Syrian Civil War: News

Zivo wrote:

First TOW spotted in Syria. A Saudi origin would be my guess.

Viktor wrote:

Zivo wrote:

First TOW spotted in Syria. A Saudi origin would be my guess.

US origin would be my guess   , Saudi apes just transfered the damn thing to the terrorists

Zivo wrote:

Viktor wrote:

Zivo wrote:

First TOW spotted in Syria. A Saudi origin would be my guess.

US origin would be my guess   , Saudi apes just transfered the damn thing to the terrorists

Going by what has been done in the past. The CIA actually transfers and distributes them. They're not giving the weapons out to every Joe Blow they come across, they have a network.

Saudi Arabia made the purchase, CIA payed the shipping and handling.

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’

The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’

Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”’

medo wrote:http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’

The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’

Barring a major change in policy by Obama, Turkey’s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely to go on. ‘I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdoğan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The answer was: “We’re screwed.” We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: “We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.”’

Now we have chemical Erdogan. Hypocrisy at best. What a crime was decision of Crimeans in referendum to join Russia, that this must be punished with sanctions, but not a single word, when Erdogan throw chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. Turkey could do this, because they are NATO members.

Videos show first U.S.-made rockets in Syria

LONDON: Online videos show Syrian rebels using what appear to be U.S. anti-tank rockets, weapons experts say, the first significant American-built armaments in the country’s civil war.

They could signal a further internationalization of the conflict, with new rockets suspected from Russia and drones from Iran also spotted in the forces of President Bashar Assad.

None of that equipment is seen as being enough to turn the tide of battle in a now broadly stalemated war, however, with Assad dominant in Syria’s central cities and along the Mediterranean coast and the rebels in the interior north and east.

It was not possible to independently verify the authenticity of the videos or the supplier of the BGM-71 TOW anti-tank rockets allegedly shown in the videos. Some analysts suggested they might have been provided by another state such as Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, probably with Washington’s acquiescence.

U.S. officials declined to discuss the rockets, the appearance of which comes as Reuters reported that Washington had decided to proceed with plans to increase aid, including delivery of lower-level weaponry.

U.S. officials say privately there remain clear limits to American backing for the insurgency, given the dominant role played by Islamist militants. A proposal to supply MANPAD surface-to-air missiles was considered but rejected.

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the Obama administration was giving support but did not define its form.

“The United States is committed to building the capacity of the moderate opposition, including through the provision of assistance to vetted members of the moderate armed opposition,” she said.

“As we have consistently said, we are not going to detail every single type of our assistance,” she said.

While the number of U.S. rockets seen remains small, reports of their presence are steadily spreading, analysts say.

“With U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles now seen in the hands of three groups in the north and south of Syria, it is safe to say this is important,” said Charles Lister, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution Doha Centre and one of the first to identify the weapons.

The first three videos were posted on April 1 and 5, Lister said. While two have since been removed, one remains on YouTube.

Several other arms experts and bloggers on the Syrian war have also reviewed the videos. They include Eliot Higgins, a Britain-based, self-taught arms and video specialist who blogs under the name Brown Moses and has emerged as one of the leading authorities on foreign firepower reaching Syria.

The rebel faction shown operating the U.S. missiles in the first videos, a relatively secular and moderate group called Harakat Hazm, declined to comment. But an opposition activist based in southeastern Turkey who is a former member of Harakat Hazm said the weapons were provided by the Americans.

The Syrian activist, who identified himself as Samer Mohammad, said Harakat Hazm received 10 anti-tank missiles earlier this month near Aleppo and Idlib, two cities torn by heavy fighting near the northern border with Turkey.

He said Harakat Hazm had launched five of the rockets to destroy four tanks and win a battle in the Idlib suburbs of Babolin and Salhieh, and this was the first time such U.S. arms had figured in Syria’s fighting.

His information could not be confirmed independently.

More recent videos had shown the rockets in the hands of the Syrian Rebel Front and another group named the Martyr Ahmad Abdo Battalions and Brigades, Lister said. Both groups are also seen as broadly moderate, in contrast with radical Islamists.

Western states have long been reluctant to make good on repeated talk of supplying weapons to Assad’s foes, nervous of arms falling into the hands of jihadi militants or simply abetting more bloodshed in a conflict that has killed over 150,000 people and displaced millions over the past three years.

Lister said that if Washington were unwilling to supply TOW rockets itself, the most likely point of origin was Saudi Arabia, which has thousands of anti-tank projectiles in its arsenal.

Under terms of the original sale, Riyadh would be obliged to tell Washington if it were transferring them to any third party.

“Considering the groups already seen with these missile systems and considering Saudis’ already established reputation for providing weapons to moderate … groups, Saudi would seem the most likely candidate at this stage,” Lister said.

The other major regional supporter of the rebels, Qatar, apparently does not hold such rockets in its regular military stores, analysts say, and may have bought Chinese weaponry from elsewhere, potentially from Sudan, for shipment to rebels last year.

Chinese-built HJ-8 anti-tank guided missiles remain a relatively common part of the rebel arsenal, according to Syria arms experts. HJ-8s first popped up largely in the hands of Islamist groups early last year, possibly coming from Qatar.

More recent shipments have been noticed in the hands of relatively secular insurgent factions and are believed by analysts to have been supplied by Saudi Arabia instead.

Use of Chinese MANPAD anti-aircraft missiles by Islamist militants has dwindled in recent months, according to monitors. Such missiles arrived last year, again believed to have come from Qatar, a development that particularly worried Western states.

“I suspect there’s been two waves of Chinese weapons, the first from Qatar and the second from Saudi Arabia going to different groups,” said Higgins.

The U.S. and other Gulf Arab states have bemoaned Qatar’s scattergun approach to arming rebel forces that has seen many weapons end up in the hands of fighters affiliated with Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists.

Qatari and Saudi officials refuse to discuss their Syria policy in detail.

Gulf states have also been alarmed by growing signs of support from Iran for Assad’s military. The latest new piece of Iranian equipment to appear on the battlefield, an unmanned Shahed 129 drone photographed over Damascus, is said by Tehran to carry weapons as well as conduct surveillance.

Higgins said the other most significant development in Syrian conflict firepower this year was the government’s growing use of Russian-made BM-27 and BM-30 rocket launchers to deliver cluster munitions. While the former had long been known to be part of Assad’s armories, the latter was not.



Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Apr-15/253421-syria-rebels-get-us-made-missiles-source.ashx#ixzz2z1CPqdc5
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

The Failed Pretext For War: Seymour Hersh, Eliot Higgins, MIT Rocket Scientists On Sarin Gas Attack

MintPress News interviews a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, MIT professors and rocket scientists, and a blogger on who perpetrated a sarin gas attack that almost dragged the U.S. into Syria’s civil war.



WASHINGTON — It’s a story that has been framed many ways: the battle of an old-school journalist against a new media blogger; a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist now on the fringes of the journalistic community; and an American media that has again refused to buck the official White House line.

Last week, the London Review of Books published Seymour Hersh’s second installment on the long-debated August 2013 sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, a nearly 6,000-word piece titled “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” Hersh uses primarily anonymous sources, most prominently a “former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence.” The expose points to the possibility that the Turkish government had a hand in the attack — or maybe even directly orchestrated it by supplying al-Nusra Front rebels with sarin to frame the Assad regime as the culprit in order to push the United States into a war with Syria for crossing Obama’s “red line.”

This report follows “Whose Sarin?,” published in December 2013, which asserts that when the Obama administration had evidence that al-Nusra Front rebels had sarin gas capabilities, it cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The earlier article declares, “Months before the [August sarin] attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports … citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity.”

The American mainstream press is overwhelmingly refusing to even acknowledge these reports. The New Yorker passed on the first installment, as did The Washington Post. The London Review of Books picked it up and had it fact checked by a former New Yorker fact checker, LRB Senior Editor Christian Lorentzen told the Huffington Post. The second time around, Hersh went directly to the LRB.

An oft-cited British blogger, however, has attacked both of Hersh’s articles in multiple posts, declaring his assertion that the U.S. government has been right all along.

We know, Eliot Higgins says, it was forces loyal to President Assad who fired the series of sarin gas attacks into the

Damascus suburbs. In an April 7 post titled “Seymour Hersh’s Volcano Problem,” Higgins shares photos of several rockets ostensibly fired by the Syrian army. These “volcano rockets” appear very similar to the ones shown in photos of the rockets he says were used in the chemical gas attack.

“In all incidents, the rockets have exactly the same design, down to the small nut and bolt, and in three of the four incidents they are described as being chemical weapons,” he wrote.

It might have been a battle between a Pulitzer Prize winner and a data-collecting blogger if a team of rocket scientists and weapons experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hadn’t taken issue with Higgins’ analysis.

“It’s clear and unambiguous this munition could not have come from Syrian government-controlled areas as the White House claimed,” Theodore Postol told MintPress News.

Postol is a professor in the Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group at MIT. He published “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21st, 2013” in January along with Richard Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories who previously served as a United Nations weapons inspector and also boasts two books, 40 patents and more than 75 academic papers on weapons technology.

Higgins, Postol said, “has done a very nice job collecting information on a website. As far as his analysis, it’s so lacking any analytical foundation it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.”

The Turkish connection

Hersh’s initial assertion that neighboring Turkey has played a role in the Syrian civil war by supporting the al-Nusra rebels is known to those who are watching the events there. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan started providing significant material support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria — which later merged with al-Nusra —  in the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East. Political analysts view this as Erdogan’s attempt to re-assert Turkey’s influence in the region as it did during the Ottoman Empire.

“Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups,” Hersh writes in “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” Such support has been well documented, as was Assad’s declaration last year that Erdogan would “pay” a price for helping “terrorists.”

Furthermore, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents cited by Hersh, “Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production efforts in Syria.”

A more bizarre incident took place in Turkey last year that raised more questions about Erdogan’s relationship with the al-Nusra Front rebels. In May, Hersh notes, more than 10 members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were “two kilograms of sarin.”

According to media reports, including Hersh’s “The Red Line and the Rat Line, in a “130-page indictment” the group was accused of attempting to purchase “fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin.”

Five of those arrested were freed after a brief detention. As hersh writes, the other rebels, including the ringleader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the prosecutor requested a prison sentence of 25 years, were released pending trial. (MintPress tried to contact Turkish press who covered this story and attempted to locate Qassab’s whereabouts by also reaching out to embassies, but to no avail. We found no official record of Qassab’s travels.)

Among the Turkish press, however, there has been widespread speculation that the Erdogan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement with the al-Nusra rebels, especially after Aydin Sezgin, Turkey’s ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and told reporters that the recovered “sarin” was just “anti-freeze,” according to the National Journal.

Just last month, Erdogan suggested the possibility of war with Syrian President Assad. More recently, he also announced the downing of a fighter jet that he said strayed into Turkish airspace, a potential precursor to war.

Perhaps most startling, Reuters, the BBC, Al-Jazeera, the Los Angeles Times and others reported last month of a leaked audio recording of high-level Turkish officials — including the country’s foreign minister, its intelligence chief and an undersecretary of foreign affairs — discussing staging attacks on Turkey from Syrian soil to justify waging a counter attack.

However, the idea presented in the Hersh report that Erdogan would or even could orchestrate a sarin gas attack in Ghouta in order to implicate Assad was quickly attacked by critics who called it implausible. Worse yet, according to Hersh’s sources, the Obama administration knew of a potential Turkish connection and squelched that information.

No mainstream American press picked up the story and multiple outlets have refused to publish it. According to BuzzFeed, and Huffington Post, The Washington Post had originally planned on running Hersh’s first story, “Whose Sarin?,” but didn’t.

From My Lai to Abu Ghraib to Syria

Hersh’s reports are the kind of exposes that could make a career, maybe even earn a Pulitzer Prize, but the career journalist has already enjoyed both of those. He doesn’t seem to mind being seen as a truth-teller who is ostracized by “the big boys,” as he calls the mainstream media. That he has been so roundly ignored seems odd because he has legitimately broken more stories for many of “the big boy” publications than just about any other journalist could hope to do, starting with the revelation of the My Lai Massacre, which earned him that Pulitzer, and continuing with the U.S.-perpetrated torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

He has no interest in defending his work, apparently content to let it stand or fall on its own weight. “I wrote the article, it’s out there,” Hersh told MintPress.

When pressed, however, Hersh responds to some of the criticisms leveled against him and his work — including his use of anonymous sources. He argues that anonymous sources provide journalists — including “the big boys” — with information.

In the “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” Hersh also mentions classified documents — which he claims he has — only revealing select content through the article.

“The only reason I mentioned the documents is because the White House said they couldn’t find them,” he explained. “We gave them the document numbers and they still said they couldn’t find them.”

Typical, he muses.

As for some bloggers’ insinuations that Hersh’s anonymous source is Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon official under the George W. Bush administration who now writes for the conspiratorial World News Daily website, Hersh says Maloof is a “crazy neocon whacko” that “no one would take seriously.”

Then there’s the Russian agent who provided samples of sarin to the British analysts at Porton Down. “Why would anyone trust a Russian agent?” some critics asked.

“Just because they are Russian, they are untrustworthy?” Hersh asked. “I could have left it out of that story but it would have been dishonest.”

Laughing off the attacks on his credibility, Hersh appears far more interested in discussing the actual debate.

Hersh’s point is that the U.S. didn’t have the conclusive evidence it claimed it had that Syrian President Assad had crossed President Obama’s previously stated “red line” by using chemical weapons — a move that would have forced the U.S. to intervene in the Syrian civil war. According to Hersh’s sources, the U.S. did have evidence that it could have been other culprits — including Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.

“No one is saying they know what happened,” he said. “We don’t know.”

Enter: Brown Moses

However, one of Hersh’s fiercest critics claims he does know and he publishes his assertions on his blog, Brown Moses.

“As more evidence has been gathered the case for the [Syrian] government being responsible has only strengthened, in my opinion,” Eliott Higgins, author of the Brown Moses blog, wrote in an email exchange with MintPress.

Higgins, a stay-at-home blogger, has been aggregating YouTube videos, maps and images coming out of the Syrian conflict since March 2012. Given the dangers of reporting on the ground in the war-torn country as well as Assad’s ban on foreign journalists due to fears of foreign meddling in Syria’s civil war, Higgins’ blog has become a go-to source of information provided by Syrians posting on social media.

Though some experts have called Higgins “unqualified,” journalists have started to incorporate his personal analysis into their reports.

“Although Higgins has never been to Syria, and until recently had no connection to the country, he has become perhaps the foremost expert on the munitions used in the war,” according to a profile of Higgins in the British newspaper The Telegraph.

He has also been described as ‘‘an authoritative source” and has been lauded by C.J. Chivers, war correspondent for The New York Times and author of “The Gun,” a history of the AK-47.

Higgins has amassed hundreds of images of the rockets from both video and still photographs. After studying these images, he is adamant that they must have come from Syrian government forces because, as he wrote in an email to MintPress, “they have the rockets, they have a chemical weapons programme [sic], they controlled the territory near by [sic], they were conducting military operations in the area.”

On his blog, Higgins provides photos of the depleted rockets, video of the Syrian army allegedly firing similar rockets and maps of possible launch areas.

“It’s possible to find the exact impact location of rockets using a combination of satellite map imagery,

photographs, and videos, and in some cases they show details that allow us to have an idea of the approximate location they come from,” he said in the email. “In those examples, it appears to be from the northwest/north, where around 2km away we have areas controlled by the government.”

On April 7, one day after Hersh published his “The Red Line and the Rat Line” expose once again asserting that al-Nusra Front rebels have realized nerve gas capabilities through the support of Turkey’s Erdogan, Higgins countered the report by posting “Seymour Hersh’s Volcano Problem.” In his post, Higgins offers photos of several rockets allegedly fired by the Syrian army to support his previous claims that the Syrian government was behind the sarin gas attack in Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013. These “volcano rockets” do appear similar to the ones shown in the photos of the rockets he says were used in the chemical gas attack. Higgins is adamant they are identical.

“In all incidents, the rockets have exactly the same design, down to the small nut and bolt, and in three of the four incidents they are described as being chemical weapons,” Higgins wrote in the April 7 post.

In a later post, Higgins argues that the rockets likely came from between the Qaboun and Jobar areas. That industrial section of Damascus, he says, was controlled by Assad forces, pointing to a report by the Russian TV news outlet ANNA as evidence of this.

“I’ve spent the past 8 months collecting and analysing [sic] videos related to that area, and I now have what I strongly believe to be an accurate representation of the area controlled by the Syrian government on August 21st,” he told MintPress in an email.

“Despite Hersh’s dismissal of the Volcano rockets importance, these images do show the impact locations were in range of government controlled areas on August 21st.”

To the layman, some of the rockets do look alike, but then, to the layman, many rockets look alike. One would also have to accept the validity of the sources providing the information to Higgins and Higgins’ own analysis. In the end, one simply has to accept that Higgins knows what he’s looking at, despite what some experts — including the professors behind the MIT report — have called his “lack of credentials.”

Pushing the establishment line

Higgins’ determination would seem to support the Obama administration’s prior claim that Assad had crossed Obama’s “red line.”

In a speech on Aug. 30, nine days after the attack on Ghouta, Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas…”

However, the maps provided by the State Department at the time put such “regime-controlled areas” out the rockets’ range. Even Higgins now agrees the rockets probably had a range of about 2 kilometers.

Less than three weeks later, The New York Times ran “UN Data on Gas Attack Point to Assad’s Top Forces,” reporting on a U.N. report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack that supported Kerry’s claims.

“Details buried in the United Nations report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack point directly at elite military formations loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, some of the strongest findings to date that suggest the government gassed its own people,” wrote C.J. Chivers, the same war correspondent who, like many, has extolled the virtues of the work of the Brown Moses blog.

However, on Dec. 28, The New York Times published another article, “New Study Refines View of Sarin Attack in Syria,” in which Chivers reported on the investigation by the weapons experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The investigation “raised questions about the American government’s claims about the locations of launching points, and the technical intelligence behind them.”

The report — which includes maps, photos, diagrams and analysis from a team of MIT scientists — would appear to be quite authoritative in its dismissal of the claims of both the U.S. government and the Brown Moses blogger.

“Whenever new information comes out it seems like people use it to support the idea that the Syrian government did it,” said Postol, the MIT professor. “According to our analysis, I would not have a claim that I know who executed the attack, but it’s very clear that John Kerry had very bad intelligence at best or, at worst, lied about the intelligence he had.”

The Rocket Scientists

In addition to earning a doctorate at MIT and previously advising the Pentagon on missile technology, Postol’s staff webpage notes that he “helped build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study developments in weapons technology of relevance to defense and arms control policy.”

“The thing I find extremely disturbing is that the Secretary of State and the White House were very specific,” Postol told MintPress. “They claimed that they had satellite positions of the launches of these rockets. That’s a pretty specific claim. I know the satellites they’re talking about and I also know they can’t tell what rockets are carrying a chemical warhead and what rockets are carrying explosive warheads.”

According to Postol, the chemical warhead — what he calls “the soup can” — would be larger, causing greater drag

and reducing the range. While some analysts have argued that the rocket motors might have been longer, with some of the engine embedded in the warhead, allowing for more fuel to propel it, Postol says such additional thrust would have a small, marginal effect. (Attempts to measure the motor sizes can be found on the Brown Moses blog.)

Postol likens it to smacking an inflated helium balloon: the balloon will stop suddenly, mid-air. If given a stronger whack, the balloon might move a little farther, but only slightly.

“We know the U.S. government intelligence claim is not compatible with the science and that should be of great concern to everyone,” he said.

Shortly after the release of the MIT report this January, Higgins posted about it on his blog. The new findings, however, did not dissuade him from believing the attack still had to have been committed by Assad. Higgins is now pushing the theory that the Syrian army took over al-Qaboun, northwest of the target areas. Higgins also insists that the images showing the Syrian army with similar rockets mean it had to be them.

That still doesn’t cut it, says Richard Lloyd, the other author of the MIT report, whose own calculations have led him to believe they came more directly from the north.

“To the north, what you have is an air force base and a variety of army bases about 3 kilometers away,” Lloyd told MintPress. “In front of those [bases] are fields. I believe they were launched from these fields.”

Lloyd says he came to this conclusion after he searched among the evidence from the “12 or 13 sites they hit,” looking for rockets that hadn’t been removed since landing. He then used Google Earth for reference and performed a “bearing analysis” to determine their trajectory.

Additionally, Lloyd points out that from looking at the target areas, the rockets would have had to originate from different launch sites, suggesting that they like came from more than just one location such as Qaboun.

“If you look at all the impact points, for one launcher to do all that, it would have had to launch a couple rockets, drive to another location, launch a few more rockets and then drive to another,” he explained.

Both Postol and Lloyd are confounded by Higgins’ contention that these “volcano rockets” could have only come from the Syrian army.

“They are well within the manufacturable range by a modest machine shop,” Postol said. “The design is clever for what it’s designed to do, but once you have the design, you can make it pretty easily. Are they identical? Did Eliot count every bolt? Is that possible?”

Lloyd points out that he has designed a course on the arms used in the Syrian conflict.

“I have a section all on the rebels,” he explained. “They have factories. A production line. They have just as much capability as anyone else in building these weapons.”

The MIT team actually gives Higgins a lot of credit for his work, noting that much of their study was made infinitely easier — and maybe even possible — by all of the information he has aggregated and posted on Brown Moses.

“I think he wants to do good and he’s done a great amount of service in getting the world up to speed on what’s going on in Syria,” Lloyd said. “He’s done a great job for what his ability is and I commend him. I know people like to see him as a weapons expert, but unless you crunch the numbers, you don’t know what you’re doing. Until you do the math, you’re not an expert.”

As for the work of Lloyd and Postol, Higgins says he accepts their findings, though he adds on his blog “with the greatest respect to the work of Lloyd and Postol I do not believe their calculations have been peer reviewed.”

“And he’s qualified to say that?” Postol asked incredulously.

“In the end, the government lied.”

Despite their disagreements, one belief unites them: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented faulty intelligence, at best.

“I agree with Lloyd, Postol, Hersh, and anyone else who thinks that the maps provided by the White House don’t match the evidence gathered about the munitions,” Higgins wrote in an email to MintPress.

However, Higgins still insists on the establishment perspective that, despite contradictory analysis, Assad was absolutely behind the attacks.

That the Obama administration presented information it knew or should have known was inaccurate as a reason to go to war reminds Postol of recent history in which American mainstream media proved complicit in perpetuating the official line that Saddam Hussein absolutely had “weapons of mass destruction.”

“It’s WMD all over again,” Postol said. “It’s the Gulf of Tonkin.”

When asked why the magazine that he has published with since 1971 wouldn’t pick up his latest reporting or why much of the mainstream press appears more interested in the “stay-at-home” blogger, Hersh demures, refusing to speak ill of his colleagues at The New Yorker or other reporters and editors at The Washington Post and The New York Times.

“They’re doing their jobs,” Hersh said.

Talking to Hersh, it’s easy to remember he remains a respected member of the journalistic community. The last piece penned by Hersh, 77, was published by the New Yorker in March 2013, after all. Coincidentally, it was an editorial about the false flag that led us into the Iraq War, “Iraq Ten Years Later: What About the Constitution.”

“How could a small group of hard-line conservatives around President Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and a few neoconservatives so quickly throw us over the cliff?” he asks in the editorial. “This included not only a war fought on false pretenses but also a system of torture and indefinite detention that, in far too many cases, ran against our laws and values…”

While Hersh won’t criticize his American editors now, he had no compunction about it then.

“It’s not enough to blame it on the fear, anger, and confusion brought on by the 9/11 attacks,” the editorial continues. “What happened to our press corps with its alleged independence and its commitment to the First Amendment and the values of the rest of the Bill of Rights?”

Postol, on the other hand, does not hesitate to critique the state of mainstream media today.

“To me, the fact that people are not focused on how the administration lied is very disturbing and shows how far the community of journalists and the community of so-called security experts has strayed from their responsibility,” Postol said.

“The government so specifically distorted the evidence that it presented a very real danger to the country and the world. I am concerned about the collapse of traditional journalism and the future of the country.”

http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-failed-pretext-for-war-seymour-hersh-eliot-higgins-mit-professors-on-sarin-gas-attack/188597/

Canada prepared for possible military mission in Syria, defence documents show

Canadian defence and diplomatic officials have been quietly working on plans for possible Canadian military missions — as well as shoring up non-religious groups on the ground — in Syria as its three-year civil war continues.

The federal government has so far said it has no plans for Canada to be dragged into the conflict, which has killed an estimated 150,000 and driven hundreds of thousands more from their homes and their country.

But internal documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen show National Defence has drawn up at least five scenarios in which it could become involved in Syria’s ongoing civil war, as well as potential Canadian Forces missions for each situation.

The documents have been censored to remove specifics, but allude to “the rapidly deteriorating conditions in Syria, its impact on neighbouring countries and … the importance of Middle East stability.”

The scenarios also include several assumptions such as the Syrian government remaining “defiant,” as well as “most likely” and “worst case” outcomes, such as extremist groups getting hold of advanced or chemical weapons, or the conflict spilling beyond Syria’s borders.

At least one possible Canadian military intervention “assumes that a legitimate armed opposition group has been recognized” by Canada, although details about the rest of this scenario have been blacked out.

National Defence spokesman Daniel Blouin described such planning as “routine to significant international events” and part of the military’s due diligence to be prepared for any eventuality. He said none of the possible interventions has been acted upon.

However, the fact such plans have been drawn up indicates the degree of seriousness to which defence officials and the government are taking the fighting in Syria, which brings with it the risk of escalation and broader regional impacts.

Any military action would require the government’s approval.

Meanwhile, separate documents show Canada has been helping train anti-sectarian activists, journalists and others so they can provide a political alternative to Islamic extremist groups if the fighting stops.

Canada has expressed concern in the past about an influx of Islamic militias into Syria, which has turned what was once billed as a fight for greater democratic rights into a messy religious conflict.

Not only have these Islamic groups blurred the lines between the different factions fighting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government, they are also positioning themselves to take power should the government fall.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/04/14/canada-prepared-for-possible-military-mission-in-syria-defence-documents-show/

Rebels could resort to chemical weapons, Syria warns

Syria warned the world on Saturday that rebels may resort to using chemical arms after they captured a chlorine factory near Aleppo. The regime's words of caution come as rebel groups elected a former Assad military chief to lead their forces.

Syria warned the United Nations on Saturday that rebels may use chemical weapons after they gained control of a factory producing toxic chlorine east of Aleppo city.

The warning came as the rebel groups elected a former officer in President Bashar al-Assad’s army to lead their military command.

"Terrorist groups may resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people... after having gained control of a toxic chlorine factory," the foreign ministry said, adding that Syria would never use chemical weapons.

The statement may be referring to the Syrian-Saudi Chemicals Company (SYSACCO) factory near the town of Safira, which was taken over earlier this week by rebel fighters from the jihadist Al-Nusra Front.

This factory, which produces sodium hydroxide and hydrogen chloride, is in an agricultural area and has been the subject of numerous complaints from farmers for polluting the local water supply.

The ministry sent separate letters to the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, reiterating that Syria would "not use chemical weapons under any circumstance, if they exist."

Syria "is defending its people against terrorism, which is supported by known countries, with the United States at the forefront," it added.

New rebel commander

On Saturday opposition sources reported that rebel groups have chosen Brigadier Selim Idris, a former officer in President Bashar al-Assad’s army, to head their new Islamist-dominated military command.

Idris, whose home province of Homs has been at the forefront of the Sunni Muslim-led uprising, was elected by 30 military and civilian members of the joint military command after talks attended by Western and Arab security officials in the Turkish city of Antalia.

“Saleh is not ideological, but he has been appointed by top aides who are close to Salafist rebels,” one of the sources who has been following the talks said.

The joint command named Islamist commanders Abdelbasset Tawil, from the northern province of Idlib, and Abdelqader Saleh, from the adjacent province of Aleppo, to serve as Idris’s deputies, the source said.

The unified command includes many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Salafists, who follow a puritanical interpretation of Islam. It excludes the most senior officers who had defected from Assad’s military.

Its composition, estimated to be two-thirds from the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, reflects the growing strength of Islamist fighters on the ground and resembles that of the civilian opposition leadership coalition created under Western and Arab auspices in Qatar last month.

Absent from the group is Colonel Riad al-Asaad, founder of the Syrian Free Army and Brigadier Mustafa al-Sheikh, a senior officer known for his opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Asaad and Sheikh were not part of the 263-man meeting in Antalia. Also excluded was general Hussein Haj Ali, the highest ranking officer to defect from the military since the uprising erupted in March last year.

http://www.france24.com/en/20121208-syria-warns-rebels-may-resort-chemical-weapons-assad-united-nations-islamists/

magnumcromagnon wrote:NATO now accusing Assad of using chlorine bombs, but didn't the Assad govt. warn of jihadists using chlorine as weapons?

TheArmenian wrote:MiG-21 bombing run under fire (In high Definition)

A new Turkish aggression against Syria: Ankara suspends pumping Euphrates’ water



The Turkish government recently cut off the flow of the Euphrates River, threatening primarily Syria but also Iraq with a major water crisis. Al-Akhbar found out that the water level in Lake Assad has dropped by about six meters, leaving millions of Syrians without drinking water.

Two weeks ago, the Turkish government once again intervened in the Syrian crisis. This time was different from anything it had attempted before and the repercussions of which may bring unprecedented catastrophes onto both Iraq and Syria.

Violating international norms, the Turkish government recently cut off the water supply of the Euphrates River completely. In fact, Ankara began to gradually reduce pumping Euphrates water about a month and half ago, then cut if off completely two weeks ago, according to information received by Al-Akhbar.

A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity revealed that water levels in the Lake Assad (a man-made water reservoir on the Euphrates) recently dropped by six meters from its normal levels (which means losing millions of cubic meters of water). The source warned that “a further drop of one additional meter would put the dam out of service.”

“We should cut off or reduce the water output of the dam, until the original problem regarding the blockage of the water supply is fixed,” the source explained.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) controlling the region the dam is located in did not suspend the water output. Employees of the General Institution of the Euphrates Dam are running the lake under the supervision of al-Qaeda linked ISIS, but they don’t have the authority to take serious decisions, such as reducing the water output. In addition, such a step is a mere attempt to ease the situation, and it will lose its efficacy if the water supply isn’t restored to the dam by Turkey.

The tragic repercussions of the new Turkish assault began to reveal themselves when water levels dropped in al-Khafsa in Aleppo’s eastern countryside (where a water pumping station from Lake Assad is located to pump water through water channels to Aleppo and its countryside).

Meanwhile, water supplies in auxiliary reservoirs in al-Khafsa are close to being depleted and the reservoirs are expected to run out of water completely by tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. This threatens to leave seven million Syrians without access to water. Also, Tishrin Dam stopped receiving any water which blocked its electricity generating turbines, decreasing the power supply in Aleppo and its countryside, further intensifying the already severe imbalance in the power supply.

"The reservoirs are expected to run out of water completely by tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest."

In Raqqa, the northern side of Lake Assad is today completely out of service. Two million Syrians living in the region covering the villages of Little Swaydiya to the east until al-Jarniya to the west could lose their drinking water supply. “Losing water supplies in the dam means that the silt in the lake will dry off which would pressure its structure, subjecting it to fissures and eventually total collapse,” Al-Akhbar sources warned, adding “it is crucial to shut down the dam to stop its collapse.”

However, shutting down the dam (if ISIS agrees) will only lead to a human and ecological (zoological and agricultural) catastrophe in Syria and in Iraq.

According to information obtained by Al-Akhbar, Aleppo locals (who had already launched many initiatives to reach solutions for a number of local issues) began a race against time to recommend solutions for the problem, including putting the thermal plant at al-Safira back to work, which may convince ISIS to spare the Euphrates Dam turbines, and in turn preserve current water levels in the lake.

In case it succeeds, such a step would only rescue whatever water and structures are left, and would ward off further repercussions of the crisis that has already started. A halt to the water supply is now inevitable and can’t be resolved unless the Turkish government takes the decision to resume pumping Euphrates water.

In any case, it is worth mentioning that the water in the lake would take about a month, after resuming pumping, to return to its normal levels.



A historical conflict

The Euphrates River has historically been at the center of a conflict between Turkey on the one hand and both Syria and Iraq on the other. Ankara insists on considering the Euphrates a “trans-boundary river” and not an “international river,” hence it is “not subject to international laws.” Also, Turkey is one of the only three countries in the world (along with China and Burundi) that opposed the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1997.

In 1987, a temporary agreement between Syria and Turkey was signed to share the water supplies of the Euphrates during the period when the basin of the Ataturk Dam was being filled. In virtue of the agreement, Turkey pledged to provide an annual level of over 500 cubic meters of water a second on the Turkish-Syrian borders, until reaching a final agreement about sharing the water supplies of the river between the three countries. In 1994, Syria registered the agreement at the United Nations to guarantee the minimum amount of Iraq and Syria’s right to the water from the Euphrates River.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/new-turkish-aggression-against-syria-ankara-suspends-pumping-euphrates%E2%80%99-water