I/III. https://muftah.org/latest-un-conclusions-will-khan-shaykhoun-truthers-continue-denying-facts/#.WbqJu9hryUm
With Latest UN Conclusions, Will Khan Shaykhoun Truthers Continue Denying Facts? Riad AlarianSeptember 9th, 2017 When the Syrian regime launched a series of chemical strikes on the town of Khan Shaykhoun last April, a slew of self-styled contrarians—journalists, academics, and activists alike—stepped up to explain away every possible detail that implicated President Bashar Al-Assad in the war crime. Despite eye-witness reports, video evidence, and survivor testimonies, Khan Shaykhoun truthers insisted it made no sense for Assad to launch such a grotesque attack against his own people, since he was already winning the war and could only hurt his standing by doing something so foolish. Perhaps the most well-known proponent of this narrative is veteran war journalist, Seymour Hersh, who argued in a Die Welt article last June that Assad did not deliberately carry out a chemical attack in Khan Shaykhoun. By relying on dodgy science and citing only one direct source (an anonymous “senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency”), Hersh claimed that, if Syrian warplanes did indeed drop bombs on Khan Shaykhoun, they were regular explosives targeting “jihadists,” rather than chemical agents intended to harm civilians. Hersh speculated that the bombs must have struck a site which inadvertently released “a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.” Some, like Professor Stephen R. Shalom, penned powerful responses to Hersh’s claims, taking him to task for his faulty logic and lack of transparency: A further problem with the “there was no reason for Assad to do this” argument is that the same argument could be advanced to explain why Assad would not have done many of the things that he undoubtedly did do. Why did he need to use barrel bombs, which so enflamed world opinion? Why did he use chlorine gas after he committed to a chemical weapons treaty that prohibits it? Why did his forces return to bomb Khan Sheikhoun just days after the American missile strike? Why did his forces and allies advance on an area protected by the United States? Why did a Syrian warplane drop bombs near American-backed forces and their advisers? If it seems crazy for Assad to use sarin when he’s already winning the war, doesn’t it seem even more provocative to drop bombs near US-backed forces? Why would Assad behave this way? Again, there’s a reasonable explanation. Consider the lesson Assad might have drawn from the response to his previous actions. He acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to eliminate his stockpile. The UN Security Council passed a resolution stating that any violation of this agreement would trigger punitive measures. Nevertheless, the Syrian government used banned chlorine gas, as was documented by the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The United States enacted some sanctions, but Russia — which challenged the JIM finding — blocked a broader international response. […] The Left must use the same critical eye it applies to the corporate media’s nonsense to analyses that support popular left positions. The Left can — and should — oppose American imperial machinations without losing our critical judgment. A careful analysis of Hersh’s sourcing, the science behind his argument, and a comparison between his and other versions of the events in Khan Sheikhoun demonstrates that we shouldn’t take his story seriously. For all the weaknesses in Hersh’s “facts,” and even with compelling counterarguments like Shalom’s, the Die Welt article continues to be astonishingly popular among leftwing and rightwing supporters of Bashar Al-Assad. Worse yet, according to Al-Bab, Hersh “is this year’s winner of an annual prize for truth-telling,” which is due to be presented to him at “the Sam Adams Award for Integrity on September 22 during a conference at the American University in Washington.” As if this were not bad enough, Hersh is being given this award “specifically for his article about Khan Sheikhoun.” By now, Hersh and his supporters must certainly be aware of the latest report published by UN war crime investigators, which found that Assad’s forces deliberately deployed chemical agents against civilians over twenty times—including in Khan Shaykhoun in April. The Guardian described the report as “the most conclusive findings to date from investigations into chemical weapons attacks during the the country’s six-year civil war.” The report has, however, elicited little more than silence from those who have been valiantly denying the many pieces of evidence that already pointed to Assad’s responsibility for the attacks. When it comes to Syria, Assad’s apologists rarely admit to their factual misjudgments, and are unlikely to do so now. Their continued dedication to outlandish conspiracy theories and outright fabrications has almost nothing to do with a genuine commitment to alleged “facts.” More often than not, those “facts” are merely convenient talking points used to substantiate pre-existing ideological beliefs about the Syrian conflict. No matter how strong the actual evidence might be, these individuals, like September 11 truthers and flat Earthers, will always skirt around the realities and truths that undercut their fantastical narratives. II/III. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/06/syrian-regime-dropped-sarin-on-rebel-held-town-in-april-un-confirms?CMP=share_btn_fb Syrian regime dropped sarin on rebel-held town in April, UN confirms Report says government has used chemical weapons 20 times, including attack on Khan Sheikhun that killed over 80 civilians A Syrian man collects samples from the site of the attack in Khan Sheikhun in April. A Syrian man collects samples from the site of the attack in Khan Sheikhun in April. Photograph: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images Martin Chulov Wednesday 6 September 2017 11.55 BST Last modified on Thursday 7 September 2017 11.14 BST United Nations war crimes investigators have formally blamed the Syrian government for a sarin attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun in April that killed at least 83 people and wounded almost 300 more. The international commission of inquiry on Syria, which is run by the UN, said it had compiled extensive evidence that the Syrian air force had carried out an airstrike that released the nerve agent. It dismissed claims by Damascus and Moscow that the carnage was the result of a bomb striking an opposition chemical weapons depot on the outskirts of the northern town as “fabricated”. In the most conclusive findings to date from investigations into chemical weapons attacks during the the country’s six-year civil war, it found that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons 20 times, including in the deadly attack on Khan Sheikhun that led to US airstrikes. In the report, produced for the UN human rights council, the commission said it had conducted 43 eyewitness interviews and analysed satellite imagery, key timings on the day of the attack and bomb remnants that it had partially matched to the type of munitions that the former Soviet Union is known to have supplied to the Syrian military. The report found that a Sukhoi 22 jet, which is only flown by the Syrian airforce, had carried out four airstrikes at 6.45am on 4 April. Three bombs carried conventional explosives, but one, which struck a road, carried the deadly nerve agent, which was carried as far as 600 metres away on a gentle wind. “Weather conditions at 6.45am on 4 April were ideal for delivering a chemical weapon,” the report said. “The wind speed was just over 3km/h, with no rain and practically no cloud cover. Under such conditions, the agent cloud would have drifted slowly downhill following the terrain features at the location.” 'The dead were wherever you looked': inside Syrian town after gas attack Read more The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons, but the report said the Syrian regime’s version of events, that an unknown weapons depot had been hit, was “extremely unlikely”. It said sarin stored in such circumstances would have mostly burned off or been absorbed by rubble, and that there was no evidence of the building being contaminated. A visit by the Guardian to Khan Sheikhun two days after the attack revealed that the site officials claimed had been hit had been empty for many months, and contained only animal feed and a volleyball net. Witnesses described the frantic aftermath of a series of airstrikes, which overwhelmed the limited capacity of local medics and rescue workers. Claims made by locals on the ground that the airstrikes had taken place at around 6.45am were endorsed by the commission, which said the Russian and Syrian version of events – that the attack had taken place at 11.30 that morning – was not supported by facts. “The commission has not, however, found any evidence to support the claim that … armed groups had a weapons depot in the area where the chemical bomb impacted. The evidence laid out above overwhelmingly indicates that the sarin gas was released at around 6.45am. All evidence available leads the commission to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Sheikhun. “The use of sarin in Khan Sheikhun on 4 April by Syrian forces constitutes the war crimes of using chemical weapons and indiscriminate attacks, and violation of the prohibition on the use of weapons designed to cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.” The commission said it had documented 25 instances of chemical attacks in Syria between March 2013 and March 2017, 20 of which had been carried out by government forces and had mainly targeted civilians. In the other cases, the perpetrators had not been identified. It said an attack in the nearby town of Latamneh a week earlier had left dozens of victims with similar symptoms to those seen in Khan Sheikhun, but none had died. The attack was previously identified as having used sarin, an odourless nerve agent, but the fact-finding mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons did not say who carried it out. III. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-warcrimes/syrian-government-forces-used-chemical-weapons-more-than-two-dozen-times-u-n-idUSKCN1BH18W SEPTEMBER 6, 2017 / 3:49 PM / 8 DAYS AGO Syrian government forces used chemical weapons more than two dozen times: U.N. A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah Stephanie Nebehay 4 MIN READ GENEVA (Reuters) - Government forces have used chemical weapons more than two dozen times during Syria’s civil war, including in April’s deadly attack on Khan Sheikhoun, U.N. war crimes investigators said on Wednesday. A government warplane dropped sarin on the town in Idlib province, killing more than 80 civilians, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said, in the most conclusive findings to date from investigations into that chemical weapon attack. The panel also said U.S. air strikes on a mosque in Al-Jina in rural Aleppo in March that killed 38 people, including children, failed to take precautions in violation of international law, but did not constitute a war crime. The weapons used on Khan Sheikhoun were previously identified as containing sarin, an odorless nerve agent. But that conclusion, reached by a fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), did not say who was responsible. “Government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition-held areas. In the gravest incident, the Syrian air force used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, killing dozens, the majority of whom were women and children,” the U.N. report said, declaring the attack a war crime. Commission chairman Paulo Pinheiro told a news conference: “Not having access did not prevent us from establishing facts or reasonable grounds to believe what happened during the attack and establishing who is responsible.” In their 14th report since 2011, U.N. investigators said they had in all documented 33 chemical weapons attacks to date. Twenty-seven were by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, including seven between March 1 to July 7. Perpetrators had not been identified yet in six attacks, they said. The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. It said its strikes in Khan Sheikhoun hit a weapons depot belonging to rebel forces, a claim “excluded” by Pinheiro. That attack led U.S. President Donald Trump to launch the first U.S. air strikes on a Syrian air base. Catherine Marchi-Uhel of France, newly-appointed head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) attends a news conference on Syria crimes at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse A separate joint inquiry by the United Nations and OPCW aims to report by October on who was to blame for Khan Sheikhoun. The U.N. investigators interviewed 43 witnesses, victims, and first responders linked to the attack. Satellite imagery, photos of bomb remnants and early warning reports were used. ‘GRAVELY CONCERNED’ ABOUT COALITION STRIKES Slideshow (5 Images) The independent investigators said they were gravely concerned about the impact of international coalition strikes on civilians. “We continue to investigate coalition air strikes carried out to expel ISIS from Raqqa resulting in an increasing number of civilian casualties,” Pinheiro said. The report said: “In al-Jina, Aleppo, forces of the United States of America failed to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects when attacking a mosque, in violation of international humanitarian law.” A U.S. military investigator said in June the air strike was a valid and legal attack on a meeting of al Qaeda fighters. “However, the commission however has not found any evidence that such an al Qaeda meeting was taking place,” Pinheiro said. The American F-15s hit the building adjacent to the prayer hall with 10 bombs, followed by a Reaper drone that fired two Hellfire missiles at people fleeing, the U.N. report said. “Most of the residents of al-Jina, relatives of victims and first responders interviewed by the Commission stated on that on the evening in question, a religious gathering was being hosted in the mosque’s service building. This was a regular occurrence.” Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by John Stonestreet -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
