chemical attack.
TAKE NOTE: The portion of the US intelligence document above reminds one of the deception that boosted public acceptance during the First Gulf War, which in turn led to another wave of lies in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Iraq War, just like its predecessor the First Gulf War, was fully aided by reportage by both the media and members of the US government…
In his first interview since the alleged chemical attack, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the the chemical claims against his government are a ‘100 percent fabrication’ and that the US is ‘hand in glove’ with terrorism. The UK’s Independent reports the following developments regarding Syria:
“Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has reiterated that his government had nothing to do with the chemical gas incident in a rebel-held village last week that killed more than 80 people.
Allegations that his forces had deliberately poisoned civilians were ”100 per cent fabrication”, the president said on Thursday, adding that the Syrian government gave up its chemical weapons stocks as part of a 2013 agreement.
“Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack,” he said.”
‘FRAME JOB?’ – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad doubts US claims. (Image Source: france24.com)
Designing War
Recently a newly released Stockholm study yielded some stunning conclusions concerning arms exports from the US and Europe, in addition to arms imports acquired by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, most notably Saudi Arabia. According to this latest report from 2012-16, there has been the highest arms transfer volume over a 5-year stretch since the end of the Cold War.
When considering the recent arms report outlined by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), we can clearly see a how a Western engineered proxy landscape took its shape in both Syria and Yemen over the past several years. Think-tank planners telegraphed their predictions around existing military operations already put in motion.
In October of 2014, 21WIRE analzyed a report from the Israeli tabloid site Vocativ that stated that ISIS had received weapon and supplies supposedly meant for Kurdish forces in Syria. Pentagon functionaries and US media bombarded the airwaves, stating that ISIS had somehow “got a hold of American weapons.” The reality was that this story was hidden in plain sight as it would have been extremely unlikely that such a military mishap could happen unless it was perhaps intentional.
Over the past 24-48 hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin stunned the international community with claims that the apparent chemical attack in the Idlib province of Syria was a false flag meant to frame the Syrian government. What’s more, Putin stated that Russian intelligence believes that there may be more events like it in the future.
RT reports:
“Russia has information of a potential incident similar to the alleged chemical attack in Idlib province, possibly targeting a Damascus suburb, President Vladimir Putin said. The goal is to discredit the government of Syrian President Assad, he added.”
“We have reports from multiple sources that false flags like this one – and I cannot call it otherwise – are being prepared in other parts of Syria, including the southern suburbs of Damascus. They plan to plant some chemical there and accuse the Syrian government of an attack,” he said at a joint press conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Moscow.
Here’s a look at Putin addressing the chemical allegations in Syria…
All of this has transpired while the Donald Trump now says NATO is ‘no longer obsolete’ after suggesting exactly the opposite throughout the well-known mogul’s campaign run. The move seems to be one of many by the Trump administration that appears to be at odds with positions taken before the prior to the 2016 election. Here’s a passage from the BBC on the matter:
“The Nato U-turn wasn’t Mr Trump’s only change of heart on Wednesday.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said he would not label China a currency manipulator, despite having repeatedly pledged to do so on his first day in office.”
The BBC report continued with the following:
“At a joint press conference with Mr Stoltenberg, Mr Trump said: “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more Nato can do in the fight against terrorism.
“I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.
“I said it [Nato] was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.”
The Trump administration’s approval of NATO appears to be a departure from its position on America’s need for a ‘light foot-print’ in the world.
In an article from February entitled “FAKE NEWS WEEK: Government & Mainstream Media’s ‘Wag the Dog’ War on Reality,” we at 21WIRE discussed the media manipulation witnessed regarding the Middle East in the lead up to the Syrian conflict. Here’s a passage of that report below that is applicable to what we are witnessing today:
“The deception used to propel both the First Gulf War and the Iraq War over the last two decades helped to pave the road for further western interventions in Libya as well as the regime-change-by-proxy war against Syria.
Since hostilities began in Syria in 2011, those on Capitol Hill, along with their public relations scriveners, have acted as dutiful functionaries by repeatedly presenting false evidence to the public. Over the past several years Washington and its trusted NATO partners have perpetually pushed unsubstantiated allegations concerning chemical weapons in a concerted effort to frame the Syrian government for war crimes – a plan designed to trigger either a UN Resolution for a No Fly Zone, or to give legitimacy to a ‘Coalition’ action against Syria.
Continuing, the article expands on the White Helmets fraudulent activity and BBC news fakery:
In 2013, in the lead up to a deeper conflict in Syria the BBC were caught staging a video after an alleged chemical weapons attack featuring what clearly looked to be crisis actors. The BBC report, Saving Syria’s Children, even went so far (according to the RT’s investigation below) as digitally altering the word napalm for “chemical weapons’ when they interviewed emergency response personnel. To date, the BBC has never properly explained why it altered the audio in that scene. It was not, however, the only apparently staged scene in the emotive documentary report, as described in the extensive research conducted by independent media researcher Robert Stuart. Nonetheless, the BBC’s policy of silence has left skeptics to conclude what many see as the obvious answer: to prosecute the Syrian government for WMD crimes on the eve of a British Parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria. The war vote was supposedly in response to alleged ‘chemical weapons attack carried out by “The Regime” in East Ghouta, Damascus weeks before.
In the end, the western claims were discredited, and the evidence for the alleged sarin gas attacks which took place instead pointed at the western and Gulf state-backed “rebels” (aka terrorists) as being the true culprits. Bear in the mind that the entire western mainstream media had already cast blame on Syrian President Bashar al Assad for the chemical attacks – making this the pretext for yet another war and “humanitarian intervention by the west. This was just one more example of a false crisis being used to sway the opinion not only of the American public but that of the international community.”
Here’s another look at an investigative feature by RT’s Truth Seeker discussing the deceptive claims presented by the BBC’s flagship investigative program, Panorama, and its producer Ian Pannell regarding allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syria government:
See Also: Episode #180 – SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Syria Under Fire’ with guests Hanin Elias and Steven Sahiounie
More from Consortium News on the current developments in Syria below…
Trump Withholds Syria-Sarin Evidence
Robert Parry
Consortium News
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.
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.
Continue this report at Consortium News…
READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA Files
SUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV