Did Bashar Assad gas his own people?

Perspectives on Syria From the blog Cannonfire By Joseph Cannon

(For hyperlinks, see original publication at http://Cannonfire.blogspot.com)

WHAT WAS AND WHAT IS

One interesting way to view our present issues is to look for precedent. Examples: 1. If the government tried Bradley Manning (as he then styled himself) for divulging information to the enemy (which he didn't), why wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald tried on the same charge? During his stint in the Marines, Oswald had gained access to many secrets, including those involving the U2 spy plane. In the USSR, he visited the American embassy and loudly announced that he intended to tell the Russians all he knew. Yet the US government offered him no official hindrances (and no small amount of official help) when he decided to return to the United States. Although defection per se may have been legal, a threat to spill military secrets obviously should have resulted in a trial. But there was no trial, no inquiry -- not even an on-therecord debriefing. 2. The neocon wing of the Republican party argues that Assad's (alleged) chemical attack warrants not just intervention but regime change. Yet these same neocons revere Ronald Reagan, who, in public speeches, excused the el Mozote massacre perpetrated by the far-right government of El Salvador in 1981. Some 1000 civilians were brutally slaughtered at el Mozote: Men were tortured and shot. Women were tortured and shot. Young women were taken up a hill, raped, and then shot. 146 children, ranging from the ages of 3 days to 14 years, were brutally murdered. Soldiers smashed the skulls of small babies and decapitated older children. Several pregnant mothers were shot, then had large rocks dropped on their stomachs to kill their unborn children. Later, the soldiers recovered the skulls of murdered children and used them as candle holders. (This is not a propaganda story: Named participants bragged about their trophies.) The killers at el Mozote were, in fact, trained and funded by the U.S. government:

When the atrocity was revealed by reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Reagan administration showed off its new strategy of perception management, denying the facts and challenging the integrity of the journalists. Because of that P.R. offensive, the reality about the El Mozote massacre remained in doubt for almost a decade until the war ended and a United Nations forensic team dug up hundreds of skeletons, including many little ones of children. By comparison, the 2013 chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Syria, is estimated (by an organization opposed to Assad) to have killed 355 people. (Other estimates put the number over 1700.) I will be grimly amused by any attempt to argue that what happened at Ghouta was worse than what happened at el Mozote. Also see here. (That link goes to an important piece of history which younger readers probably never learned about in school.) One could cite many more examples. Only someone with an absurdly selective notion of morality would argue that America has earned the right to "discipline" Assad. Which brings us to... 3. Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter (she may even have penned some of his rationalizations of the Salvadoran death squad atrocities), now favors caution on the question of intervening in Syria. While caution is indeed wise, rewriting history is always vile. Yet rewriting history remains a Noonan specialty. There you go again, Peggy: When Saddam used gas against the Kurds it was not immediately known to all the world. It was not common knowledge. The world rued it in retrospect. Syria is different: It is the first obvious, undeniable, real-time, YouTubed use of chemical weapons. Noonan won't let her audience in on the most important part of the story: The gassing of the Kurds would have been common knowledge had her beloved Ronald Reagan told what he knew. In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent. The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing

an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose. The 1988 attack was hardly the only such incident. Reagan had kept Saddam's filthy secret for five years... But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attach in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture. "The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew," he told Foreign Policy. According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted. Noonan refuses to acknowledge that this history is history. She still insists that Ronald Reagan was "the sweetest, most innocent man ever to serve in the Oval Office." Will this woman ever have the decency and humility to admit her own complicity in aiding a government guilty of mass murder?

Now let's look at some further indications that Assad is not responsible for the chemical attack on Ghouta.
Oddly, nobody in the American media seems to have thought to ask the opinion of the people who live in that area. Some of you may feel inclined to dismiss this article because it comes from a source that will be unfamiliar to most of you. Frankly, I had never heard of Mint Press News before this day. Although I like what I read here, I'd also like to know where the money comes from. While you should not accept this report uncritically, I do think that these claims deserve further investigation... However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry, said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a tube-like structure while others were like a huge gas bottle. Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels. The piece goes on to relate a theory that the Saudis had provided chemical weaponry to the alNusra front but had not given adequate instruction on how to operate the things. They didnt tell us what these arms were or how to use them, complained a female fighter named K. We didnt know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons. When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them, she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution. A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named J agreed. Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material, he said. We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions, J said. Call this the "oops" theory. Yes, I'm fully aware that this scenario conflicts with information published in the New York Times, which reported that the rockets came from the Qaboun/Jobar area, which was rebel-held. Still, one reason why the Mint News scenario intrigues me is that it does not offer a "false flag" story. Instead, it gives us a more nuanced scenario in which an accident is used opportunistically by propagandists intent on regime change in Syria. Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry is now claiming that the rebels, not Assad, were responsible for the previous alleged chemical attack last March. A statement released by the ministry on Wednesday particularly drew attention to the massive stove-piping of various information aimed at placing the responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria on Damascus, even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed.

By such means the way is being paved for military action against Damascus, the ministry pointed out. The Russians have sent a report to the UN. According to UN envoy Vitaly Churkin, Russian scientists have examined a recovered projectile and found indications of sarin. Churkin added that the contents of the shell didnt contain chemical stabilizers in the toxic substance, and therefore is not a standard chemical charge. The RDX - an explosive nitroamine commonly used for industrial and military applications - found in the warhead was not consistent with what the armed forces use. According to Moscow, the manufacture of the Bashair-3 warheads started in February, and is the work of Bashair al-Nasr, a brigade with close ties to the Free Syrian Army. This next bit is also worth noting, in light of the Mint News report listed above: The Syrian government invited chief UN chemical weapons investigator Ake Sellstrom and UN disarmament chief Angela Kane for talks in Damascus on Monday, announcing that a rebels-linked storage site containing piles of dangerous chemicals had been discovered. The Syrian authorities have discovered yesterday in the city of Banias 281 barrels filled with dangerous, hazardous chemical materials, Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari said, adding that the chemicals were capable of destroying a whole city, if not the whole country. The chemicals, which included monoethylene glycol and polyethylene glycol, were found in a storage site used by armed terrorist groups, Jaafari explained. The 800-pound gorilla. The NYT indulged in an interesting bit of censorship. (I hate linking to Dylan Beyers' column, but he didn't write this particular post.) A reference to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC was mysteriously cut from a New York Times article published online Monday and in print Tuesday. The first version, published online Monday, quotes an anonymous administration official calling AIPAC the "800-pound gorilla in the room." The original article, which is still available on The Boston Globe's site, had two paragraphs worth of quotes from officials about the powerful lobbying group's position in the Syria debate: Administration officials said the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee was already at work pressing for military action against the government of Assad, fearing that if Syria escapes American retribution for its use of chemical weapons, Iran might be emboldened in the future to attack Israel. In the House, the majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, the only Jewish

Republican in Congress, has long worked to challenge Democrats traditional base among Jews. One administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified discussing White House strategy, called AIPAC the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and said its allies in Congress had to be saying, If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line against the catastrophic use of chemical weapons, were in trouble. The newer version makes no reference to AIPAC and does not include an editor's note explaining any change, other than a typical note at the end of the story noting that a version of the article appeared in the Tuesday print edition of the Times. Despite a claim made by the NYT that these paragraphs were excised because they were repetitive, it's pretty obvious that the "gorilla" line irked AIPAC. Some gorillas like to pretend that they're not gorillas. Strange bedfellows. Stopping Obama's planned war in Syria is imperative. Although the administration assures us that there will be no boots on the ground, a moment's thought will tell you that there is simply no safe way to take out chemical weapon storage facilities from the air. Bombs will surely release toxins into the environment. Perhaps afterwards we can claim that "We had to poison them in order to save them." That said, the effort to stop this war is creating some of the strangest bedfellows in political history. Rush Limbaugh, of all people, is now speaking of the Ghouta attack as a "false flag" event. A little more predictably, Ron Paul has expressed a similar view. You have to admit: The image of Rush Limbaugh marching in step with the Russian Foreign Ministry is pretty amusing. I can't stand Ron Paul's libertarian ideology -- if he ran the economy, we'd enter a new age of barbarism -- but his words have a certain wisdom: This can escalate and Russia could get in -- what if there's an accident and a hundred Russians get killed by our bombs? Some type of unintended consequences -- wars always expand because of unintended consequences. They always provide short term wars. Just think of all the promises on Iraq, short term, not much money, we'll get their oil. Don't believe it. We should look at what is best for America and not try to pick sides in an impossible war like this. It's more likely that the war would expand to include Iran, not Russia. But the consequences of that could be just as disastrous.