More of today's world than most people realize was shaped ten years ago when the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad challenged the conscious of the world by murdering more than 1400 Syrians, including hundreds of children, with the deadly nerve agent sarin. Much of what has happened since, has happened because of what he was allowed to get away with then.
That being the case, this would seem to be a good time to review my extensive contemporary writings on the subject:
Eleven years ago yesterday, US President Barack Obama made the famous "red-line" threat that he was to renege upon ten years ago. Within hours of his "threat," I wrote this:
08/20/2012 Obama "green lights" Assad's slaughter in SyriaIn our culture a "green light" tells you when it is safe to do something, and while it can't be said that what Assad is doing has Obama's approval, he would prefer that he resigns, it can at the very least be said that he has Obama's acquiescence.originally published on the Daily Kos, as was what followed:
08/23/2012 Assad's Redline and Obama's Greenlight! In that, I wrote:
My Monday diary, UPDATED: #Obama "green lights" #Assad's slaughter in #Syria, has been roundly condemned among Kossacks here, earning it an unprecedented 31 donuts.
However, it has been much appreciated by others much closer to the struggle and shared, liked or tweeted more than 200 times and the idea is finding resonance among Syrian activists as exampled by the articles below...
I also promised this exhaustive original research, which I published three weeks later:
09/14/2012 Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad
This history of the relationship between the Obama administration and the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been done as an investigative partnership organised by WikiLeaks. I have been privileged to have access not only to the usual open source medias but also to three generally "closed source" databases highly relevant to my search, thanks to Wikileaks.
On the day of the attack, I published these:
After the top US General, Martin Dempsey, told US Representative Eliot Engel on Monday that the Barack Obama administration opposes intervening militarily in Syria, the Assad regime today slaughtered over a thirteen-hundred Syrians with a chemical weapons attack, most of them women and children.
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| A mother in Damascus, found her child among a row of dead children | 21 Aug 2013 |
A few late night thoughts.Followed in quick succession by these:
Clearly these latest chemical attacks are the most terrible the Syrian people have witnessed. But there is something else about them. Something about the timing. They come almost a year to the day of Obama's famous "red-line" proclamation, almost as if Assad was mocking him.
There is something else. Something much darker.
I wrote Assad's New Strategy: Nothing Makes People Flee Like Murdering Their Children three weeks ago and it is terrible but it is true.
There is something else I realized this evening, as I posted the pictures of the dead and dying children: A chemical attack disproportionately affects children, it has a definite bias in favor of killing them - and Assad knows this!
I am reprinting an AntiWar.com blog post in full because I think this one should haunt them forever:08/29/2013 Obama's Dilemma and Assad's Opportunity
Obama's current dilemma is of his own making. He set it up almost precisely a year ago when he stumbled into the White House Press room and warned Assad not to cross his red-line. Obama has had a long working relationship with Assad and has never supported regime change in Syria but for political reasons he has been forced to feign support for the democratic struggle and opposition to Assad's use of military power to suppress his people.
Those like Amy Goodman and her guest yesterday on Democracy Now, Phyllis Bennis, try to obscure who is slaughtering Syrians by blowing smoke around this latest chemical attack, should consider that they are defending a mass murderer who has killed tens of thousands with conventional weapons and is actively killing children even as they mount a defense of him.08/30/2013 Obama Denied Gas Masks to Assad's Victims
Knowing that Assad is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Syrians and laying waste to some of the oldest cities on Earth, it saddens me greatly to see members of the US peace movement marching under the banner of this dictator, as was the case yesterday:
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| "Peace activists" marched with the pro-Assad reactionaries |
Racan Alhoch: It comes as no surprise to me that the proponents of ‘Hands off Syria’ have been keeping their hands off Syria for almost three years now.08/31/2013 Win-Win for Assad as Obama Response to CW Put on Hold
Is there any thing else Barack Obama could do to make things better for his good buddy Bashar al-Assad?
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| My display on Venice Beach Ocean Front Walk |
09/01/2013 Anti-War in Form, Pro-War in Essence
G. Sabra Jr.: "No war with Syria" is something a progressive like Phyllis Bennis and a reactionary like Rand Paul -- who wishes Bennis didn't have abortion rights, the right to vote, or enjoy affirmative action -- can get together on.09/02/2013 How Obama Helped Assad Kill with Poison Gas in Syria
The United States has an excess supply of gas masks left over from the Iraq War filling up warehouses all over the region and yet Obama turned down persistent requests for them from the people Assad was killing even after he started killing them with gas.
09/07/2013 My dare to Ray McGovern & VIPS on Syria CW attackStill there have been strong currents on the Left who claim that they are clueless about who could be behind this genocidal attack. They dismiss the prima facie evidence as they dismiss the pictures of dead children. They talk like lawyers for Assad, demanding he be given the benefit of the doubt, no matter his other crimes. They counsel nothing should be done until all are satisfied by indisputable proof. They wonder "Why the rush?" They are not very concerned with preventing future attacks.There is another strong current on the Left that is striving to blame the victims. They are trying desperately to exonerate the Assad regime and come up with some theory on how Assad's opposition, the "rebels" are behind all of the chemical attacks, including this most recent one,..
09/08/2013 Why would Assad use CW with UN Inspectors in Syria?[Y]ou absolve the Assad Regime of responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks that took place in the Damascus area on 21 August without ever referencing the vast amount of carnage caused by aircraft, Scud missiles and heavy artillery that the Assad regime is solely responsible for.That alone, makes your chemical weapons memo a depraved defense of a mass murderer!
After the attack, the UN investigators weren't allowed to go anywhere near Ghouta. They couldn't even leave their hotel without Syrian government permission and their Syrian government minders. This is the key fact that undermines the claim that Assad wouldn't do it because the UN investigator were in town. What real difference did it make? They could have been on the other side of town or the other side of the planet; it would have made no difference since it would be four days before they were allowed to access the chemical weapons attack sites in Ghouta.
09/08/2013 Dr. Zaher Sahloul on the CW Attacks in Syria
1. The regime should have held a press conference next day blaming the attack on the rebels, the terrorists, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as it has done after Khan Alassal CWA attack in Aleppo in April 2013. This is a great chance for the regime to discredit the rebels once and for all. Instead the regime denied the attack completely as if it did not happen for the first 3 days.09/09/2013 Witness to CW Attack: When Paradise turned to Hell.
This was written by Luna Watfa and published anonymously before she was arrested and tortured by Assad's thugs for photographing the children he murdered with sarin, and transmitting those pictures to media Assad didn't control:
Eastern Ghouta became today a symbol of death for the whole world to see. It has become a living hell in which souls die silently, along with all the details of a previous life, humans, trees, and stones.09/09/2013 Why did Assad Regime first Deny CW Attack if Blameless?
Eastern Ghouta woke up on 13 / Shawal / 1434, corresponding to August 21/2013 because of the sound of rockets fired from the brigade 155. The 12 rockets fell in Zamalka and Ain Tarma around two-thirty in the morning (2:30 A.M). These towns have high population density and they are far from the military front-line. Most people were asleep and they awoke to an enormous tragedy, people fell dead and those who were asleep, did not ever wake up. The scene was very painful.
In the immediate aftermath of the chemical attack, the Syrian government didn't act like an injured party. It acted like a guilty party. It hoped that it could cover up the chemical attack completely. Rather that act to rescue the injured and preserve the evidence for the UN investigators, it denied the investigator access for four days while it bombarded the area, destroying evidence and killing witnesses.09/11/2013 Secret Intel Source of Ray McGovern & VIPS Revealed!
So it would appear that the source of VIPS intelligence is not active CIA case officers speaking to old colleges like Ray McGovern, Philip Giraldi, Larry Johnson and Ann Wright on the q-t, it is Yossef Bodansky writing for the pro-Assad, pro-Qaddafi, pro-Russian website Global Research.
The use of chlorine clearly sets up this attack to be blamed on the opposition and the silence on this attack by the mainstream media and the Obama administration (In the hope that they could just sweep this inconvenient attack under the carpet, so to speak?) now allows the Assad regime and friends to "reveal" this attack in a manner of their choosing. Obama is being so played on this!09/16/2013 UN hints Assad used Russian rockets in sarin gas attack
The United Nations has this day released a report on its investigation into the attack that took place in the Damascus suburbs in Syria on 21 August 2013. The investigation found that sarin gas rockets were used to kill hundreds while they slept. While the report was not allowed to name the perpetrator, all the evidence points to the Assad Regime. Furthermore, it would appear that the source of some of the rockets used in the chemical attack is the very country that is expected to oversee Assad disarmament of chemical weapons, Russia!
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| Graphic from UN Report |
Confirming what I wrote a year ago in Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad, the Obama Administration is now joining with Russia and China in blocking the International Criminal Court prosecution of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for war crimes.09/25/2013 Where Robert Fisk's defense of Assad falls down
When that story could no longer cut the09/26/2013 More on ex-journalist Robert Fisk's defense of Assadmustardsarin, the Russians bought into the Mint Press story about how rebels in a tunnel bungled a bottle of gas given them by Saudi Prince Bandar and caused all the deaths, still without rockets. Now that story has been completely discredited. So finally they admit that Russian rockets were involved, just as I wrote on the day the UN report came out.
When Robert Fisk advances this thesis, he does it with a flourish worthy of an ex-journalist turned propagandist and he does it in the name of unnamed UN employees...
It seems that the French, which did their own investigation of the chemical attack in Damascus, [ see this and this in English, and official report in French here ], and drew their own conclusions, were already warming up jets for a strike against Assad's missile batteries and command centres of the 4th Armoured Division in charge of chemical weapons, when US President Barack Obama made them call it off.10/07/2013 The Courage of Ghouta in a Craven World
The bombardment of the rebellious communities of East and West Ghouta continues today just it did for months before the sarin gas attack of 21 August brought these neighbourhoods to the attention of the world. Now, in return for a promise to give up his chemical weapons, Assad is being welcomed in from the cold. Meanwhile, he has tightened his siege of those communities to the point were he has cut off all food and medical supplies, electricity and telephone, and a craven world looks the other way as he is being allowed to starve to death the children who survived his poison gas attack.
One day people will rue the day that poison gas was re-introduced into class warfare and the antiwar movement sat on its hands.10/18/2013 Disillusion in Syria’s Armed Opposition
Poison gas is the perfect ultimate weapon for the bourgeois to use against the proletariat. That is why Assad is using it now.
Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, Syrian American Council: As top politicians representing the Syrian opposition pushed their case with world leaders on the sidelines of the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, a dozen rebel brigades inside Syria, fed up with waiting for elusive Western support, issued a joint statement rejecting their political leaders and called on both military and civilian groups in Syria to “consolidate under an Islamic framework ... with Sharia as the main source of legislation.”11/24/2013 How Obama has supported Assad's gas murder always
The facts and history described in this article reveals a US government that had come to accept the routine "tactical" use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against his opposition, and indirectly supported their effective use both by denial of basic protective devices to those being gassed and by a public denial of the fact that they were being gassed. This story reveals a damning history of US government complicity with the Assad Regime's gas murder and its biggest flaw is that it tries to excuse this trail of evidence as "missteps" and "miscalculations."The struggles against the Assad apologists for his sarin murders continues to this day:
12/09/2013 Whose Seymour Hersh?
[Hersh] agrees with Assad that the only real choice for Syria's future is between the jihadists and his regime, and given those choices, he favors the Assad Regime.01/28/2014 Ex-journalist Robert Fisk: One is reminded of Goebbels
It is important to understand that this is where Seymour Hersh is coming from in evaluating Whose sarin?, because, for all of Seymour Hersh's historic accomplishments, it is little more than another poorly written and poorly sourced piece designed to muddy the waters as to who is responsible for the sarin gas attack in Ghouta on 21 August this year.
Joseph Goebbels was Adolph Hitler's chief propagandist, and while Assad is no Hitler and Fisk is no Goebbels, it should be remembered that Goebbels was a journalist who fashioned himself a left-winger before he started shilling for a fascist dictator.03/09/2014 UN: Assad sarin used in attacks | The Left's response?
Flying under the headlines this week, while all eyes are focused on the clouds gathering over Ukraine, the United Nations published the 7th report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. This report was published on 5 March 2014 although it is dated 12 February 2014. This report goes further than the UN has ever gone before in placing the blame for the use of poison gas in Syria squarely on the Assad Regime.
Almost a decade before Sy Hersh attempted to exonerate Putin for any responsibility for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sabotage, he busied himself attempting to exonerate Assad for the sarin murders. I took him on with a vengeance!
Repetition is at the heart of the Assad-Putin propaganda method, what might also be called the RT method. It is widely supported by the "non-(NATO) interventionist" Left. You make up a lie and you keep repeating it. Lack of proof is not an obstacle, just keep repeating it. Anonymous sources won't impeach its credibility as long as you keep repeating it. Even after it has clearly been disproved, you pay that no never mind and you keep repeating it.04/10/2014 Seymour Hersh's chemical weapons fetish
The purpose of this essay is not to add more proofs of Assad's responsibility for the poison gas attacks, but put that in a larger context and to point out that most of those killed in the Syrian conflict have been killed with conventional weapons and the vast majority of those have been killed by the Assad regime, so no matter how you slice it, Hersh et al are defending a mass murderer while ignoring all those murders by non-chemical means.
His piece became like a call to action for Assad supporters everywhere to renew the claims that Assad didn't do it, repeat all the Fall conspiracy theories, and try to build unity among the conflicting versions. For example, Mint Press came out in support of Hersh, in spite of the fact that they had been supporting a version of how the rebels gassed themselves that involved untrained rebels in a tunnel bungling a big tank of sarin given to them by Saudi Prince Bandar. Hersh's current version has the Turks ramroding al Nursa, and using missiles, no Bandar, no tank, no tunnel. But nevermind about that, these Assad supporters are flexible, the main point is that Assad didn't do it and the rebels did. That is why all those that had formerly promoted a version that had the CIA and/or Qatar masterminding the chemical attacks were as quick as Mint Press to jump on the Hersh campaign bus.05/10/2014 The appeasement of Putin began in Syria
My hands-down favorite gangster movie is The Godfather and when we speak of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin we are definitely in gangster territory. There is a famous scene when Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather, realizes who his real nemesis is: “Tattaglia is a pimp. He never could have outfought Santino. But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along.”11/16/2015 The Imperial Left's sarin song: still "Regime Change" after all these years!
One day soon Obama will come to realize that Assad is a pimp and it has been Putin all along.
The revolution was less than two weeks old, 27 March 2011 when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked on Face the Nation, "Can we expect the United States to enter the conflict in the way we have entered the conflict in Libya?" Her answer was "No. Each of these situations is unique, Bob." The headline that went out the next day was: Clinton: No attack on Syria.12/14/2015 From Luna Watfa: Death accompanies you on every step This was written after she was released from Assad's custody, and was making her way to Germany:
To die in Syria is very likely. However, at least you have a fighting chance on this horror trip. Therefore, you take that chance and put the most valuable thing on the line that you have: yourself, in the hope to being able to start a new life.12/15/2015 Truth Revealed: 2013 East Ghouta sarin attack was done by aliens!
Anyone who's ever seen Invasion on the Body Snatchers knows what's going on here.12/24/2015 From Luna Watfa: "Do not stop, keep going ... keep moving!"
It took me two weeks to reach Germany. I thought the waiting and suffering would now have an end - but I was wrong.01/05/2016 Luna Watfa: Enemy of Syrian State admitted sarin photos were fakes!
Most in the opposition couldn't understand why Obama would renege on his promise and fail to strike Assad. Luna's SNC contact was so confident that the US was about to act that he told Luna that no more photographs would be required. When the US and other world powers failed to act after Assad's big sarin attack, it had a devastating impact on the morale of his opposition. Beyond Assad, those extremists that had long warned against western treachery were the biggest beneficiaries.
Luna was finally released 25 February 2015 from the women's prison in Adra after more than a year in the regime's custody. She then reunited with her husband Basel in Turkey and they have since made their way to Germany. Luna is still looking forward to being reunited with her children - Sara, 13 and Obada, 16.02/01/2016 From Luna Watfa: Under The Mercy of Potentials 2
After all this, Patrick McCann now thinks that Assad is responsible for the sarin murders. He wrote me, 11 November 2015:Despite being unsure of the veracity of those who report it (e.g. John Kerry), I believe that Assad may very well be guilty.He still doesn't understand that is was not John Kerry but Luna Watfa that he was calling a liar, and it was Luna Watfa that paid the price.
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Brothers and sisters from Syria, Aleppo. Happily waiting at Budapest train station to move towards Austria the day when Germany closed its borders at night. Hungary. 13/9/2015. |
04/29/2016 Robert F. Kennedy's Jr. Andromeda Strain
He seems to equate Arab with Islamic which is odd since the Arab that murdered his father, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was a Palestinian Christian.07/19/2016 In spite of UN deal Assad continues to make & use chemical weapons
Obama never planned to carry out his red-line threat, and so this Left opposition was helpful. Instead he supported a Russian program that required Assad to give up all the CW weapons and production facilities he was willing to admit to having.09/29/2016 Chemical Weapons attacks expand beyond Syria
When most of the Left supported US President Barack Obama's decision to renege on his promise to take military action if Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his people, others warned that this acceptance of the re-introduction of the formerly banned weapons against mass rebellion would be followed by a wider use and a darker future. Now Amnesty International is reporting that Sudanese dictator, Omar al-Bashir, has been using chemical weapons for the first time in the Darfur conflict.04/05/2017 Noam Chomsky regurgitates 2012 Putin propaganda to excuse latest sarin murders
He seems to hold the US responsible for all acts of violence committed by the Assad regime in the past four years because, according to the Russians, it miss an opportunity to get Assad out in 2012:04/16/2017 Why would Assad use sarin in Syria now?
Ajamu Baraka thought Hillary Clinton much more dangerous than Donald Trump. Last year he was the Green Party vice presidential candidate and together with his running mate, Jill Stein, they diverted enough progressive votes to put Trump in the White House, but in 2013 he was part of the Assad didn't do it chorus,...
"Sincerely yours?" Really? Who signs a scientific paper about a chemical weapons attack "Sincerely yours?" The answer is Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when he is trying to use the mantles of science and position to pull the wool over our eyes.04/28/2017 Please Re-Tweet as Ted Postol beats a hasty retreat
Poor Postol. He wants so badly to please his Syrian Sister, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't seen to get it right. First he rushes to press with his own theory of how Assad didn't do it, only to discover his theory blows their alibi. So he ditches his theory to back their alibi, and in his zeal to find new proofs for them, ends up calling them out for lying again.04/30/2017 Dr. Postol's "correction" shows he still needs Reading Comprehension 101
Doctor Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a "correction" yesterday. This correction didn't explain the apparent contradiction between his earlier theory that jihadist terrorists set off a chemical pipe-bomb in the street and his current support for claims by the Russians and the regime that they bombed a terrorist arms depot that stored chemical weapons.
Human Right Watch published this May Day a four minute video that graphically documents what I have feared most would result from the world's indifference to the suffering of the Syrian people. That has been the normalization of the use of chemical weapons against rebellious civilian populations. The HRW reports how the Assad regime has regularized the use of chemical weapons in the past six months while the world paid it no never mind. Only with the 92 sarin murders at Khan Sheikhoun has the matter made the news again, and this has again brought out Assad's defenders to blame the victims and "question the evidence." In the cases of attacks that don't make the news they don't question the evidence because they don't have to be bothered.05/03/2017 Reading Comprehension 101 for MIT Professor Dr. Ted Postol
I know you faced a certain amount of ridicule along these lines because in critiquing the French Report, you "missed" that when they referred to the sarin attack that occurred on 29 April 2013 in Saraqib, they were talking about a different attack than the one that occurred in Khan Sheikhoun last month. So I'd like to begin with some words of encouragement. When last you wrote and made a "correction" to that original critique of the French report, you said you thought that report focused on the sarin attack of 29 August 2013, and "does not report on the details of the attack on April 4." With this new paper from you, I see that you have found those details. This shows that you are making progress already!
05/12/2017 Dr. Ted Postol misreads the HRW Report on Khan SheikhounThere are forces, some on the Right and some on the Left, that speak out on questions related to Syria only when the slaughter that has been raging for the past five years rises to a level that floods it into the mainstream media. Then they jump into action to defend those that have unquestionably been responsible for the overwhelming proportion of murders in Syria by arguing that it can't be proven that these particular murders were committed by regime forces. These people are what I callHOLOCAUST ENABLERS.
Doctor Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes these local residents don't know what they are talking about, or worst, they are part of a deep state conspiracy that involves obviously the White House, as usual, the French, a couple of guys in England, and now apparently also Human Rights Watch. In spite of those odds, his Syrian Sister can rest assured that Dr. Ted is as yet undaunted in his defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.06/27/2017 Putin: More chemical attacks being prepared in Syria
When this headline appeared in Russian media just days after the sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun killed over a hundred civilians it got almost no notice in the United States.07/04/2017 Sy Hersh's incredible secret source
Sy Hersh's latest defense of Assad, Trump's Red Line, published by Welt, 25 June 2017, makes the bold claim that we are the victims of fake news and there really were no victims of a sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun in April. His claim has been lauded and repeated by a number of commenters, including Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, who like Hersh himself, are people I use to admire.
An important post by Brian Whitaker, Former Middle East editor of The Guardian, 1 July 2017. Republished from his website www.al-bab.com.07/07/2017 Seymour Hersh exposes Russian & Syrian lies about sarin attack
Dr. Ted said that jihadist terrorists set off a sarin pipe bomb in the middle of the street. He said they staged it as a "false flag" attack while a Syrian war plane was overhead, however he did agree with just about every other investigation, including now the OPCW, on one important point - that there was a chemical attack. Hersh denies even this! Postol said in his initial report:The only indisputable facts stated in the White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve agent occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria on that morning.Now Hersh and his supporters dispute what even Ted Postol found indisputable! We've come a long way in two months. What's the saying?: "Like it never even happened!"
If Hersh is right about the original target and reason for hitting it, and he is also speaking truth when he says both the Russians and Syrians made sure this was well known my all players in the region, why have they never made these claims and in fact made quite contradictory claims?05/31/2019 Lies, damned lies, and engineering sub-team reports
Why is this story a Hersh exclusive? It's because he is feeding us the whole cloth.
Can we finally put to rest any reverence for Seymour Hersh's Pulitzer?
Lately, many on the “anti-imperialist” Left have been slaphappy about a “leaked” OPCW engineering sub-team report they think exonerates Bashar al-Assad of the chlorine mass murder that took place in Douma, Syria, 7 April 2018. Like the Trump cabal after Attorney General William Barr said that Robert Mueller found no obstruction, their delight will soon fade when it is shown that the 15-page note to the OPCW is about as valuable as Barr's 4-page “summary” of the Mueller report. I will show why all the theatrics surrounding this 15-page note is much ado about nothing, but first I must set the stage by going into a little history.
The way they talked about this one attack, you should be forgiven for not knowing this was just one of more than 300 chemical attacks in Syria since 2012. Maté, says dozens were killed, so you should be forgive for not knowing that 70 were killed, and over 500 were injured. They made no mention of the current carnage Assad and his Russian patron are causing in Idlib today, even as Grayzone seeks to exonerate them for the war crimes they committed a year ago.
That international ban has largely held, with a few notable exceptions, for more than 85 years. However, now it would seem that chemical weapons are on something of a comeback. This started in 2012 in Syria, where there have been more than 300 reported chemical attacks linked to the Assad regime. But CW hasn't been just for Syria anymore. Since 2012, CW attacks have also been reported in Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Iraq, the UK, and Sudan.This is a worrying trend that should concern us all.
United States Attorney General William Barr has recently shown us how much we should trust an “Executive Summary” while we are being denied the full report. No one should continue to give this so-called "Executive Summary" a minutes attention as long as the document being summarized is missing and the author is unavailable to validate his work.
Before Ukraine, there was Syria—Hilary has passed.
Clay Claiborne
20 August 2023
