09) NEW REPORT DISMANTLES U.S. ACCUSATION AGAINST SYRIA

 

By Kimball Cariou

 

            The corporate media in Canada has ignored revelations exposing the U.S. claim that the Syrian military fired rockets carrying poison sarin gas into a Damascus suburb last August 21.

 

            From the moment the accusations were made, many observers were extremely dubious. The gas attack killed hundreds of people, at a time when the Syrian government and armed forces were winning important successes against mercenaries backed by the NATO alliance and reactionary Gulf Arab regimes. Why would Syria pick such a moment to risk provoking a U.S. attack?

 

            The incident invited comparison with the lies spread by the Bush regime about non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" to justify the 2003 destruction of Iraq. The extent of foreign involvement in the war against Syria pointed to a strong possibility that the gas attack may have been an attempt by the "rebels" to lure the U.S. into launching missiles. That strategy failed, in the wake of massive public skepticism in Britain and the United States.

 

            Now, the McClatchy news service reports that "a team of security and arms experts, meeting ... in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated."

 

            Apparently, the rocket in question, said to be an improvised 330mm to 350mm rocket equipped with a large receptacle on its nose to hold chemicals, did not appear in the Syrian government’s declaration of its arsenal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

 

            Washington continues to claim that Syrian government forces could have used such a rocket.

 

            But the authors of a report released on Jan. 15 said that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 

            Titled "Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence," the report fingers a major weakness in the Obama administration's call for military action.

 

           President Obama later withdrew his request for congressional authorization for a military strike, after Syria agreed to submit to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

 

            The report focuses on one key target of the attacks, the suburb of Zamalka, where the largest quantity of sarin was released. Relying on mathematical projections about the likely force of the rocket, and noting its awkward design, the authors conclude that the rocket likely had a maximum range of two kilometers, far short of the necessary range of at least six kilometers.

 

            The authors used a map produced by the White House, showing which areas were under government and rebel control on Aug. 21 and where the chemical weapons attack occurred. Drawing circles around Zamalka to show the range from which the rocket could have come, the authors conclude that the likely launching points were inside rebel‑held or disputed areas.

 

            Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog, explained, "My view when I started this process was that it couldn't be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I'm not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct."

 

            The second author, former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd, disputed assumptions that the rebels are incapable of making rockets. "The Syrian rebels most definitely have the ability to make these weapons," he said. "I think they might have more ability than the Syrian government."

 

            Both rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's insistence that satellite images had shown the impact points of the chemical weapons. The charges that detonate chemical weapons are too small, they said, to be visible in a satellite image.

 

            "What, exactly, are we spending all this money on intelligence for?" Postol asked.

 

www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/15/214656/new‑analysis‑of‑rocket‑used‑in.html#storylink=cpy

 

(The above article is from the February 1-14, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)