I am afraid I have to specify which chemical attack I am referring to-there have been so many.
From the limited reading I have done on the latest chemical attack in Douma Syria, it appears that nerve gas was not used. It was probably Chlorine, a gas that is readily available to the Assad regime. First, is this an accurate conclusion?
Second, the adults in the room, Great Britain and France, are insisting on actual proof that there was a chemical attack and that it was done by the Syrian regime. I am focusing on the first step. Will it be possible to prove several days or a week after the attack what chemical weapon was used? I know that the The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is planning to investigate. By the time they get there, assuming the chemical is Chlorine gas, will there be anything left to analyze? Chlorine is of course highly reactive so there won’t be any gas left, but what about reactants? Will those be reliably detectable compared to background? OPCW never assigns blame, they simply investigate and try to determine what happened. Will they be able to do that in Douma?
I don’t think it’s provable. The thing about Chlorine gas is that it’s everywhere. It’s very easy to make and easy to use, mix some bleach with battery acid and you have chlorine gas. We also know that both sides have produced and likely used it. So I think that it would be very difficult to prove who exactly used chlorine gas in Douma. Whoever did use it is probably banking on that fact. It’s also difficult to say that it was even intentional. The SAA has claimed in past attacks that it was bombing weapons depots and rebels were storing chlorine there that immediately dispersed. If one side had a known delivery method that was traceable to them, you could probably look for debris from that weapon, but the last video I saw out of Douma claimed that it was dispersed via a propane tank that was dropped at the same time as an explosive. That’s a pretty tough thing to trace.
Agreed that it will be impossible to prove who used the gas, if that was the gas used. I don’t think that is the major issue though. Everyone in the west is willing to blame the Syrian regime simply because there is no creditable alternative. I know the Syrians and the Russians claim it might have been stored gas hit by a bomb-but that doesn’t pass the smell test (oops, bad pun). Not even the most die-hard terrorists are going to store lethal quantities of poison gas in their own areas that are under constant bombing. Even if they did so once, they wouldn’t continue to make that mistake. Given the historically weak western response to date, the rebels wouldn’t have much incentive to inflict another chemical attack on themselves in the hope of getting the west to do something.
IF someone can prove that poison gas was used, and that is my question, the who part is likely going to be considered a forgone conclusion.
In the previous CW attacks, there have been press reports that there were communications intercepts the showed that the Assad government planned the attacks.
Whether or not there were similar intercepts this time, or what the actual content of the intercepts were, we can only speculate. But as a matter of assigning responsibility, if there are indeed intercepted communications that say, “Deploy the gas bombs over there!” and then the gas bombs are dropped over there, we can safely say that the communicants are responsible for the attack, even without forensic analysis of the weapons that were used.
One can always hope, but it seems likely that since they made that mistake before they would avoid talking too much on the radio. OTOH, they may not care. Getting bombed by the US for a day or two is a small price to pay to push the civil war toward a favorable conclusion. They are winning and know that all those European refugees give them a huge lever in post-war diplomacy. Europe and Turkey will be very anxious to move the refugees back home.
I was listening to the NPR program The World today, in which they were interviewing a semi-regular correspondent in Syria. She was claiming to have seen videos proving that it was all a White Helmet conspiracy, that everyone in the other videos was acting, and that it was a false flag operation designed specifically to bring in US military action against Assad’s regime. I could tell that the NPR host was very taken aback by this claim, and had to fall back on the “I really don’t want to argue with you about this” because she was very shrill and vehement and certain.
So is there any of this actual proof that this was a false flag operation? The claim seems that much more odd because, as I understand it, White Helmets is an organization of volunteers who rescue people in rebel held areas of Syria from fallen buildings and such. So she seems to be saying that all that is a front, that they are only pretending to risk their lives to help people who aren’t actually in danger, for a political purpose. Sounds pretty much exactly like Assad propaganda. I have to wonder if there wasn’t someone holding a gun to her head. She’s usually much more centrist in her reporting.
I agree - the idea that the rebels have some secret store of chemical weapons - which they only ever use on themselves and never on the Assad troops who have the military upper hand is crazypants.
True. but that would only make the rubble bounce.
The Syrian regime has had weeks, and as long as it takes since they decided when to start the clock by using the chemical weapons, to move all the equipment, records and personnel out of any buildings that might be targets. Their flyable aircraft have already relocated to the Russian base inside Syria. It is going to cost the regime some time to rebuild the bombed buildings-but they have all the time they need.
Again, no proof of anything. Syria watchers (I’m one of them) do find the timing of these attacks to be suspicious. They almost always happen when Assad is on the cusp of a major victory and they are accompanied by demands that the west do something about it. This latest example was yet another example of weirdness. The rebels in most of Ghouta had already surrendered and all that was left was one town. That town was talking about surrender, but there was a breakdown in talks. Assad began another offensive and had broken through their defensive lines near Rayhan and looked poised to overrun the town when this attack happened. It’s a weird time to set off a chemical weapon. The explanation given is that Assad is just evil and wants to kill as many people as possible so they don’t rebel later, but killing 40 people is a drop in the bucket. They kill many times more than that with conventional weapons, so it’s a very strange thing to do.
As for the white helmets. They are a loose organization of volunteers that go about saving civilians. They do have detractors though. Russia and Assad claim that they are closely affiliated with rebel groups and have on at least one occasion been caught faking a rescue and on another covering up war crimes. The organization as a whole says these are simply the actions of a hand full of rogue volunteers and not indicative of the organization as a whole. They seemingly lean anti-Assad in their sympathies (for good reason since Assad has killed a decent number of them in various strikes.) After the fall of Aleppo, they requested to be evacuated along to rebel fighters to Idlib which would seem to be strange for an ostensibly neutral organization.
My personal opinion is that it is very unlikely that they don’t have significant numbers of rebel fighters in their ranks if for no other reason than there aren’t too many young men left who aren’t in one military organization or another and if the White Helmets were a truly neutral source of large numbers of fighting age men, they would be press-ganged pretty quickly if they didn’t have some sort of explicit protection. I don’t know that I would go so far as to accuse the leadership of anything shady.
Personally, I doubt the white helmets as an organization are committing false flag operations. I think it’s much more likely if a false flag operation occurred that it was one of the militias. I don’t think it would be particularly difficult for them to launch an elephant bomb into a civilian neighborhood while a jet is overhead and say that it was Assad that did it. I think confirmation bias from bystanders would do the rest of the job for them.
Gas cylinders are color coded according to contents. Presumably this is an international standard. Yellow indicates corrosive or toxic gas. It could have held chlorine. There is heavy corrosion around the valve and the stand which holds the cylinder. The stand looks like it was originally part of an industrial application and is held in place by a flimsy clamp. An area of the stand which is bent shows rust, i.e., old damage.
These tanks are extremely durable and are designed to survive a serious impact, but that stand would be seriously damaged, even ripped off if it fell through the ceiling tearing through what looks like 1/2" rebar. And look at the size of that hole! No way it could make a hole that big. These brackets are designed only to hold cylinders securely upright. Somehow, the cylinder landed on the bed, which is not under the hole in the ceiling.
Without more information, it is not clear whether the valve is open or closed. It appears that there was originally a tube exiting the valve which has been broken off, but there seems to be no mechanism to release gas on impact.
If you are looking for absolute proof that it was Assad or Russia then you’ll be disappointed. You won’t find anything that stands up to western ideas of judicial proof, the fog of war will not allow such clarity.
I see absolutely no benefit politically or militarily in France, UK and USA collaborating on a “false-flag” operation in order to trigger air-strikes and no evidence to suggest it. I do think that Assad, Russia and Iran are both capable and willing to use them as they see fit and will quite happily deny any knowledge and point the finger anywhere else. Plus ca change.
One other theory is that the rebels or sources close to them did it to themselves in order to prompt actions from the west, I wouldn’t rule that out entirely but the order of probability is clearly
a) Assad (backed by Russia and Iran)
b) Rebels (or affiliated and interested third parties)
c) Western powers (a very, very distant third place)
I don’t have a cite for this since I just heard this in passing on the local NPR station, but the talking heads were saying that the chemical gas was launched in an air raid, and since the Rebels don’t have an air force it was hard to imagine it being anyone but the Syrians or Russians.
