United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and US Secretary of State John Kerry, September 2013. Allan Tannenbaum\/Press Association. All rights reserved.On 18 August 2011, President Obama declared
\nthat \u201cthe future of Syria must be
\ndetermined by its people\u201d.\u00a0 But he
\nimmediately contravened this basic democratic principle by saying that Bashir
\nal-Assad should cease to be President of Syria forthwith, irrespective of the
\nwishes of the Syrian people. In a joint statement the same day, the
\nUK, France and Germany dutifully agreed.\u00a0
\n<\/i><\/p>\n
At that
\npoint, regime change became the explicit policy of the US and its allies in
\nSyria. This policy was maintained for nearly six years with a bit of wavering
\nhere and there about the timing of President Assad\u2019s departure \u2013 until 30 March
\n2017, when it was overturned by President Trump's Ambassador to the UN, Nikki
\nHaley.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
She made it clear
\nthat the US was no longer going to focus on removing President Assad from
\npower, saying:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou pick and choose your battles and when we're
\nlooking at this, it's about changing up priorities and our priority is no
\nlonger to sit there and focus on getting Assad out\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n
The same day
\nSecretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed this reversal of US policy: asked at
\na press conference in Ankara if President Assad should stay or go, he replied:<\/p>\n
\u201cI
\nthink the status and the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided
\nby the Syrian people.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
This new policy
\nprioritised the defeat of ISIS over the removal of President Assad from power. As
\nsuch, it reflected the position on Syria that President Trump had expressed on
\nmany occasions during his election campaign.<\/p>\n
This reversal of US
\npolicy was a staggering victory for President Assad. Thanks to assistance from
\nRussia over the previous eighteen months, his military position had improved
\ndramatically and the likelihood of him being ousted had diminished to near zero.\u00a0 Then, on 30 March 1017, his position was
\ncopper fastened by the US withdrawing its objective of removing him from power.
\nUnlike Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddaffi before him, he had survived despite
\nbeing targeted for regime change by the US and its allies.<\/p>\n
Five days later on 4
\nApril 2017, if we are to believe the US, President Assad took the extraordinary
\ndecision to mount an aerial attack using chemical weapons against civilians in
\nKhan Sheikhoun, a town held by the armed opposition in Idlib province, leading
\nto the deaths of around 100 people including many women and children. Predictably,
\nthis brought down the wrath of the US and its allies on his head and on 6 April
\n2017, for the first time, the US took military action against the assets of the
\nSyrian regime itself, firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air
\nbase from which, according to the US, the chemical weapons attack had been
\nlaunched.<\/p>\n
President Assad is in
\na much weaker position now than he was before 4 April 2017, when he allegedly launched
\nthe chemical attack \u2013 his removal from power is back on the US agenda and there
\nis now at least a possibility that the US will put its military weight behind
\noverthrowing him.<\/p>\n
All this was the
\npredictable outcome of President Assad allegedly deciding to launch a chemical
\nweapons attack against civilians. He would have to be insane to take such a
\ndecision \u2013 and he is not insane.<\/p>\n
If you are trying to
\nidentify who is responsible for an act of this kind, it is common sense to ask
\nwho would gain from it.\u00a0 President Assad
\ncertainly could not have expected to gain and he hasn\u2019t gained \u2013 he has lost,
\nbig time, and predictably so.\u00a0 The armed
\nopposition has gained in that the US shift away from supporting their goal of
\nregime change has been reversed.\u00a0 It
\nremains to be seen whether the reversal is accompanied by direct military
\naction by the US, or increased military support for the opposition by the US,
\nin order to bring about regime change \u2013 if so, they will have gained, very big
\ntime.<\/p>\n
On 11 April 2013, the \u201cThe United States is confident that the Syrian \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have confidence in our assessment because we \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur information indicates that the chemical agent This document didn\u2019t For a document that As former CIA None of these The US government \u201cWe assess that Damascus launched the chemical This is a But, laying that The use of chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun was the second occasion during On On At \u00a0\u201cThe United States Government assesses with high But the assessment A year earlier on 20 "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, From then on, the But, President Obama Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper in 2015. Wikicommons\/Jay Godwin. Some rights reserved.This came to light in an interview <\/i><\/p>\n \u201cObama So, the certainty expressed publicly by the On 1 September 2013, when as immediate strike \u201cWith But, was the Syrian government responsible for The \u201cgovernment assessment\u201d published on 30 \u201cMultiple This encourages the reader to believe that the \u201cWe And, on 16 September 2013, information published \u201cOne An accompanying map on the Times\u2019 front page This HRW\/NYT analysis received widespread However, there were major flaws in the Times\u2019 \u201cThe \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut (See NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis<\/em>, Consortium News, The new study Lloyd and Postol summarised \u201cThe \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn This indicates that the sarin carrying rockets Unfortunately, this crucial correction to the But, was the armed opposition capable of mounting \u201cWe And, in a briefing to journalists on 16 September 2013, US Ambassador to \u201cThe Seymour Hersh is an investigate journalist In his first article Whose sarin?<\/em> (December 2013), Hersh asserted that<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cby late May 2013 \u2026 the CIA had briefed the Obama Furthermore:<\/p>\n \u201cOn This confirmed that \u201cal-Nusra had the ability Hersh concludes:<\/p>\n \u201cIn The only source Hersh gives for this In his second article, The Red Line and the Rat Line<\/em> \u201cA \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe I\u2019m not in a position to verify this account It made absolutely no sense for President As former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked \u201cWhy was chemical attack of any interest for In August 2013 the Obama administration \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and US Secretary of State John Kerry, September 2013. Allan Tannenbaum\/Press Association. All rights reserved.On 18 August 2011, President Obama declared that \u201cthe future of Syria must be determined by its people\u201d.\u00a0 But he immediately contravened this basic democratic principle by saying that Bashir al-Assad should…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTrump administration published a 4-page document, entitled The Assad Regime\u2019s Use of Chemical Weapons on April 4, 2017<\/em>, to justify after
\nthe event its attack on Shayrat air base. It began by stating:<\/p>\n
\nregime conducted a chemical weapons, using the nerve gas sarin, against its own
\npeople in the town of Shaykun in southern Idlib province on April 4, 2017. \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
\nhave signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence \u2026 . We cannot publicly
\nrelease all available intelligence on this track due to the need to protect
\nsources and methods. \u2026<\/p>\n
\nwas delivered by regime SU-22 fixed-wing aircraft that took off from the
\nregime-controlled Shayrat Airfield. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\npurport to be an assessment prepared by the US intelligence community and
\npublished by the US
\nDirector of National Intelligence.<\/p>\n
\nserves as a justification for unprecedented US military action against Syria,
\nit is remarkably lacking in certainty in respect of its critical conclusions:
\nit merely expresses \u201cconfidence\u201d \u2013 rather than \u201chigh confidence\u201d \u2013 that the
\nSyrian government was responsible and merely says that the available
\ninformation \u201cindicates\u201d that the chemical agent was delivered by air from
\nShayrat Airfield.<\/p>\n
\nofficer Philip Giraldi wrote on 24 April 2017,
\nto date \u201cno evidence has been produced to demonstrate convincingly that Syrian
\nforces dropped a chemical bomb on a civilian area\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nuncertainties found their way into the mainstream media reporting of this US
\ngovernment assessment. Generally speaking they reported Assad\u2019s guilt as a fact
\nand failed to address the crucial question of why he deliberately shot himself
\nin the foot.<\/p>\nWhy did Assad do it?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nassessment contains one sentence that attempts to address the question of why Assad
\nallegedly mounted an attack.\u00a0 It says:<\/p>\n
\nattack in response to an opposition offensive in northern Hamah Province that
\nthreatened key infrastructure.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nnonsensical claim because by 4 April 2017 when the alleged attack occurred, the
\nopposition offensive had failed and Syrian government forces had recaptured all
\nor almost all the territory taken over by the opposition in the early days of
\nthe offensive.\u00a0 Furthermore, Khan
\nShaykhun is north of the front line between government and opposition forces at
\nthe time, and it\u2019s difficult to see how an attack there \u2013 especially a chemical
\nattack with very little military value \u2013 could be a response to the offensive.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\naside, what possible reason could there be for the Syrian government to use
\nchemical \u2013 rather than conventional \u2013 weapons on any target anywhere, when
\ntheir use was likely to provoke a military response, perhaps a devastating
\nresponse, from the US? <\/p>\nThe Ghouta attack<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nthe war in Syria when their use caused a large number of civilian deaths. The
\nfirst occurred in the early morning of 21 August 2013, when a sarin gas attack
\ntook place in the Ghouta area of Damascus, resulting in the deaths of hundreds
\nof people (355 according to M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res, 1429
\naccording to the US government).<\/p>\n
\nthat occasion also, as we will see, the US administration asserted that the
\nSyrian government was responsible for the attack on the basis of less than
\nconclusive evidence, as later confirmed by President Obama himself.\u00a0 On that occasion also, the Syrian government
\ndenied responsibility.<\/p>\n
\n21 August 2013, a UN Mission was already present in Damascus to investigate
\nallegations of earlier chemical weapons use.\u00a0
\nIt was redirected by the UN Secretary General to investigate the Ghouta
\nattack and it reported
\non 16 September 2013, that \u201cthe environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide
\nclear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the
\nnerve agent Sarin were used\u201d in the attack. It was not part of the Mission\u2019s
\nterms of reference to identify who was responsible for firing the rockets.<\/p>\n
\nthe time, the Obama administration asserted that the Syrian government was
\nresponsible. On 30 August 2013, the White House published what it termed a \u201cgovernment
\nassessment\u201d (significantly, not an assessment
\nprepared by the US intelligence community and published by the US Director of
\nNational Intelligence).\u00a0 This
\nbegan by stating:<\/p>\n
\nconfidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in
\nthe Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013. We further assess that the regime used
\na nerve agent in the attack. These all-source assessments are based on human,
\nsignals, and geospatial intelligence as well as a significant body of open
\nsource reporting. \u2026 To protect sources and methods, we cannot publicly release
\nall available intelligence \u2013 but what follows is an unclassified summary of the
\nU.S. Intelligence Community\u2019s analysis of what took place.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\ncontained no verifiable information to justify this conclusion.\u00a0 Nevertheless, at the time the mainstream media reported as a fact that
\nthe Syrian government was the guilty party \u2013 and they continue to do so today
\neven though, as we will see, over time evidence to the contrary has steadily
\nmounted.<\/p>\nIntelligence not a \u201cslam dunk\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nAugust 2012, President Obama was asked at a press conference whether he would
\n\u201cenvision using US military, if simply for nothing else, the safe keeping of
\nthe chemical weapons\u201d.\u00a0 He replied:<\/p>\n
\nbut also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start
\nseeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That
\nwould change my calculus. That would change my equation."<\/i><\/p>\n
\nexpectation was that, if the Syrian government used chemical weapons against civilians
\nor opposition forces, the US would take punitive military action against Syrian
\ngovernment assets in response.<\/p>\n
\nhesitated to take military action. One reason was the refusal of the UK
\nParliament to back an immediate US strike. Another was that he had been warned
\nby his Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, that he couldn\u2019t
\nguarantee that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical weapons
\nattack. <\/p>\n
\nwith Jeffrey Goldberg published in The
\nAtlantic in April 2016.\u00a0 There,
\nPresident Obama revealed that Clapper had made a point of emphasising to him that
\nthe intelligence that the Syrian government was responsible wasn\u2019t a \u201cslam
\ndunk\u201d (using the phrase used by George Tenet, the head of the CIA in 2003, to
\nassure President George Bush that Iraq possessed \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d,
\nwhich was a trifle wide of the mark).\u00a0
\nHere\u2019s what Goldberg wrote:<\/p>\n
\nwas also unsettled by a surprise visit early in the week [beginning 27 August
\n2013] from James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, who
\ninterrupted the President\u2019s Daily Brief, the threat report Obama receives each
\nmorning from Clapper\u2019s analysts, to make clear that the intelligence on Syria\u2019s
\nuse of sarin gas, while robust, was not a \u201cslam dunk.\u201d He chose the term
\ncarefully. Clapper, the chief of an intelligence community traumatized by its
\nfailures in the run-up to the Iraq War, was not going to overpromise, in the
\nmanner of the onetime CIA director George Tenet, who famously guaranteed George
\nW. Bush a \u201cslam dunk\u201d in Iraq.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nObama administration that the Syrian government was responsible wasn\u2019t
\njustified.<\/p>\n
\nwas thought to be imminent, President Obama drew back and sought authorisation
\nfrom Congress for it. It quickly became clear that this was not forthcoming and
\nthat if he was going to take military action he would have to do it without specific
\nCongress authorisation. Then, on 9 September 2013 Russia pulled his chestnuts
\nout of the fire by offering an alternative \u2013 Syria would join the Chemical
\nWeapons Convention and give up all its chemical weapons, providing the US
\nrefrained from taking action against Syria.\u00a0
\nThe US agreed and nine months later John Kerry was confident that
\nSyria\u2019s disarmament had been achieved:<\/p>\n
\nrespect to Syria, we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical
\nweapons out.\u201d (NBC interview, 20 July 2014)<\/p>\nWere the
\nsarin carrying rockets launched from government controlled territory?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nthe Ghouta attack?\u00a0 A key question here
\nis: were the rockets which delivered the sarin launched from government
\ncontrolled territory?<\/p>\n
\nAugust 2013 said:<\/p>\n
\nstreams of intelligence indicate that the regime executed a rocket and
\nartillery attack against the Damascus suburbs in the early hours of August 21.
\nSatellite detections corroborate that attacks from a regime-controlled area
\nstruck neighborhoods where the chemical attacks reportedly occurred \u2013 including
\nKafr Batna, Jawbar, \u2018Ayn Tarma, Darayya, and Mu\u2019addamiyah. This includes the
\ndetection of rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the
\nmorning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack
\nappeared in social media.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nUS had intelligence that the sarin carrying rockets were fired from
\ngovernment-controlled territory but it doesn\u2019t actually say so explicitly.\u00a0 However, in a briefing
\non the day the assessment was published, Secretary of State John Kerry left no
\nroom for doubt, saying:<\/p>\n
\nknow where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they
\nlanded and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and
\nwent only to opposition-controlled or contested neighborhoods.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nby the New York Times appeared to put the question beyond doubt. In a front
\npage article, Forensic
\nDetail in UN report point to Assad\u2019s Use of Gas<\/em>, evidence was presented that claimed to show that
\nthe rockets delivering the sarin were launched from a Syrian military complex.\u00a0 This was based on information in the UN
\nMission\u2019s report about the trajectory of two of the rockets, which were
\nbelieved to have delivered the gas with such appalling consequences: <\/p>\n
\nannex to the report identified azimuths, or angular measurements, from where rockets
\nhad struck, back to their points of origin. When plotted and marked
\nindependently on maps by analysts from Human Rights Watch and by The New York
\nTimes, the United Nations data from two widely scattered impact sites [in
\nMoadamiya and Zamalka\/Ein Tarma, east of Damascus] pointed directly to a Syrian
\nmilitary complex.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nshowed the flight-path lines of the two rockets intersecting at a Syrian
\nmilitary complex, near the Presidential Palace in Damascus.\u00a0 This scenario required the rockets to have a
\nrange of at least 9.5 kilometres to travel from the postulated launch site in a
\nSyrian military complex to the impact sites in Moadamiya and Zamalka\/Ein Tarma.<\/p>\n
\npublicity and was almost universally regarded as proving the Syrian government\u2019s
\nguilt.<\/p>\n
\nanalysis, which it was forced to admit a few months later (see New Study
\nRefines View of Sarin Attack in Syria<\/em>,
\n28 December 2013).\u00a0 Robert Parry, an
\nexperienced American investigative journalist, who has written many informative
\narticles on the Ghouta attack, described the flaws as follows:<\/p>\n
\nanalytical flaws included the fact that one of the two missiles, the one
\nlanding in Moadamiya, south of Damascus had clipped a building during its
\ndescent making a precise calculation of its flight path impossible, plus the
\ndiscovery that the Moadamiya missile contained no Sarin, making its use in the
\nvectoring of two Sarin-laden rockets nonsensical.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nthe Times\u2019 analysis ultimately fell apart amid a consensus among missile
\nexperts that the rockets would have had a maximum range of only around three
\nkilometers when the supposed launch site is about 9.5 kilometers from the
\nimpact zones in Moadamiya and Zamalka\/Ein Tarma, east of Damascus.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n29 December 2013)<\/p>\n
\nreferred to in the Times\u2019 headline was by Theodore A Postol, Professor of Science,
\nTechnology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of
\nTechnology (MIT) and Richard M Lloyd, a former UN weapons inspector.\u00a0 They concluded that the rockets had a range of
\naround two kilometres.\u00a0 This is in line
\nwith an estimate given by the head of the UN Mission, Dr \u00c5ke Sellstr\u00f6m, at a
\npress conference on 13 December 2013 (see video,
\naround 16 minutes in), when he said: \u201ctwo kilometres could be a fair guess\u201d.<\/p>\n
\ntheir findings as follows:<\/p>\n
\nU.S. intelligence community, supported by the remarkable capabilities of U.S.
\nspace-based infrared satellites, supposedly observed that the chemical rockets
\nwere launched from the heart of Syrian government-controlled areas, as shown on
\nthe map that the White House released. For this to be the case, the munitions
\nwould have had to fly about 10 to 15 kilometers, which is simply not possible.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nanalysis of the munition used in the attack on Zamalka reveals that the
\nmunition\u2019s range is actually about two kilometers. The United Nations conducted
\na completely independent analysis of the munition and reached exactly the same
\nconclusion.<\/p>\n
\nother words, the entire basis for the U.S. intelligence claim is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ncould not have been fired \u201cfrom regime-controlled areas\u201d as asserted by John
\nKerry in his briefing on 30 August 2013.\u00a0
\nMost likely, they were fired from areas controlled by the armed
\nopposition \u2013 and therefore fired by the armed opposition.<\/p>\n
\nflawed analysis published by the Times a few months earlier got very little
\nattention from the mainstream media, then or since.\u00a0 <\/p>\nWas the
\narmed opposition capable of mounting the Ghouta attack<\/strong>?\u00a0 <\/h2>\n
\nthe Ghouta attack? \u00a0At the time, the Obama
\nadministration stated continuously that it had no evidence that the opposition
\nwas capable of doing so.\u00a0 For example,
\nSecretary of State John Kerry emphasised
\nto the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 3 September 2013:<\/p>\n
\nare certain that none of the opposition has the weapons or capacity to effect a
\nstrike of this scale particularly from
\nthe heart of regime territory.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nthe UN Samantha Power said:<\/p>\n
\nregime possesses sarin, and we have no evidence that the opposition possesses
\nsarin."<\/i><\/p>\n
\nwith a legendary reputation dating back to his exposure of the My Lai massacre
\nduring the Vietnam War and including his revelations about the torture and
\nother abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during the US occupation of Iraq forty
\nyears later.\u00a0 He has written two
\nextensive articles on the Ghouta attack, which were published in the London
\nReview of Books.\u00a0 He claims that in
\nAugust 2013 the Obama administration had ample evidence that elements of the
\narmed opposition were working with sarin.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\nadministration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, and had sent alarming
\nreports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaida in
\nIraq (AQI) [later Islamic State], also understood the science of producing
\nsarin\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n
\n20 June [2013] a four-page top secret cable summarising what had been learned
\nabout al-Nusra\u2019s nerve gas capabilities was forwarded to David R. Shedd, deputy
\ndirector of the Defense Intelligence Agency.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\nto acquire and use sarin\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nboth its public and private briefings after 21 August [2013], the
\nadministration disregarded the available intelligence about al-Nusra\u2019s
\npotential access to sarin and continued to claim that the Assad government was
\nin sole possession of chemical weapons. This was the message conveyed in the
\nvarious secret briefings that members of Congress received in the days after
\nthe attack, when Obama was seeking support for his planned missile offensive
\nagainst Syrian military installations.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\ninformation is \u201ca senior intelligence consultant\u201d, but given his formidable record
\nas a journalist what he writes deserves to be taken seriously.<\/p>\nTurkey a
\nprime mover?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n(April 2014), he asserted that Turkey was a prime mover in the Ghouta sarin
\nattack:<\/p>\n
\nUS intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before 21 August [2013] he
\nsaw a highly classified briefing prepared for [the Chairman of the US Joint
\nChiefs of Staff General Martin] Dempsey and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel,
\nwhich described \u2018the acute anxiety\u2019 of the Erdo\u011fan administration about the
\nrebels\u2019 dwindling prospects. The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership
\nhad expressed \u2018the need to do something that would precipitate a US military
\nresponse\u2019. By late summer, the Syrian army still had the advantage over the
\nrebels, the former intelligence official said, and only American air power
\ncould turn the tide. In the autumn, the former intelligence official went on,
\nthe US intelligence analysts who kept working on the events of 21 August
\n\u2018sensed that Syria had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound gorilla was,
\nhow did it happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks, because they had all
\nthe pieces to make it happen.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n
\nintercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the
\nintelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. \u2018We now know it
\nwas a covert action planned by Erdo\u011fan\u2019s people to push Obama over the red
\nline,\u2019 the former intelligence official said. \u2018They had to escalate to a gas
\nattack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors\u2019 \u2013 who arrived in Damascus on
\n18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas \u2013 \u2018were there. The deal was to
\ndo something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the
\nDIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey \u2013
\nthat it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also
\nprovided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.\u2019 Much of the
\nsupport for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted
\nconversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. \u2026<\/p>\n
\npost-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House.
\n\u2018Nobody wants to talk about all this,\u2019 the former intelligence official told
\nme. \u2018There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no
\nall-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There
\nhas not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in
\nthe sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called
\noff. My government can\u2019t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly.
\nAnd since we blamed Assad, we can\u2019t go back and blame Erdo\u011fan.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\nof how the Ghouta attack came about.\u00a0
\nBut, given Erdo\u011fan\u2019s enthusiasm for overthrowing Assad, it certainly
\nmade sense for the Turkish state to help manufacture a \u201cfalse flag\u201d chemical
\nweapons attack to which, given his foolish setting of a red line, Obama would
\nalmost certainly have to respond by taking military action against Syrian state
\nassets.<\/p>\n
\nAssad, when he was in the ascendant militarily, to take a decision to mount
\nsuch an attack himself, in the full knowledge that Obama would almost certainly
\nrespond militarily \u2013 which could have led to victory for the armed opposition
\nand his own removal from power.\u00a0 He would
\nhave to have been suicidal to engage in such a provocation.<\/p>\n
\nrhetorically at the time;<\/p>\n
\nthe Assad regime, given the fact that in recent months they\u2019ve been making
\nadvances rather than retreating? And why would Assad \u2013 by all account such an
\nextremely unpleasant regime, but it\u2019s not irrational \u2013 why would he decide to
\nrisk the wrath of US when he was making progress in any event?"<\/i><\/p>\nEndnote <\/strong><\/h2>\n
\ndeclared with \u201chigh confidence\u201d that Assad was responsible for the Ghouta
\nattack even though the available intelligence to that effect wasn\u2019t a \u201cslam
\ndunk\u201d (unlike the US intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed \u201cweapons of
\nmass destruction\u201d).\u00a0 Today the Trump
\nadministration declares that it is merely \u201cconfident\u201d that Assad is guilty of
\nthe Khan Sheikhoun attack \u2013
\nwhich presumably means that the available intelligence is not a \u201cslam dunk\u201d
\neither.\u00a0 Sean Spicer should be asked to
\nclarify.<\/p>\n