Syria - Iraq 2.0?

paulsurovell said:

LOST said:

And then I Googled and found a counter-article:

https://www.bellingcat.com/new...

So you are undecided on the issue?

I guess so at this point.

For those still keeping track of explanations for the Syrian “CW incident,” the latest suggestion from Russia is that it wasn’t the result of an air attack after all:

Russia-U.S. Diplomatic Dispute Could Endanger Syria Investigation

In the meantime, this contribution to groupthink happened last month:

United Nations Accuses Syrian Government of April Sarin Attack

paulsurovell said:

South_Mountaineer said:

What is known is that there are victims of poison gas.

The Russians say that Assad's forces bombed a storehouse where rebels were keeping the gas. The BBC had a report this morning doubting that claim:

Is Russia's explanation credible?

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the British Armed Forces Joint Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, said it was "pretty fanciful".

"Axiomatically, if you blow up Sarin, you destroy it," he told the BBC.

Experts say the explosion resulting from an air strike on a chemical weapons facility would most likely incinerate any agents. Sarin and other nerve agents are also usually stocked in a "binary manner", which means they are kept as two distinct chemical precursors that are combined just before use, either manually or automatically inside a weapon when launched.

"It's very clear it's a Sarin attack," Mr de Bretton-Gordon added. "The view that it's an al-Qaeda or rebel stockpile of Sarin that's been blown up in an explosion, I think is completely unsustainable and completely untrue."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...


Assad's forces did drop bombs. If investigation confirms that the victims suffered from poison gas, then it was dropped from the sky (not already there in a warehouse). That's what I meant when I wrote earlier: "There's no evidence to contradict the conclusion that Assad's forces were responsible for the recent attack."

We don't really "know" anything. The main sources on the incident are opposition (Al Qaeda-linked) rebels. The chief source is a former British doctor whose license was removed, who was charged with kidnapping British journalists in Syria.
Former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, also suggests the possibility that the videos were staged:

With regard to sarin, in the link to the article you posted there is a rebuttal in the comments section by an individual who identifies as a "CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) professional:"

Paveway IV - April 5, 2017

“…To date, all of the nerve agents used in the Syrian conflict have been binary chemical warfare agents…”

Curious how you’re so sure about this, Dan. Do you know personally if the Jobar FSA Sarin landmines that sickened/killed SAA troops were binary? How about the Sarin rockets in Kahn al-Assal the rebels used on the SAA? I mean, they certainly could have been, but the OPCW kind of ignored those, didn’t it? Don’t you mean to say that all the UN-destroyed Syrian stockpile, specifically, was binary?

And by ‘all’, you mean all one – Sarin. I have not heard any reports or confirmation of VX or any other nerve agent used in Syria (besides speculation), unless you know something we don’t. And we actually have no idea if Sarin was responsible for the deaths and injuries in Khan Sheikhoun. Once again (like East Ghouta) there seem to be many kinds of injuries and symptoms inconsistent with those know to accompany Sarin. Videos emphasize the small number of casualties exhibiting such symptoms, but they seem to be a remarkably small percentage overall. Nonetheless, I see Turkish Civil Defense chem teams showed up surprisingly early, almost like they expected the attack. I’m sure we’ll be presented with their ‘proof’ implicating Assad any time now.

“…Even assuming that large quantities of both Sarin precursors were located in the same part of the same warehouse (a practice that seems odd)…”

Odd for head-choppers? I didn’t know they were such safety nuts! They didn’t seem to have many worries about precursors close to each other in Jobar. I’m going out on a limb and assuming “in the same tunnel” qualifies as “close to each other”. The SAA seemed suitably terrified to find that – well, the ones that didn’t die and actually made it out of the tunnel.

“…an air-strike is not going to cause the production of large quantities of Sarin.”

Not large quantities, but the potential for *some*. And you surely know the consequences of methylphosphonyl DF exposure, right? Providing the head-choppers were making Sarin, which we don’t really know. Could have been some other nasty CW agent – not sure what their Turkish suppliers are sending over nowadays. There is no need to presume anything was mixed – the precursors (if there were any) are plenty toxic in their own right.

“…The US and USSR had devoted a huge effort to finding a way out of this problem…”

Binding the HF wasn’t the problem. It was removing the residual bound fluoride so the mixture was as pure as possible. A consideration for self-life and the small quantity a shell/rocket would hold. Head-choppers certainly wouldn’t have the same worries for a crude bomb or land mine. NATO, Israel and the USSR went to great effort to produce unary Sarin as pure as possible or binary Sarin as concentrated as possible through whatever method. That’s an entirely different engineering problem than just producing a sufficiently neutralized short shelf-life product.

“…Dropping a bomb on the binary components does not actually provide the correct mechanism for making the nerve agent. It is an infantile argument…”

Well, it’s a stretch, but once again you’re assuming binary Sarin. We have no idea at this point. But the mere suggestion of binary components mixing when the warehouse is bombed: ‘infantile’? What kind of CBRN snobbery is that?

“…Another issue is that, if the Syrian regime actually did believe that the warehouse stored chemical warfare agents, then striking it deliberately was an act of chemical warfare by proxy…”

Whaaa..? Didn’t you just say that the argument was infantile? And Russia is guilty, not your head-chopper pals? If you remember, there were people salivating at the though of the US unloading a few hundred cruise missiles at Assad’s CW facilities a while back. Would that have constituted CW use by proxy?

“…Are we to seriously believe that one of the rebel factions has expended the vast sums of money and developed this industrial base, somehow not noticed to date and not molested by attack?…”

Whoa… you led us down the path of “it must be binary Sarin” and now you’re saying that it necessarily must have been home-brewed by the head-choppers? No, sorry – it doesn’t work like that. Head-chopper-backers are MUCH more likely to have supplied the precursors, binary components or whatever. The head-choppers were packaging it in the warehouse, not manufacturing it from scratch by any stretch of the imagination. Why that argument is… oh, never mind.

Today's news:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44471985

The global chemical weapons watchdog says the nerve agent Sarin and chlorine are very likely to have been used in attacks on a Syrian village last year. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded Sarin was used as a weapon in the south of rebel-held Latamina on 24 March 2017, and chlorine at its hospital the next day. It did not assign blame for the incidents, in line with its mandate. But activists said at the time the area was under attack by government forces. The government has repeatedly denied ever using chemical weapons. However, a joint UN-OPCW mission that recently ended said it was confident that government forces used Sarin in an attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun just days after the incidents in nearby Latamina.

Thanks for that update.

"The materials in the leaked draft paint a far more frightening picture of chemical weapons use in eastern Ghouta than had been previously reported. And they assert without qualification that Syrian forces and their allies were responsible, rebutting repeated denials by Mr. Assad’s government and his backers in Russia and Iran."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/world/middleeast/un-syria-eastern-ghouta.html

Not to mention his backer on MOL. 

South_Mountaineer said:

"The materials in the leaked draft paint a far more frightening picture of chemical weapons use in eastern Ghouta than had been previously reported. And they assert without qualification that Syrian forces and their allies were responsible, rebutting repeated denials by Mr. Assad’s government and his backers in Russia and Iran."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/world/middleeast/un-syria-eastern-ghouta.html
Not to mention his backer on MOL. 

 You should check out his twitter feed.

drummerboy said:

 You should check out his twitter feed.

I do. But it’s not why I asked myself this question:

Isn’t this how I’d want a commission to proceed?

A member of the commission explained the omissions, saying that many of the details in the early draft needed additional corroboration or clarification and might be included in another report, perhaps by September. ...  “It’s better we finish the investigation, rather than release it in dribs and drabs.”