Here We Go Again: Fabricating a Casus Belli with Syria

Last week it was Amnesty International's "HUMAN SLAUGHTERHOUSE: MASS HANGINGS AND EXTERMINATION AT SAYDNAYA PRISON, SYRIA," thoroughly demolished by Rick Sterling in his "Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War."

Then yesterday it was the Atlantic Council's "Breaking Aleppo," which, according to The New York Times' Michael Gordon, the man who helped bring us the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed."

But all one needs to know about "Breaking Aleppo" comes midway through the article: "Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by [Eliot] Higgins, a Britain-based researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat.com." To mention that Eliot Higgins is a principal author of the report (a guy who is clearly a government agent) without mentioning his role in using spurious arguments and bogus evidence to blame the Syrian government for the 2013 chemical attack in East Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, or his role in arguing for Russian complicity in the downing of MH17 in Eastern Ukraine is clearly misleading to the Gray Lady's readers. Once again with The New York Times we are in the realm of crass banana-fingered propaganda.

Now comes the absurd "Syria: Coordinated Chemical Attacks on Aleppo," released yesterday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Rick Gladstone, like his colleague Michael Gordon, another spook posing as a reporter, writes breathlessly in "Syria Used Chlorine Bombs Systematically in Aleppo, Report Says" -- the opening paragraph -- that

Syrian military helicopters systematically dumped canisters of chlorine gas, a banned weapon, on residential areas of Aleppo at least eight times late last year in the final weeks of the battle to retake the city from rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a detailed study released Monday.

But skim through the report --  it is not hard to do -- and for all the video links and purported photographic evidence there is not one image of a Syrian helicopter dumping chlorine canisters! An example of the willful suspension of disbelief that Human Rights Watch is asking of us can be found below:

Omar Arnaout, a photographer, said that he saw a helicopter drop an object near a cemetery in Qadi Askar at about 3 p.m. on November 28:

"Suddenly, yellow smoke started spreading followed by the smell of chlorine a few minutes later. It’s the smell of the liquid that we use to clean toilet, but more intense, much more intense. People were unable to breathe, they are coughing. Some children were throwing up. The smell was everywhere."

Arnaout said that about 20 civilians were injured in the attack and taken to hospitals for treatment.

If he is a photographer, why didn't he take a picture of the helicopter? I guess he didn't have his camera with him. Then why in this instance, which is supposed to document a Syrian helicopter dropping a chlorine bomb, mention that he is a photographer? Clearly it is a rhetorical sleight of hand meant to convey to the reader photographic evidence where there is none.

The HRW report is chock full of everything we've seen plenty of times before -- pictures of spent shell casings, eyewitness testimony from jihadis posing as citizen activists, photos of babies in emergency rooms receiving oxygen.

The overall idea is to reboot the Western war on Syria now that the Syrian-Russian-Iranian coalition is about to conquer the Western-backed jihadis; that, and block the Trump administration from working with Russia. With Flynn out it looks like the U.S. posture to Syria will be identical to the one during Obamatime.

House Holds Hearings Titled "Assad's Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks"

The bane of a frontline wage-worker's life is repetition. Life is largely routinized Monday through Friday down to quarter-hour intervals. There is a tiny bit of freedom that the weekend affords, but Saturday and Sunday, for me at least, are largely routinized as well.

The silver lining to all this repetition is that it does yield a certain kind of deep knowledge. Doing the same thing over and over again gives one a type of understanding that is prized as "organic."

Reading the newspaper every morning for years one bit of organic wisdom that I have gleaned is that anything in the Gray Lady with a byline by Eric Schmitt or Rick Gladstone usually mirrors a U.S. governmental department perspective. These reporters' jobs are to act as a conduit -- most of the time, not 100% of the time -- for USG propaganda.

Another fruit of repetition (we seem to be on a lunar cycle here) is the Syrian chlorine gas barrel bomb delivered by "only Assad's military has helicopters" helicopters. There were hearings held yesterday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee neutrally titled "Assad's Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks." Gladstone, in his story covering the hearings, "Claims of Syrian Chlorine Bombs Counter News of Progress on Chemical Arms," could not bear to refer to the hearings by their title, no doubt because he is a seasoned propagandist and "Assad's Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks" is clearly of a class with Gaddafi's rape rooms, Saddam's soldiers throwing babies onto the floor from their incubators, etc.

Gladstone even includes the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announcement of the successful disposal of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles as a way to balance the House Foreign Affairs Committee dog & pony show:

The monitoring group overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical arms stockpile said Wednesday that almost all effluent from the neutralized weapons had been eliminated, portraying the progress as a great success in the nearly two years since Syria agreed to give up its arsenal. 

But the news from the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was partly overshadowed by outrage over what critics of the Syrian government call its increasingly brazen use of chlorine in makeshift poison gas bombs dumped on civilians and suspected rebels in the civil war. 

Witnesses at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, including a Syrian doctor and a civil defense coordinator from areas said to have been attacked, described the chlorine bombs as horrific weapons that had asphyxiated young children.

One witness, Dr. Annie Sparrow, a pediatrician and human rights activist who has helped train doctors working in rebel-held areas of Syria, accused the Syrian government not only of using chlorine in bombs, but also of withholding chlorine for water purification and other critical sanitation needs in areas it does not control. 

Dr. Sparrow, an outspoken critic of the Syrian government, said it had “transformed a principal element of public health into a tool of disease and terror.” 

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria denies that his forces have dropped chlorine bombs, which would be a war crime. Such attacks would also violate the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the Syrian government, under heavy pressure from Russia, signed in 2013 to avert an attack threatened by the United States.

Gladstone doesn't mention that Dr. Annie Sparrow is married to Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Kenneth Roth. HRW authored a report, now discredited, blaming the Syrian government for the Ghouta sarin attack in August of 2013. Sparrow and Roth are partisans in the campaign to topple the Syrian government.

To get a more in depth look at these hearings one should consult a story (Alice Ross and Shiv Malik, "Syrian doctors to show the US evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons") that appeared in The Guardian a few days ago:

A network of Syrian doctors is due to tell the US Congress that Bashar al-Assad’s regime is systematically weaponising chlorine to spread fear among civilian populations, in defiance of a recent UN security council resolution.

The testimony on Wednesday will be accompanied by a dossier of evidence compiled by the Syrian American Medical Society (Sams), a charity that runs 95 medical facilities inside the country. It documents 31 separate chlorine attacks between 16 March and 9 June. The charity says all the attacks were conducted by launching barrel bombs from helicopters and many targeted civilian areas, leaving 10 dead and at least 530 people seeking medical treatment.

The dossier, which has been seen by the Guardian, provides US lawmakers with data, photos and videos that Sams says were taken in the aftermath of chlorine bombings in a province of Syria recently overrun by militants, including the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front.

The Guardian has been unable to verify the material, which includes videos and photos of adults and children struggling to breathe, often wearing oxygen masks. Some are retching, while others are being stripped and hosed down to remove chemical residue.

Sams also provided the Guardian with a redacted list of basic patient information for 221 people treated for chlorine exposure. According to that list, 57 were under 18.

The lead medical coordinator for Sams in Idlib province, Dr Mohamed Tennari, has flown to Washington DC and has been invited to testify in front of the House foreign affairs committee on Wednesday morning. Tennari will say that although chlorine is less likely to kill than conventional weapons, it has created a “new type of psychological torture” for the Syrian people. He told the Guardian: “We would like to see a no-fly zone and increasing help being provided to refugees.”

The Sams data only reflects attacks that have been confirmed by the charity’s own facilities, and only those taking place in Idlib province. Other activists, including the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue service who will also testify at the hearing, have reported further incidents in the adjoining Hama province.

Recent reports suggest that militant forces in Syria, including Isis, are developing a chemical weapons capability of their own. Isis are understood to have used chlorine in Iraq. However, Sams said that all the attacks in their data were launched from helicopters, which are only operated by the Assad regime. [!]

The Syrian president has denied that his forces have deployed chlorine. Although the chemical is widely available, its weaponisation is strictly banned under international law. In an interview with France 2 on 20 April, Assad said there was no proof of chlorine use in attacks on Idlib city. 

“This is another fake narrative by the western governments … The regular armaments that we have are more influential than chlorine, so we don’t need it anyway,” he said. “We didn’t use it. We don’t need to use it. We have our regular armaments, and we could achieve our goals without it. So, we don’t use it. No, there’s no proof.”

These chlorine gas stories crop up every month to keep alive the issue of a no-fly zone in northern Syria. Obama's realpolitik brain trust has been wary of overt moves to get rid of Assad, but his administration has supported CIA front groups like SAMS and White Helmets. Once a neocon, whether Hillary or the Republican (whomever that may be), recaptures the presidency, the issue of chlorine gas will be part of the public record and used to launch the no-fly zone.

What is incredible to me is that even in a superior story like the one that appeared on Tuesday in The Guardian the absolutely bald lie that only Assad's regime operates helicopters used to deliver the chlorine barrel bombs in the Idlib and Hama is waved through without comment or disclaimer.

HRW vs. Sisi

With so many significant events happening in the Middle East, it is easy to skip over a story like the one that appeared yesterday, "‘Systematic’ Killings in Egypt Are Tied to Leader, Group Says," by Kareem Fahim. I did in the morning. But failing to board a train right as it was about to depart the station in the evening led to additional idle time to read. Subsequently, I thoroughly scrubbed the front section of the paper.

Fahim's story about the Human Rights Watch report is an important reminder of what a pivotal event the Sisi coup was last summer:

CAIRO — A day after Egypt barred representatives of Human Rights Watch from entering the country, the group disclosed the source of the government’s alarm: a report implicating senior officials, including Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in what it called the “widespread and systematic” killings of protesters. 

Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said Monday that it had conducted a yearlong investigation into violence that followed the military’s ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi, and found that the killings of demonstrators by the police and army forces “likely amounted to crimes against humanity.” Official statements during the killings made clear that the attacks “were ordered by the government,” the group said.

The report, which was released Tuesday, was the latest of several independent attempts by human rights workers and journalists to document a series of mass killings last summer that Egyptian authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate, and that government officials seem determined to help the country forget. 

The worst of the violence occurred on Aug. 14, 2013, when the security forces used force to disperse a large sit-in of Mr. Morsi’s supporters near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo, killing more than 800 people, and possibly more than 1,000, according to Human Rights Watch. It called the episode “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.” 

No security or government officials have been prosecuted in the killings, which set off a period of civil conflict and government repression that included the arrests of tens of thousands of people, including Islamists, journalists and leftist political activists. 

The report calls for an investigation of Mr. Sisi, who was commander of the armed forces at the time, and several other sitting government officials, including Egypt’s interior minister. The Obama administration has signaled its intention to return full American support for Egypt under Mr. Sisi, despite scant evidence that Egypt is becoming more democratic or inclusive. 

Human rights workers and civil society advocates have described an atmosphere that is more stifling and perilous than life under President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in a popular uprising in 2011.

On Monday, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, and the director of the Middle East division, Sarah Leah Whitson, were deported from Egypt after being stopped at the airport on Sunday. 

It was the first time Egypt had denied entry to employees of Human Rights Watch, Ms. Whitson said. Airport officials wrapped a form around Ms. Whitson’s passport and checked a box that said, “For security reasons.”

David Kirkpatrick follows up this morning with "After Human Rights Watch Report, Egypt Says Group Broke Law":

Human Rights Watch “does not enjoy any legal status that may allow it to operate in Egypt,” the government said in a statement responding to the report. “Conducting investigations, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses without any legal backing are activities that constitute a flagrant violation of state sovereignty under international law,” the statement added. It called the report a “flagrant intervention in the work of the national investigative and judicial authorities, and an attempt to impinge upon the independence and integrity of the Egyptian judiciary.”

The government also said that Human Rights Watch had issued the report “in parallel with dubious moves by the terrorist organization and its supporters” — a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that sponsored Mohamed Morsi, the ousted Egyptian president — “with a view to carrying out further acts of violence and terrorism against the Egyptian state and innocent civilians.”

 ***

“The government seems to be suggesting that H.R.W.’s investigation and visit to Egypt is part of a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist plot, which is farcical on its face,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s executive director for the region, said in an email. She called the charges “absurd, unsubstantiated allegations, and a naked effort to intimidate us.”

Human Rights Watch is generally a close ally of the U.S. government. Maybe this report, along with one published in July about the Ukrainian junta slaughtering civilians in Donetsk with Grad rockets, is proof of pockets of discontent within the Obama administration: in the case of Egypt, the discontent would be with the way in which the U.S. has meekly swallowed its soaring rhetoric of democracy and human rights and lined up with the Saudis behind Sisi's military dictatorship; in the Ukraine, the complaint would be with the neocon's rapacious embrace of the fascist coup government and its criminal assault on the civilian population of Donbass.

Government is not a monolith. There are always opposing camps struggling for advantage over one another. Sisi's conflict with HRW reminds us of this; but, more importantly, it reminds us that the "Sisi trend" -- totalitarianism -- to roll back the Arab Spring is still being contested, albeit obliquely, within the established power structure.

Al Nusra Assaults Aramaic-Speaking Town + Obama Tosses in Towel on AUMF + HRW Report

I am often critical of Anne Barnard, Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times, for being reflexively pro-opposition in her reporting on the Syrian civil war. Most of the time reading her dispatches feels as if one is reading reports vetted at Langley. But this morning Ms. Barnard deserves praise. Her story, written along with Hwaida Saad, "Assault on Christian Town in Syria Adds to Fears Over Rebels," is devastating to the rebel cause. Fighters, the Nusra Front in the vanguard, took control of the town of Maaloula:

Most of the town’s residents have fled, and Maaloula, one of the last places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken by Christians and some Muslims, has become a one-word argument against Western support for the rebels — at the worst possible time for Mr. Obama and the opponents of Mr. Assad. 

Syrian-Americans lobbying against the proposed American missile strike flooded Congressional message boards with appeals for Maaloula. A common refrain was that Mr. Obama was throwing Syria’s Christians “to the lions.”

**** 

The situation in Maaloula underscores the core problems that bedevil the movement against Mr. Assad: the opposition, rooted in Syria’s Sunni majority, has failed to win over enough Christians, who make up 8 percent to 10 percent of the population, or other religious minorities. More than 450,000 Christians have fled their homes, church leaders say, during more than two years of war. 

On the battlefield, well-armed radical Islamist groups, including foreign fighters, show little inclination to coordinate with local battalions, and sectarian killings and references to non-Muslims as infidels further intimidate Christians. In Maaloula, according to fighters, the rebel attack was led by members of the Nusra Front, a group with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq, even after local fighters affiliated with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army tried and failed to dissuade them. 

Last week, as the battle began, opponents of American military action in Syria circulated a recent video of a Syrian Christian woman accosting Senator John McCain, a proponent of military action, accusing him of abandoning Christians. “I could trace my family’s name to the Bible,” she said. “We refuse to be forced to leave.”

The fact that jihadists lead the rebel war effort is a huge barrier for the Obama administration and helps explain why, in addition to war weariness on this anniversary of 9/11, the American public, though it blames the Assad regime for the Ghouta gassing, overwhelming refuses to support a military assault on Syria. People know that such an attack would benefit the very forces we have been at war with since 2001.

No, the elites misread the gullibility of the populace on this issue. Obama has requested a delay in Congressional consideration of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) while Kerry and Lavrov attempt to hammer out an agreement on the Russia-sponsored proposal for Syria to give up its stockpile of chemical munitions.

Based on the Syrian reaction -- both opposition and pro-government -- one would have to conclude that events since Monday when Kerry made his impromptu comment about a possible path to peace have benefited the anti-war forces. This from another article written by Anne Barnard, "In Shift, Syrian Official Admits Government Has Chemical Arms":

Abu al-Haytham, the commander of a rebel group in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, said he had redeployed fighters to attack government bases after the expected American strike, but was now forced to revise those plan because the strike might never happen. 

He said he believed that under any deal, the government would secretly retain some chemical weapons stocks, continue using them and blame rebels for the attacks.

“We will continue the battle — it’s either death or life, no other choice,” he said. “Bashar will feel stronger now — why not, since all his fears have gone?” 

Supporters of the government cast Russia in a heroic light. 

“Obama is a coward,” said Shifa, 29, a humanitarian worker from Jaramana, a government-held suburb near Damascus. “He didn’t have enough support in the first place to do the strike, and now he just feels relieved.” 

She said that Russian officials had saved Mr. Obama by proposing the weapons deal in response to an off-the-cuff suggestion on Monday by John Kerry, the American secretary of state, that Mr. Assad could avoid the strikes by giving up his weapons. 

“The Russians are great and very smart,” she said.

Obama's speech last night, which I didn't bother to watch, deciding instead to spend my time on an evening run in the late summer sun, will persuade no one to back the AUMF who didn't already do so; rather, it was a way for Obama to tactfully toss in the towel.

In all the hubbub of the last couple of days -- the AUMF apparently headed to defeat in both chambers of Congress; anti-war public opinion triumphant; then the Russian proposal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons and the Obama administrations confused, seesaw response -- the Human Rights Watch (HRW) glossy report "conclusively" blaming the Syrian government for the August 21 chemical weapons attack got buried. HRW at first glance makes a more compelling case than the U.S. Government. The HRW assessment is based on the type of rocket system used:

Syrian Government Forces Responsibility for the Attacks

The evidence examined by Human Rights Watch strongly suggests that the August 21 chemical weapon attacks on Eastern and Western Ghouta were carried out by government forces. Our basis for this finding is: 

• The large-scale nature of the attacks, involving at least a dozen surface-to-surface rockets affecting two different neighborhoods in Damascus countryside situated 16 kilometers apart, and surrounded by major Syrian government military positions.

• One of the types of rockets used in the attack, the 330mm rocket system – likely Syrian produced, which appear to be have been used in a number of alleged chemical weapon attacks, has been filmed in at least two instances in the hands of government forces. The second type of rocket, the Soviet-produced 140mm rocket, which can carry Sarin, is listed as a weapon known to be in Syrian government weapon stocks. Both rockets have never been reported to be in the possession of the opposition. Nor is there any footage or other evidence that the armed opposition has the vehicle-mounted launchers needed to fire these rockets.

• The August 21 attacks were a sophisticated military attack, requiring large amounts of nerve agent (each 330mm warhead is estimated to contain between 50 and 60 liters of agent), specialized procedures to load the warheads with the nerve agent, and specialized launchers to launch the rockets.

It is still a circumstantial case -- the kind of munitions most likely used to disperse the gas have never been seen in the possession of the rebels while they have been seen being used by the government. One question. Weren't the initial reports -- by Anne Barnard, in fact -- of the chemical weapons attack of August 21, didn't they say that the delivery system was low-tech tube rockets?