Dr. Ted Postol misreads the HRW Report on Khan Sheikhoun

On the heels of the French Report on the sarin massacre at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2016, Human Rights Watch came out with their own report on May Day, Death by Chemicals: The Syrian Government’s Widespread and Systematic Use of Chemical Weapons. While the HRW report agrees with the basic findings of the White House Report, the French Report, and Syrians on the ground at Khan Sheikhoun, that in the early morning hours of 4 April 2016, a single Syrian air force Su-22 bomber dropped a chemical bomb in a civilian area and a lot of people died, it went further because it documented a pattern of chemical weapons use by the regime that involved at least four chemical attacks in the last six months.

The HRW Report does go into detail about the Khan Sheikhoun attack, and provides some important new information. In summary it says:

Human Rights Watch interviewed 60 people with first-hand knowledge of the chemical attacks and their immediate aftermath, and reviewed dozens of photos and videos of impact sites and victims that were posted online and provided directly by local residents, but was unable to conduct ground investigations of the attack sites.

Information from local residents in Khan Sheikhoun indicates that a warplane flew over the town twice around 6:45 a.m. on April 4, 2017. One resident said he saw the plane drop a bomb near the town’s central bakery in the northern neighborhood during the first fly-over. Several people, including the person who saw the bomb falling, said they heard no explosion but saw smoke and dust rising from the area, consistent with the relatively small explosive charge in a chemical bomb. Several people also confirmed that they saw people injured or heard reports of injuries immediately after the first fly-over. A few minutes later, they said, a warplane dropped three or four high-explosive bombs on the town.

Human Rights Watch identified 92 people, including 30 children, whom local residents and activists said died due to chemical exposure from this attack. Medical personnel said the attack injured hundreds more.

Human Rights Watch reviewed dozens of photos and videos provided by residents of a crater from the impact of the first bomb. Local residents believed this site was the source of the chemical exposure because those who died lived nearby and people who came near it, including first responders, exhibited the strongest symptoms of chemical exposure. One of the first photos of the crater, taken by first responders, shows what appears to be liquid on the asphalt. That would be consistent with the use of a bomb containing sarin, which is in liquid form at room temperature.

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. He maintains staunchly that Assad wouldn't hurt a fly, at least not with chemicals, so fresh on the heels of his attack on the French Report, which I critiqued here, he has penned a new attack on the HRW report dated 8 May 2017 and titled The HRW Evidence Disaffirms Its Own Conclusions in Its Report of May 1, 2017

In the best journalistic and humanistic traditions, HRW takes upon itself the task of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Now, Dr. Ted can't say that, because when he writes about human rights atrocities it is to comfort the afflicter. He earlier made a name for himself for his pseudo-scientific defense of Assad in the case of the 21 August 2013 sarin murders. In the present case, he is attempting to get Assad off the hook for the sarin murders of 4 April 2017. I believe this is his sixth attempt. There were those first three attacks on the easiest target, the White House Report, the first pdf, the addendum, and the Truthdig article, all that claimed the evidence pointed to terrorists setting off a sarin pipe bomb in the street, and not an air strike. Then there was the second Truthdig article that said the Russians might be right about bombing a terrorists arms depot that stored chemical weapons. Then there was the attack on the French Report, and now this attack on the HRW Report. That makes six. If we were to include the Scott Horton show in which Postol attacks Bellingcat, Elliot Higgins, and Dan Kaszeta, that would make seven.

In examining Dr. Postol's critique in some of these earlier works, I noted that they seem to come from issues the good doctor has with reading comprehension. As we shall see, that is also at the heart of his problem with the HRW report. His reading error with the HRW Report is similar to the one he made with the French Report. In that case he read "a sign of" as meaning "a unique indicator," and then he used his confusion to "prove" the French Report didn't prove what he thought it said. With the HRW Report he misreads it as saying a certain model of Soviet era weapon was definitely used, and then bases his critique on that, whereas it only referenced it as an example, and not the weapon that was definitely used to the exclusion of all others, that is Postol's mis-reading.

In his critique, Dr. Ted speaks as though the HRW Report had identified the specific weapon used [my emphasis]:

The KhAB-250 and KhAB-500 airdropped munitions identified by HRW are designed to dispense sarin by bursting at low altitude in the air, creating an aerosol cloud of nerve agent-droplets that are carried downwind as they fall from the point of the airburst (see diagrams and photos on page 5 of 13 pages). A properly functioning “250” or “500” munition would not create the crater that is the focus of the HRW analytical conclusion that there is evidence that this munition was used

.@hrw Here we have Postol incorrectly identifying OFAB 250-270s as FAB-250s, which is like Baby's First Weapon ID 2/? pic.twitter.com/SE1XgVHjtj

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) May 9, 2017

.@hrw Postol also appears to think FAB-250s and FAB-500s are cluster bombs, which they are most certainly not 3/? pic.twitter.com/qAVzgO89IZ

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) May 9, 2017

.@hrw I suspect Postol got RBKs and OFABs mixed up, and thought OFABs are called FABs. Real amateur hour stuff 4/4

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) May 9, 2017

In addition his misreading of the weapons type, his whole critique discounts any of the eye-witness reports or sarin tests done by multiple agencies. It is almost entirely based on his view that the HRW report is talking about this weapon. But does the HRW Report say that? [again my emphasis]:

The photos and videos of the crater show two remnants from the chemical weapon used: a twisted thin metal fragment with green paint and a smaller circular metal object. Green coloring is widely used on factory-produced weapons to signify that they are chemical weapons. The KhAB-250, for example, one of two Soviet-produced bombs specifically designed to deploy sarin from a warplane, has two green bands. The circular object seen in photos of the crater appears similar to the cap covering the filling hole on the KhAB-250.

These remnants, combined with witness observations, the victims’ symptoms, and the identification of sarin as the chemical used in the attack by the French[1] and Turkish[2] governments and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,[3] suggest that the Syrian warplane dropped a factory-made sarin bomb. According to open source material, the only Soviet-produced bombs designed specifically to deliver sarin are the KhAB-250 bomb, and its bigger version, the KhAB-500.

You will notice that HRW never says that a KhAB-250 or KhAB-500 was dropped on Khan Sheikhoun. They did use those for purpose of comparison, "similar" - their word, because both have the green markings for chemical weapons, but not the same, because the green markings are different. They definitely say that the available evidence "suggest that the Syrian warplane dropped a factory-made sarin bomb," and they do point to KhAB-250 and KhAB-500 as publicly known examples of such weapons from this very secret world. Of course we have no way of knowing what variants of these old designs, or even completely new designs for "a factory-made sarin bomb," the Assad regime may have come up with. The North Vietnamese became famous for re-engineering the Soviet and Chinese anti-aircraft rockets to get more range out of them than anyone thought possible. That is something else Postol should consider when he is promoting his 2km limit as the reason Assad couldn't possibly have done the people in Ghouta with sarin in 2013. 

Reading comprehension is thus the core problem with Postol's critique of the HRW report. He says:

The HRW claim that their analysis shows that this “standard” Russian munition was the source of the sarin release is therefore unsupported by the observed evidence they put forward. Put in other words, the HRW report does not contain any basic forensic evidence to support its claim that a standard Russian munition was the source of a sarin release at the crater.

But the HRW Report does not claim that "a standard Russian munition" was used. It only cites those as examples. The HRW report did conclude "a factory-made sarin bomb," was used. Since the focus of Postol's critique is that HRW never proved claims it never made, all his charts and diagrams miss the point. He could have better spent his time improving his reading skills.

There is one place where he tries to clean up a bent position that I must address, however. In a number of his previous defense briefs on the Khan Sheikhoun sarin massacre, Dr. Postol referenced a video that show workers taking samples from the crater some 30 hrs. after the attack, and said that if it was really sarin, they would be dead. A number of his critics, including me, pointed out that sarin was a low persistence nerve agent. It would be gone in 60 minutes or less. His obvious ignorance on this point must have been an embarrassment to him, so in this latest piece he tries to clean that up a bit. In this new piece he says:

Since the evaporation rate from the saturated soil would be slow relative to sarin deposited on the flat surrounding road surface, the area in and around the crater could have easily been highly toxic for 5 to 10 or more hours after the impact. During this period it would have not been possible for “White Hats” without hazmat protective equipment to dig inside the crater or linger in the immediate area around the crater, as observed in videos.

Since he had previously identified the videos as being taken 30 hrs. after the attack, there is little point in arguing his thesis that soil under the road surface could have "easily been highly toxic for 5 or 10 or more hours" to people that "linger in the immediate area." Although he had previously correctly identified the sample collectors in the video as being from the Idlib Health Directorate, now he calls them "White Hats." This smells like an attempt to get extra strokes out of the tar brush that has been used against a different group, the White Helmets. Denigrating anyone who comes to the aid of the victims is central to the work of the holocaust enabler.

While Postol demands exacting evidence that meets his high standards from those he is criticizing, he offers wild statements without anything like a shred of evidence as the premise for his conclusions. For example he says:

Given that there is substantial evidence that groups other than the Syrian government possess sarin precursors, indications of sarin poisoning do not alone indicate that the Syrian government was the source of the sarin, assuming the observed medical effects were from sarin.

Yes, assuming the French, the Turkish and the OPCW, weren't all conspiring together to "independently" find that samples tested positively for sarin, what proof is there that groups other than the Syrian government has sarin precursors beyond rubbing alcohol, or that even if in possession of all the necessary precursors, could formulate sarin? None is offered. Afterall, I can get plenty of coal but I can't make diamonds.

Postol offers this assertion about the widespread possession of sarin precursors, again without proof in this "Summary and Conclusions," and it is there that we find out what he really thinks. He starts out by acknowledging that whatever happened was a crime against humanity, and then immediately jumps into what I would call the "who didn't do it mode," in which you work to exonerate the most obvious killer. This is another thing that shows Postol and others of his ilk act like defense council for Assad rather than prosecutors for the people. If they were representing the people, and believed Assad didn't do it, they still should have pursued the "case of 2013" until the "real killer" was convicted or at least identified. That is how prosecutors prevent crimes from recurring. Defense counsels don't worry about that. After their guy gets off, they go home. Recurring crime is only their problem if their guy is being charged again.

This is why we are again hearing Postol et al speak out in Assad's defense. Bear in mind that Assad is most certainly a mass murderer many times over even if he can be acquitted in this particular case: 

There can be no doubt that using any form of murderous weapon, chemicals or otherwise, against innocent civilians and children constitute crimes against humanity.

It is also clear that there are multiple groups in Syria who have, or who have had access to the precursor chemicals needed to produce sarin. There is substantial evidence that the nerve agent attack of August 21, 2017 in Damascus might not have been executed by the Syrian government.

The future date of "August 21, 2017" is obviously a mistake, but it is Postol's mistake. Maybe Dr. Ted has problems with proofreading comprehension as well? He means 2013. Even after the United Nations said the sarin used in Damascus on 21 August 2013 came from "the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military," he is still arguing Assad's innocent. His thesis would mean that opposition groups possess sarin and have used it twice against their own civilians, in 2013 and now in 2017, but never once used it in battle against Assad's forces.

In the case of the 2013 attack, Assad and most of his supporters, including Postol, argued that the opposition had a motive for gassing its own people. They said that because Obama had made this "red-line" pledge to intervene militarily if CW was used; they faked this attack so that he would intervene. It wasn't a very good "motive" then. Now it is a terrible one, but that doesn't stop Dr. Ted from raising it:

Human Rights Watch should have considered the possibility that at least some of these attacks could be perpetrated by groups who are interested in manipulating the United States into taking military actions that would support their political and military objectives against the Syrian government.

Really? Most of those attacks were done by aircrafts and those groups don't have them. Does HRW have a duty to entertain Dr. Ted's fantasies? Because if that was a thin thread in 2013, it is a gossamer one in 2017. Why would anyone stage a false flag attack that killed less than a hundred in the hopes of getting Trump to intervene against Assad right after he has announced a new more pro-Assad US policy, when the sarin deaths of over a thousand didn't prompt Obama to enforce his own red-line four years ago?

The French Report actually had a section on "the presence of armed groups in Hama and of their capabilities," but Dr. Ted chose to ignore it. He said the French Report didn't have any "details" like this:

Neither do the French services assess that the theory of a staged attack or manipulation by the opposition is credible, particularly because of the massive influx in a very limited time towards hospitals in Syria and Turkey, and the simultaneous, massive uploading of videos showing symptoms of the use of neurotoxic agents. 

Postol accuses HRW of encouraging groups to continue murdering innocent civilians and children in pursuit of US military intervention:

If this is the case, Human Rights Watch could be inadvertently encouraging these groups to continue murdering innocent civilians and children in pursuit of this objective.

I appreciate his logic, because even if Assad were somehow innocent of one or more chemical attacks, he clearly is guilty of the majority of the carnage in Syria. So what should we call those who come out to defend Assad whenever his mass murders get media attention, but holocaust enablers?

The next paragraph gives us his bottom line on the Syrian conflict. There is no just and moral side. There is no people's side in Syria. They are all bad people committing atrocities. No reason to single out the Assad Regime:

It is not foreseeable that when multiple groups are all engaged in routine wartime atrocities that one of the groups will suddenly transform itself into a moral and just winner while all the others would surely continue their monstrous behavior.

Clearly, he knows nothing of the history of Syria, its people, or this revolution. One of the groups is still the millions of Syrians that started this upheaval in 2011 by demanding an end to the fascist 40+ year old Assad dictatorship, and refusing to take "no" for an answer. They are still refusing to take "no" for an answer. That is the reason Assad is dropping sarin bombs on them. Those that still argue, as they did in 2013, that "Assad has almost won," don't understand the fight, because after all this carnage, Assad has still not forced them to accept his "no" for an answer. They didn't have to suddenly transform themselves into a moral and just cause, they have been that all along. Dr. Postol just can't see that from his perch on the other side. He probably can't read these banners either, so let me simplify them for him:

The People Demand an End to the Regime!

Bonus Feature...
Scott Lucas on sarin gas attack disinformation

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Please Re-Tweet as Ted Postol beats a hasty retreat

Although I prefer to think of the Syrian Revolution as the Paris Commune of the 21st Century, I have also called the Syrian tragedy the first holocaust of the 21st century. I continue to hope that latter characterization remains a warning and an exaggeration, but in the spirit of that sad metaphor, I would like to say that Doctor Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is becoming one of the leading holocaust deniers of the 21 Century.

Many will say this label is unfairly awarded because what has so far happened in Syria has yet to reach holocaust proportions. That may be true. It may be more accurate to call Postol a holocaust enabler, because he is defending the mass murderers while they are committing the crime, and by doing this, he is helping them turn a string of atrocities into a holocaust.

As long as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was allowed to do his grisly work without much attention on the world stage Dr. Postol kept quiet. There were over a hundred thousand murdered before Assad used sarin in a big way in August of 2013. Then Ted Postol remerged as one of the chief investigators to argue that the Syrian regime wasn't responsible for the sarin murders of over 1400, including more than 300 children in Ghouta. He made a seemingly scientific argument that the regime could not have done it, and because of his MIT credentials, he quickly became the darling of the Assad didn't do it crowd.

Fast forward to 2017 and Assad is at it again with the sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun, 4 April, so Postol is at it again too. Actually, Assad has been at it all along. He'd killed roughly another three hundred thousand since Postol first came to his defense, and he has never stopped killing, including with chemical. But this is the first time since 2013 that Assad has killed big time with sarin, and gotten the world's attention for it. Now Assad needs Postol's special talents again, and he's there for him.

And Postol is a rather slippery fellow. He's hard to pin down.

When both the Russians and the Syrians were coming out with a story about how they bombed a terrorist weapons depot that stored chemical weapons, Postol concocted his own story about how he could prove the terrorist exploded a chemical weapons pipe bomb in the street. Between 11 April and 14 April, he published no less than three versions of this story. The last one in Truthdig. Now that so many holes have been punched in that theory that it can't even hold our attention, he has come back to Truthdig with a "new" theory, Russian Explanation of the Mass Poisoning in Syria Could Be True, 26 April 2017. What I find incredible is that he doesn't address the earlier theory, because the sub-title of this piece should be "My Previous Truth Could Be False." He begins:

I have been examining the possibility that the April 4 attack in which a number of Syrian civilians and animals were killed, apparently by some kind of poison, hit an ammunition dump as claimed by the Russians. Videos taken on the morning of the attack show explosive debris clouds from four targets that were hit and provide strong circumstantial evidence that this Russian explanation could be true.

So far we have heard only of civilians (and animals) being killed, and assuming that is true, we have to wonder why no armed militants were killed, if this was an arms depot or chemical weapons store. Wouldn't they have been guarding it? Postol doesn't address that, instead he shows us this panorama stitched together from an opposition video of the Khan Sheikhoun attack that shows the three explosions and one puff of smoke seen in the video in one shot.

Then he tells us:

One of the clouds is quite distinctly different from all the others. The stem of this debris cloud has a base area that is five or more times larger than the cloud-stem bases of the other bomb debris clouds.

So now he is interpreting smoke signals for us. This image is actually from the video I used in my blog post criticising Postol.



There are a couple of problems with his use of these images to defend Assad. The first is that most observers of the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun reported that the Su-22 dropped four ordinances, 3 conventional rockets and one chemical. So the more likely interpretation of the three plumes of smoke is that they represent the conventional bombs. You wouldn't expect to see a plume like that from the chemical weapon. Why one plume is larger than the others may well have to do with what it hit, but it certainly doesn't prove it hit an arms depot. Besides, the only two large buildings in the area have been inspected both by reporters, and before and after satellite photos, and it has been determined that they were not bombed. That much smaller puff of smoke you see in the lower right hand corner on the video above in its starting position, it doesn't make a plume, it doesn't even go as high as the minaret, and is whiter. You can see it in Postol's picture too. Maybe that is where he should be looking for the chemical attack.

The second problem is that this video was uploaded to YouTube at 7:59am local time, just after the attack really happened, but both the Russians and the Assad regime insist the Syrian jet didn't attack Khan Sheikhoun until much later, close to noon. So by accepting this video as a valid record of the strike, he is acknowledging both the Russians and Assad regime are, shall we say "mistaken," even when he is arguing that they may be telling the truth!

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.

Then he goes off the deep end to imply it was some sort of industrial accident. Maybe they died from burning plastic!

I also have looked up data on poisonous gases that could be generated by the combustion of plastics, and have inspected photographs of the dead and dying from the Bhopal, India, chemical accident of Dec. 2-3, 1984.

How pathetic. Truthdig should publish a retraction of his earlier article, and this one.

Also on Wednesday, France issued a report on the sarin attack in Syria that is extremely detailed and claims to prove, among other things, that the sarin used on Khan Sheikhoun has been used by Assad before. The Chemical Attack in Syria - National Evaluation presented by Jean-Marc Ayrault following the Defense Council Meeting (26 April 2017) is a must read for anyone who wants to know what happened. This report is based exclusively on French intelligence, and they have been spying on Syria longer than most:

In view of the horrific attack and Syria’s repeated violations of its commitments to stop using weapons banned by the international community, France has decided to share the information at its disposal with its partners – who were informed overnight – and the general public.

The conclusions published in the national assessment – which we will be making public today – are based on painstaking investigations and analyses by French intelligence.

Naturally this became the new enemy Ted Postol had to take on and he did this on Thursday, 27 April 2017 in a piece he posted on Sic Semper Tyrannis (A Committee of Correspondence). He writes:

Attached below are data derived from the French Intelligence Report published yesterday on April 26, 2017. A reading of the report instantaneously indicates that the French Intelligence Report of April 26, 2017 directly contradicts the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017. The discrepancies between these two reports essentially result in two completely different narratives alleging nerve agent attacks in Syria on April 11, 2017. The fact that these two intelligence reports allege totally different circumstances associated with the same alleged event raises very serious questions that need to be investigated and reported to the American public.

He is so confused in his haste to respond. He probably didn't take the time to read it twice before he added, with his empathise:

The French Report instead claims that there were at least three munitions dropped from helicopters in the town of Saraqib, more than 30 miles north of the alleged sarin release crater identified by the WHR.

The WHR claims that a fixed wing aircraft was the originator of the airdropped munition at the alleged dispersal site. The French Intelligence Report alleges that a helicopter was used to drop sarin loaded grenades at three different locations in Saraqib.

Both reports cannot simultaneously be true.

Actually they can. The French were talking about an attack on Saraqib that took place 29 April 2013. In that attack, the Assad regime dropped sarin grenades from a helicopter. One of the grenades failed to explode and was recovered. The French were able to compare that sarin with the sarin used on Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017, almost 4 years later. This is how the French intelligence report referenced the attack on Saraqib:

c) According to the intelligence obtained by the French services, the process of synthesizing sarin, developed by the scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) and employed by the Syrian armed forces and security services, involves the use of hexamine as a stabilizer. DIMP is also known as a by-product generated by this process.

d) This intelligence on the process used by the regime, which is a sign of its responsibility in the attack on 4 April, is based notably on the analysis of the content of an unexploded grenade which was used with certainty by the Syrian regime during the Saraqib attack on 29 April 2013. That mid-afternoon, a helicopter arriving from the north-east flew over the city of Saraqib at high altitude. Three unidentified objects, emitting white smoke, were dropped on neighbourhoods to the west of the city, on a north-south trajectory.

That was a small sarin attack. It never made the news, so Assad's defense was never called, and Postol paid no attention to it, otherwise he never would have fallen victim to his confusion now.

The French are also in complete agreement with Syrian witnesses and the White House Report as to the type of aircraft that attacked Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April, 2017:

b) The French services are aware in particular of a Sukhoi Su-22 bomber which took off from the Shayrat Airbase on the morning of 4 April and launched up to six strikes around Khan Sheikhoun.

This isn't rocket science, it's reading comprehension 101. If logic were a person, or even a corporation, it could probably bring a case in federal court against Postol for violating the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. At some point this has got to be embarrassing for MIT, even if it isn't for Dr. Postol.

Also related:
Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now says Assad now best for Syria
Sincerely yours, Theodore A. Postol
A valuable admission: Russia controls Syria & Putin runs the war
Why is Russia Today attacking Rep. Maxine Waters?

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for my posts on the 2016 US Election Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Sincerely yours, Theodore A. Postol

"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. That is his final argument {"trust me"} in a long list we will shortly unraven from his Addendum to Dr. Theodore Postol’s Assessment of the White House Report on Syria Chemical Attack, and two other pieces of his repetitive Khan Sheikhoun trilogy, but before we get to that, we need to address what others had to say about whatever happened on the morning of 4 April 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun that left more than eighty people dead from sarin poisoning. We will start with the people in Khan Sheikhoun, those that both witnessed and suffered the attack.

This tweet, discovered by Bellingcat, was posted at 8:21am local time and refers to a video published at 7:59am local time. It was the first we know of to speak of a chemical attack:

ابو يزن مراسل وكالة حق:#عاجل

*||# وكالـة_حـَق_الإخبَاريـّة||*04.04.2017

ريف #ادلب

كاميرا " وكالة حق الاخبارية "... https://t.co/nGoDFBihSC

— وكالة حق الإخبارية (@Agencynewshaq) April 4, 2017

Those who are convinced that this was a "false flag" operation carried out by Assad's opposition on the ground rather than a chemical weapon dropped by one of Assad's warplanes, really need to interrogate the posters of this tweet and video, because it they didn't really see what they say they saw, they must have been in on the plot to have posted so early. Here is another one:

.@hassinaouch @hxhassan @salqin @waelwanne @worldonalert @KyleWOrton @GissiSim @FSAPlatform @MousaAlomar @Conflicts - An #AssadRegime Sukhoi-22 military jet equipped with chemical weapons hit Khan-Shaykhoun city in Idlib Syria

- More than 200 suffocations pic.twitter.com/AlrURMXjOQ

— Polemic Dissident☪️愛 (@ShamiRebel) April 4, 2017

There were many, many reports from the ground, and many videos uploaded to YouTube, videos that could not be fabricated. Bellingcat has done an excellent report on this material.

By the day after the sarin attack, Syrian activists had already identified the pilot who dropped the ordinance, according to the English language Orient Net, a Syrian opposition media group, 5 April 2017:

Observatories operating in the provinces of Hama and Idlib revealed the identity of the commander of the aircraft that carried out the massacre on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib countryside, which marked the second largest chemical attack in Syria after the August 2013 attacks on both eastern and western Ghoutas in Damascus.

Orient Net contacted a number of field, independent and even Syrian Civil Defense observatories in the countryside of Idlib and Hama, and all testimonies indicated that the Assad terrorist who dropped toxic gas-filled barrels on Khan Sheikhoun was colonel pilot, Muhammad Yousef Hasouri.

Colonel Hasouri is the commander of the Sukhoi 22 Squadron at al-Sha’yrat airport. His warplane carries Quds 1 banner. He hails from the villages of Talkalakh town from Homs countryside and currently resides with his family in the Assad-controlled al-Sakan al-Shababy neighborhood in Homs city.

At approximately 06:30 am on Tuesday (April 4), Colonel Hasouri took off with his Sukhoi 22 and dropped barrels filled with toxic chemicals on the town of Khan Sheikoun in Idlib countryside, killing more than 100 civilians as they slept and injuring more than 400.

The majority of those who fell victim to the toxic gas were children.

How could they possibly know who the pilot was with any degree of certainty? After all, they don't have the sophisticated signals intelligence apparatus of a major state power. Orient Net explains that too:

It is worthy to mention that the walky-talkies and wireless connections have become an essential part of the lives of Syrians living in the liberated areas because of their effective role in reporting any sudden assault by Assad or Russian warplanes.

In addition, the Syrians use them to announce urgent appeals from hospitals or civil defense stations and report information on the location of the expected Assad or Russian targeting, which contributes to the safety measures and could possibly reduce the number of victims.

The observatories operating in the provinces of Hama and Idlib countryside were able to intercept the aviation talks with the operations room of the airport, decipher the code and determine the area the Assad warplane bombed.

They couldn't know that it was sarin from Syrian government stocks at that point. That would require laboratory testing not available to them, so that would come later. They did know that some type of chemical weapon was dropped on them from a warplane they had spotted taking off and tracked. These arts are a matter of life and death to them. So to answer that question about how could they know who is responsible for the attack without an "independent investigation," they know who controls the skies over Khan Sheikhoun.

The trial of war criminal #Assad and his regime is what exactly the #Syrians want. #Kafranbel #Syria @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Qgh8Bvnlmm

— Kafranbel English (@kafrev) April 12, 2017

The Other Side's Story

Both the Russians and the Assad regime have had a consistent story about how civilians in Khan Sheikhoun died of chemical poisoning and they have been sticking to it. According to them, the Syrian air force bombed a jihadist chemical weapons storage facility in a civilian neighborhood and that is what caused the chemical deaths. It was the terrorist's sarin. Although they have never once used it in battle, we are told to believe they had it stockpiled in a warehouse waiting to be released by a Syrian air force bomb.

On the day of the attack, 4 April 2017, Russia Today reported:

The Syrian Air Force has destroyed a warehouse in Idlib province where chemical weapons were being produced and stockpiled before being shipped to Iraq, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman said.

The strike, which was launched midday Tuesday, targeted a major rebel ammunition depot east of the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

The warehouse was used to both produce and store shells containing toxic gas, Konashenkov said. The shells were delivered to Iraq and repeatedly used there, he added, pointing out that both Iraq and international organizations have confirmed the use of such weapons by militants.

The next day Sputnik News repeated the same story:

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Syrian aircraft have conducted an airstrike near the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib province on the warehouse of terrorists’ ammunition and the mass of military equipment, where chemical weapons' ammunition had also been stored and delivered to Iraq, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday.

According to Konashenkov, on Tuesday "from 11.30 to 12.30, local time, [8.30 to 9.30 GMT] Syrian aircraft conducted an airstrike in the eastern outskirts of Khan Shaykhun on a large warehouse of ammunition of terrorists and the mass of military equipment".

Konashenkov said that from this warehouse, chemical weapons' ammunition was delivered to Iraq by militants.

Konashenkov added that there were workshops for manufacturing bombs, stuffed with poisonous substances, on the territory of this warehouse.

On the day after that, 6 April 2017, the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in a press conference in Damascus @6:20:

"The first air raid conducted by the Syrian army was at 11:30 of that day and it attacked an army depot that belongs to al Nusra Front which contains chemical weapons. The evidence is that army depot is actually monitored by cctv and had that raid actually happened the damage would have reached a circle about with 1 km diameter. al Nusra Front and ISIS and other organizations continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas."

And in case anybody thought they were changing their story, they repeated it again more than a week after the attack. Sputnik News stated 12 April 2017:

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia stands by its assertion that the Syrian forces struck a militant chemical weapons production facility on April 4, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday.

"According to our absolutely reliable information, the point at issue are Syrian Arab Republic air force's Su-22 airstrikes on a site controlled by terrorists where chemicals were produced," Ryabkov told reporters.

Trump's Story

By now we all know United States President Donald Trump's story. He woke up one morning to pictures of dead Syrian children and was so moved by those images that he just had to take action. Apparently he wasn't really aware of what has been going on in Syria for the last five years. What does he think a half million dead look like? Its hard to believe even Donald Trump could have avoided the ubiquitous pictures of the dead Syrian baby washed up on the beach, or of the little boy, his face covered in soot, sitting in the back of an ambulance in Aleppo. Apparently those images didn't move him to relax his ban on Syrian refugees, but given the opportunity to be moved to take violent action, he's all in.

To justify his decision to do what President Obama failed to do in 2013, the White House released a 4 page Declassified U.S. Report on Chemical Weapons Attack that generally agreed with observers on the ground, and added some info it claimed from its own classified sources. In spite of the source, it generally got the story right:

We assess that Damascus launched this chemical attack in response to an opposition offensive in northern Hamah Province that threatened key infrastructure. Senior regime military leaders were probably involved in planning the attack. Shaykhun at 6:55 AM local time on April 4. Our information indicates that the chemical agent was delivered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing aircraft our information indicates personnel historically associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program were at Shayrat Airfield in late March making preparations for an upcoming attack in Northern Syria, and they were present at the airfield on the day of the attack.

Commercial satellite imagery from April 6 showed impact craters around the hospital that are consistent with open source reports of a conventional attack on the hospital after the chemical attack. An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video. observed munition remnants at the crater and staining around the impact point are consistent with a munition that functioned.

A significant body of pro-opposition social media reports indicate that the chemical attack began in Khan Shaykhun at 6:55 AM local time on April 4. Our information indicates that the chemical agent was delivered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing aircraft that took off from the regime-controlled Shayrat Airfield. These aircraft were in the vicinity of Khan Shaykhun approximately 20 minutes before reports of the chemical attack began and vacated the area shortly after the attack. Additionally, our information indicates personnel historically associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program were at Shayrat Airfield in late March making preparations for an upcoming attack in Northern Syria, and they were present at the airfield on the day of the attack.

Open source accounts posted following the attack reported that first responders also had difficulty breathing, and that some lost consciousness after coming into contact with the victims— consistent with secondary exposure to nerve agent.

It is this third-party White House Report that Postol takes on, not the original reporting by Syrians on the ground. He is making this effort to defend Assad and he knows that the White House makes for an easier target than the Syrians with first hand knowledge of the event. He completely ignores the Syrians and what they had to say about this event, on both sides, as we shall see. 

To give himself even more of an advantage, he completely blindsides the WHR. As the New York Times pointed out:

Much of the White House report was devoted to rebutting Russia’s claim that the chemical attack last week, which it said killed as many as 100 people, including “many children,” was actually the result of a Syrian airstrike against a terrorist depot in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that contained chemical weapons. 

In denying the Syrian opposition version of events, as retold by the White House, Postol is not supporting the Assad regime/Russian version of what happened either. He is putting forward a uniquely Postol third way that completely clears Assad of any responsibility for the slaughter.

This was necessary. In the first place, the original Russian/Syrian story is not a very good one because if they knowing blew up a stockpile of chemical weapons in a civilian area, they can hardly be absolved of any responsibility for the deaths that resulted. It is not enough to complain that terrorists "continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas," after you have released them with your bombs. Those that claim to be the legitimate government of Syria have a responsibility to do everything they can to protect civilians and not take advantage of a known pre-existing condition to kill them.

In the second place, once Guardian reporters were able to visit this so-called "terrorist warehouse," it became clear that whole story was a fabrication. The warehouse had not been bomb recently. No weapons of any kind were being stored there. It was a food warehouse that was empty and had been abandoned since Assad bombed it six months ago.

Postol claims terrorist exploded a sarin pipebomb in the middle of the street without any help from the Syrian air force. He says they exploded a pipe filled with explosives on top of a pipe filled with sarin. He divines all of this from a couple of YouTube videos and satellite photos that he has determined are the ones the WHR is relying on. The WHR itself doesn't include or reference any specific videos or photos. Although he ignores the Russian/Syrian story, he does contradict it which is to say that if you believe Postol is right and the White House is lying, you have to believe the Russians and the Assad regime are lying too.

In his initial report, Postol agrees that some type of chemical attack did take place:

The only undisputable 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.
...
the [WH] report contains absolutely no evidence that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this atrocity.

Postol bases his findings from afar on a some commercial satellite photos and a couple of YouTube videos that he has determined must be the ones the WH is relying on.  In the third report, published by Truthdig, 14 April 2017, he says:

The evidence presented herein is from two selected videos that are part of a larger cache of videos that are available on YouTube. These videos were uploaded to YouTube by the SMART News Agency between April 5 and April 7.

That's literally all he has to go on! However that doesn't stop him from determining who the perpetrator is, as we shall see.

Much ado about nothing

For a M.I.T. grade scientist, Postol makes a lot of amateur mistakes in his striving to prove Assad's innocence. Maybe he has let Syrian Sister turn his mind into mush. For example, he clearly doesn't understand that sarin evaporates like water on a dry day because after noting:

The video evidence shows workers at the site roughly 30 hours after the alleged attack.

He then goes on to conclude that because they aren't using what he would consider adequate protection, the whole scene must be a fabrication:

The honeycomb facemasks would provide absolutely no protection against either sarin vapors or sarin aerosols. The masks are only designed to filter small particles from the air. If sarin vapor was present, it would be inhaled without attenuation by these individuals. If sarin was present in an aerosol form, the aerosol would have condensed into the pores in the masks and evaporated into a highly lethal gas as the individuals inhaled through the masks. It is difficult to believe that health workers, if they were health workers, would be so ignorant of these basic facts.

What utter nonsense! I asked chemical weapons expert Dan Kaszeta to name a common substance with evaporation characteristic similar to sarin and he responded "Water. On a very dry day, next to zero humidity." The reason why he stated that last part twice is because how rapidly water evaporates does vary greatly with the amount of water already in the air, but it is always a very dry day for sarin, at least for parts of the world not under Assad's air force. For that reason alone, if sarin vapor was present in dangerous quantities, after 30 hours, in sunlight, outdoors, in a dry climate, it would be a physics miracle, and if sarin was present in an aerosol form, still floating over the road after 30 hours, it would be a good candidate for an investigation of the supernatural. That is what it would be. To use "ignorance of these basic facts," to condemn health workers who are necessarily putting themselves at great risk without adequate equipment because they have been given no other choice is disgraceful.

To make it absolutely clear that my ridicule of Postol on this point is justified, I will cite a few more sources who, although they aren't rocket scientists, are expert on the subject of chemical weapons. The first is a 1973 report from the US Army Edgewood Arsenal Chemical Laboratory. The US military designation for sarin is GB.

This is from page 19.

The above section follows pages of chemistry and other highly technical details, but we can see the bottom line above, and that is easy enough to understand, according the US Army Edgewood Arsenal "The times for 99% removal [decomposition] of GB [sarin] ranged from 2.5 to 24 hours." 

Now can you see how shameful it is for a man like Theodore A. Postol to use his position and his M.I.T. credentials to denigrate courageous Syrian volunteers as frauds because sarin in the crater isn't still killing them after 30 hours? Noam Chomsky, another M.I.T. notable was just on Democracy Now today defending Assad, and as proof for his position he cited what he called Postol's "pretty devastating critique." Both of these Assad apologists are tarnishing the name of the institution whose name they brandish about to give their words credibility they don't deserve.

This table is from the same army report and it shows the decomposition time for sarin at different temperatures and environments. Note that this table predicts a 99.9% decomposition of sarin in soil of from 2.5 to 24 hrs. for all temperatures, however the shorter time would correlate to the higher temperature, and Postol's own data shows that temperatures in excess of 25°C were reached in Khan Sheikhoun that day.

The chart below is from a 1 March 2013 report from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) titled Chemical warfare agents and their interactions with solid surfaces and designated FFI-rapport 2013/00574:

As you can see from the lower left corner, they would expect sarin to lose its toxicity very quickly, in under 30 minutes at the temperatures in Idlib that day. They define sarin as a non-persistent rather than a persistent CWA, the difference being  "a non-persistent one dissipates or loses ability to cause casualties after 10 to 15 minutes." [p. 11] So Postol was entirely mistaken to expect them after 30 hours.

Another example of where he shows his ignorance of chemical weapons technology is when he recalls the critique he made years ago about the Obama White House report on the 21 August 2013 sarin massacre:

For example, the report claimed that the locations of the launch and impact of points of the artillery rockets were observed by US satellites. This claim was absolutely false and any competent intelligence analyst would have known that. The rockets could be seen from the Space-Based Infrared Satellite (SBIRS) but the satellite could absolutely not see the impact locations because the impact locations were not accompanied by explosions.

Actually, he is wrong. Now, I'm no rocket scientist, so it should be embarrassing to Postol that a layman such as myself have to reveal some basic facts to him, but most CW munitions use a bursting charge to disperse the CW agent and so the impact location would be accompanied by an explosion, albeit, a small one. Wikipedia talks about this in connection to some of the older US sarin rockets:

The warhead comprises about 15 pounds (6.8 kg) total, and consists of several components. The M34 and M36 Burster utilize composition B or tetrytol and total about 3 pounds (1.4 kg) of the total weapon weight. The agent, as stated, comprises about ten pounds of the weight with the rest lying in the casing and M417 fuze.^[2]

I also asked Dan Kaszeta to comment on this Postol statement. He wrote back:

Two types of rocket were used in the 2013 Ghouta attacks, the so-called Volcano rocket (which he exclusively focuses on) and the smaller 140mm rocket.  The larger-payload Volcano rocket appears to have an incorrectly low explosive charge, just basically a pop to open the warhead and let liquid Sarin out. Not ideal.  There’s not much a thermal/IR satellite could see at impact on that from an explosion.  The 140mm rockets (firmly documented as their engine sections were recovered and fragments thereof recovered by OPCW) had seemingly an ideal charge to burster ratio. These would have been visible.

What he doesn’t state is that the majority of US imagery satellites work in the visual light spectrum and don’t rely on infrared.  Why he focuses on one type of satellite to the exclusion of others is beyond me.  I am by no means an imagery intelligence specialist and the true figures are deeply secret (hence the US reluctance to release satellite photos). However, it is widely reported in the public domain, and well backed up by basic optical calculations that US satellites easily have imagery resolution of about <redacted>.  This isn’t quite enough to read a newspaper, but it is good enough to see the impact point of a large Volcano rocket.

A comment left on Bellingcat spoke of the false relief those small explosions can bring:

A nurse at the Rahma hospital (per the Guardian) reported hearing a dull explosion, which initially relieved her because she thought the bomb was a dud. I recall survivors of the 1988 Halabja attack reporting the same thing: that the explosions that delivered the chemical agent were not as loud as the conventional bombs that had been raining down on the city in the days before.

The same experiences were reported in East Ghouta after the 2013 sarin attack. After that attack, Postol used a bunch of fancy math to "prove" they were too far away for Assad's army to hit them with rockets. The residents knew where the rockets were coming from because ones with conventional warheads had been raining down on them for months. That's why the children were all sleeping in the basements where gas could get them first. For them, there was never any mystery about that where the rockets came from. But these sounded different when they landed. Almost like duds; Almost.

Pipe Dreams: What Postol thinks really happened

Postol's most important conclusions are drawn from his examination of videos and satellite photos of what most agree is the crater made by the sarin bomb, remembering that the Russians and Syrians maintain they hit a warehouse not a street. Robert Barsocchini, wrote approvingly of Postol's work:

Postol located the crater via satellite and examined it himself, concluding it reveals “absolutely no evidence that the crater was created by a munition designed to disperse sarin after it is dropped from an aircraft.”

In that first "Quick Turnaround Assessment," Postol concludes from afar:

The data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane. This conclusion assumes that the crater was not tampered with prior to the photographs. However, by referring to the munition in this crater, the White House is indicating that this is the erroneous source of the data it used to conclude that the munition came from a Syrian aircraft.

Analysis of the debris as shown in the photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin.

There are a couple of big problems with this. The first is that these particular YouTube videos have been chosen by Postol, the WHR includes no pictures or videos and references them only generally. The bigger problem with trying to draw any conclusions from these images is that there is no reasonable reason to believe this site remained undisturbed in the 30 hours since the crater was made. It is unguarded and unprotected in the middle of the road, without even a decent barrier to stop people from driving into it. A single red sign warns of the possible chemical danger and we can see from the way that is positioned in different images that change has occurred. Postol uses the more sinister phrase "tampered with," but I see no reason to go all negative. In spite of the attack, people still got to get on with their lives, still got to use this road. We can see vehicles driving by in the two videos Postol has submitted for our examination. For all we know, the real rocket parts, if there were any in the crater, were dragged off hours ago, and the pipe that Postol is fretting about fell out the back of a passing truck.

But maybe there is a more likely explanation. Here is a frame from a YouTube video uploaded the day after the 21 August 2013 sarin attack.  It shows the rocket still in the crater:

Now you can see that it is a rocket in the crater, right? Notice how the part actually in the crater resembles the remnants left in the crater at Khan Sheikhoun. I suspect that what we see in the crater in Postol's picture below is not the remains of a terrorist sarin filled pipe-bomb that was detonated with explosive on top, as he claims. I think it's the remains of a missile much like the one in the Erbin City picture above, and deformed by much the same forces, except in Khan Sheikhoun it hit a paved street so the top of the missile got completely sheared off, and since it was in the way of traffic, "tampered with."

Now, what does the WHR actually say about this crater? From the White House Syria Chemical Weapons Report we have:

An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.
...
In addition, observed munition remnants at the crater and staining around the impact point are consistent with a munition that functioned, but structures nearest to the impact crater did not sustain damage that would be expected from a conventional high-explosive payload. Instead, the damage is more consistent with a chemical munition.

That is it! That is all the WHR has to say on the question of the crater. Basically it says the existence of the crater indicates an explosion did happen, just not a very big one, like you would expect with a chemical weapon. They make no claim that would require that the site remained undisturbed since the explosion, nor do they make any claim that it has been undisturbed.

That doesn't stop Postol from insisting that the WHR claims the site was not "tampered with":

the assumption in the WHR that the site of the alleged sarin release had not been tampered with was totally unjustified

Where is he getting this? He also says the same thing in the second version:

the assumption in the WHR that there was no tampering with the alleged site of the sarin release is not correct. This egregious error raises questions about every other claim in the WHR.

Clearly, he is arguing that the site was "tampered with," and as I have said, it would be hard to believe it remained undisturbed for 30 hours, and yet his whole thesis about what happened is based on looking at photographs and assuming they accurately represent the original undisturbed site. He even says in that first report:

The data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane. This conclusion assumes that the crater was not tampered with prior to the photographs.

Incredible! If that's his case, then he has no case. That's not rocket science. That's simple logic.

What he really thinks may be revealed by a poorly worded statement near the end of his Truthdig piece. After he recounts the Obama White House report that Postol thinks incorrectly blamed Assad for the big 2013 sarin attack, he says:

It is now obvious that this incident produced by the WHR, while just as serious in terms of the dangers it created for U.S. security, was a clumsy and outright fabrication of a report that was certainly not supported by the intelligence community.

Is he saying the report was fabricated by the White House or is he saying the incident was fabricated by the White House? It is hard to know what he really thinks.

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

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