Assad says chemical attack was “false flag”
The New York Times reports that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, in an interview has presented a scenario of the recent use of chemical weapons in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun which killed at least 80 people and injured hundreds more as either the fault of American bombing or completely manufactured and designed to unfairly portray him as a monster;
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria not only repeated the government’s denials of responsibility but contended without evidence that the episode had been fabricated as a pretext for an American retaliatory missile strike.
“We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhoun,” Mr. Assad told Agence France-Presse in the television interview from Damascus, which was recorded on Wednesday. “Were they dead at all?”
[…]
The interview with Mr. Assad was broadcast as the Syrian government’s news agency asserted without evidence that American warplanes had bombed what it called a chemical weapons cache possessed by Islamic State militants in Syria on Wednesday, leaving hundreds dead, including “a large number of civilians, due to suffocation caused by the inhalation of toxic materials.”
So their story is that it never happened but if it did, it was the fault of Trump and the US. Of course.
Category: Terror War
I’m sure he wouldn’t lie about such a thing. FFS
Of course, the New York Times will do everything in their power to undermine Prez Trump, including publishing enemy war propaganda.
Syria is just one big Blue Falcon, IMHO.
I cannot see any good resolution to what is going on there. I fear it will be a morass of warlords for the next 100-200 years.
Assad, for all that I don’t like him, at least had the country as stable as those countries can seem to get.
Why is anyone surprised? Vlad (Putin) probably told him to do that if he wants to keep getting support from Russia.
Assad, “Who ya gonna believe, me or yer own liein’ eyes?”
After all, he has the street cred of Susan Rice.
“yer own liein’ eyes?”
Well, he is an opthamologist isn’t he?
I like the pleading in the alternative that he employed, with a twist. The chemical attack didn’t happen. If you find that it did happen, we didn’t do it. If you find that we did do it, then there must be dead children. If you find that there are dead children, then they were not killed by us. You killed them by bombing a chemical weapons cache maintained by our enemy. (He could have added, “Can we please go back to the meaningless Red Line that we were accustomed to?”
I’m sure that bare handed aid workers handling sarin infested clothing would be a reasonable tactic after a suspected nerve agent attack.
Maybe Assad did it, maybe he didn’t…he’s done it before so it fits hi MO to be certain. But if we trained to be covered from head to toe to avoid having this shit touch our skin I find it amazing that was unnecessary…
And why does sarin matter more than say a bullet to the head of the children?
He’s been killing people for years as did his father before him and it never mattered….why now do you suppose it matters? I understand Obama wasn’t gonna do jack shit, but the Assads have been murderers for decades.
If we’re going to only stop chemical attacks are we going to overlook Assad some more if he goes back to just using conventional weapons?
If we need someone gone to advance our current political interests I understand that part, I don’t need the pretense of angst over a chemical weapons attack to soothe my conscience. Shooting a kid is not much different than gassing them when it’s over, one is quicker maybe depending where they shoot him….but let’s not pretend we’re acting now because Assad suddenly became a monster. His father was a monster who raised a monster….what a shocking piece of information.
Seems to me the difficulty here is that everybody – absolutely everybody – involved in this has a strong incentive to lie and to present the “facts” (such as they are) in a way that favors their specific aims.
Even the NGOs and aid organizations have ties to one side or the other which makes their reports as suspect as those of the combatants.
It’s a tragedy that so many innocent people get caught in the middle of horrific scenes like this but that doesn’t make it our problem.
If we really had any compassion for the innocent victims of the Syrian civil war we’d stop giving them hope that they’ll succeed. It’s that hope that keeps them fighting.
Assad may be a terrible son-of-a-bitch (in a region of the world that has produced more than its fair share of terrible-sons-of-bitches) but there are worse things than having a brutal dictator in power – things like endless civil war and religious fanaticism.
Point.
I’ve got mixed thoughts on this. One of the things that’s been a problem is rock-solid evidence that the Sarin is actually from Assad’s side. The compound itself is not that complicated, it’s related to the insecticide Malathion, and apparently has a unique chemical signature dependent on how it’s cooked up. As far as I’m aware, no one has demonstrated a direct link from Sarin attack residue to a stockpile under Assad control.
About a year ago, Seymour Hersh offered fairly strong evidence that some Sarin now in Syria was originally in Libya under Gaddafi’s control until his regime fell. Hersh contends it wound up with Assad’s opposition, and was conveyed there with the blessing of the prior administration. The apparent idea was that it would help to push forward the Arab Spring by leveling the playing field. Maybe it’s a stretch, maybe not.
Some of the on-site observation also seems extremely suspect. When you have so-called eyewitnesses of an attack describing the ordnance dropped as “gas bombs,” it seems to push the bounds of plausibility. It’s a bit too pat. What exactly does a gas bomb look like? Do they look like regular HE only with a big label that says “SARIN” in Arabic? And if you’re close enough to recognize one, how do you survive?
It also seems to me there would be a distinct difference in the dispersal pattern of delivered Sarin ordnance as opposed to stored Sarin being hit with explosives. Has anybody bothered to look at such a forensic aspect of this?
Too, it might be mentioned that if Assad’s regime falls, it would also threaten the Russian possession of bases in Latakia. Something Putin is probably not going to take lightly.
Your last two sentences say everything.
Gas shells at least in WWI were distinguished by a much lower audio signature…instead of KA-BOOM apparently you got – boom. (No personal knowledge of this despite what my children may say about my age.) Believe that was also taught as one of the warning signs of a potential gas attack, at least in the ’80s.
Just so we’re clear, that would be the same Seymour Hersch who continues to insist there is “no definitive evidence of a nuclear weapons program” in Iran?
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-deceits-of-seymour-hersh/
It’s not like Islamists haven’t tried to frame him before and we caught. We obviously need to interview more Islamist doctors on TV to get to the real truth.
No motive for him to do it. White hats are notorious propaganda tool and consider how our record on intel and how oblivious it’s been in that region we are going to need more than a trail of flight path dots, or not we already bombed them.
Dems wants a war so they can turn around and be anti war and run as the anti war party next election cycle. It’s why the never trumpers and leftist scum are praising military action by Trump. It’s all politics.
It wasn’t “Islamist Doctors” making the claims it was DWB, UN investigators and several human rights organizations. That being aside from any US intel which is likely better, especially in regard to things flying around in the sky and dropping ordnance. That stuff is pretty hard to hide.
Yeah, I’m certainly gonna believe Assad. /sarc
“The interview with Mr. Assad was broadcast as the Syrian government’s news agency asserted without evidence that American warplanes had bombed what it called a chemical weapons cache possessed by Islamic State militants in Syria on Wednesday, leaving hundreds dead, including “a large number of civilians, due to suffocation caused by the inhalation of toxic materials.””
We are asserting he did it without evidence. I find his explanation just as plausible. After all, a number of outlets have posed the interesting question “why? He had nothing to gain and is wining”
Anybody stop for a second and ask why Obama and now a whole lot of people in charge of Western Countries want Assad gone so badly?
jonp. I am growing concerned about you. There is a mountain of evidence that Assad used chem weapons multiple times, spanning two US administrations, both of which, along with the UN, established their use after he claimed to have no such weapons. You seem to want a sworn admission by Assad that he ordered the use of chem weapons or that he authorized subordinates to use them at their discretion. That’s not going to happen. And that “Why would I do THAT?” question is one that criminal suspects often respond with when being questioned. Here are a few links going to the evidence you seek. There is much more, if you look.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/government-assessment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/11/523427866/u-s-lays-out-case-for-assads-culpability-in-chemical-weapons-attack
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0
http://time.com/4492670/syria-chemical-weapon-aleppo-assad-regime/
There is a mountain of evidence that ISIS has chemical weapons and used them as recently as this week in Iraq.
Links to The NYT, Time, NPR and Obama’s corrupt regime don’t impress me much.
“Links to The NYT, Time, NPR and Obama’s corrupt regime don’t impress me much.” And if all of the reports came from Breitbart, I suppose they could be dismissed as blind support for Trump. I selected those reports b/c it establishes that both the right and left have amassed evidence of Assad’s use of chem agents, the ones he said he destroyed and don’t exist. I tried. Screw it then.
The links were interesting. A possible explanation for what’s going on is that Assad or his minions used Sarin in Damascus in 2013 because they were in a desperate situation. Following that, they actually did turn over the tons of Sarin, VX, and Mustard in storage, but have continued limited use of chlorine gas which wasn’t covered under an international possession treaty.
Delivery of the chlorine gas has been by “barrel” bombs dropped from helicopters. Testing for the existence of chlorine has been effective despite the fact that the compound dissipates relatively quickly. None of which has apparently been true for Sarin, which is a much nastier nerve agent.
Personally, I still think the evidence is somewhat thin on Assad’s use of Sarin in Khan Sheikhoun. We don’t, for example, know the tactical situation at the time that would have caused it.
Yet another big question is if somehow Assad is taken off the board, who is going to replace him?
How much does it really matter who ordered which subgroup to use the gas originally, or even the second or third time? Sure, I am as curious as everyone else to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but in reality, the primary goal here is to get the use of poison gas to stop. Right now.
If we get the use of Sarin et al stopped there should be plenty of time to sort out the details. Holding those responsible accountable is a secondary consideration. Important, yes, but the current line in the sand is to have whoever is acting against clear international law to stop doing so.
It matters because you don’t retaliate against those who did not use them.