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Wednesday, April 26, 2017

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:

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:

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 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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Monday, April 24, 2017

A valuable admission: Russia controls Syria & Putin runs the war

In its rush to defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime from charges of committing the mass murder of civilians with sarin at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017, the Russian website Pravada Report made what I think is an extremely valuable and important admission:
Now the media are trumpeting that it was Assad's troops that used chemical weapons in Idlib. This is absolute nonsense, because it is Russian headquarters that supervise all combat actions in the region. Assad will not be able to use any aircraft unless the Russian command in Hmeymim gives permission for this.
Pravada Report comes out of Moscow and is seen as a Putin mouthpiece. This statement is attributed to an unnamed "Russian expert." Hmeymim air base in Latakia is the main Russia airbase in Syria and after Trump's cruise missile strike against Shayrat airbase, Assad moved all his fighters to it. The Russian high command in Syria is stationed at that base. They have advanced Russian surveillance instruments there that track the movement of all aircraft moving through Syrian airspace. Russian SIGINT [signals intelligence] and the Russian spy agency GRU are also located there. Syrian operational staff officers also work out of that base. Two days after the sarin attack, the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in a news conference @35:20:
We are coordinating on a daily basis with Russia.
Yes, that is the polite term for it. I "coordinate" on a daily basis with my boss too.

In the case of the United States military assistance command to The Republic of Vietnam [MACV], there was never any doubt about who was really running the war. Those who think Assad is still running the war just don't understand how these things work. The Washington Post, which discovered and translated the secret "status of forces" agreement that allows the Russian military to operate in Syria described it as giving Moscow "carte blanche."

If the Pravada statement is true, and that seems very likely, if "it is Russian headquarters that supervise all combat actions in the region" for their side, it means that the decision to use sarin on Khan Sheikhoun, and to bomb the hospital, were Russian decisions. It also means that anyone who looks to the United Nations to end this tragedy is a fool because those committing the atrocities have veto power over anything the UN might want to do about it. This been shown time and time again in the six years they have been attempting to put down this uprising. The UN never stopped the US from killing more than 3 million Vietnamese, and the UN will never stop Russia from killing millions of Syrians for the same reason.

It also means that all our brave Assad Advocates with their one-sided "Cui Bono" argument that Assad had nothing to gain by using sarin on Khan Sheikhoun can pack it in, because Assad didn't make that decision, almost certainly, Putin did. Those "who benefits" questions needs to be put to Putin not Assad, and Putin operates on a much bigger playing field than just Syria. Putin can almost certainly be counted on to be more concerned that the US president he worked so hard to elect was getting into trouble because of his Russian connections than what affect a sarin strike may have on Assad's standing.

Clearly Trump has benefited greatly, not from the chemical attack of course, but from the opportunity to respond and thus stage a falling out with Putin just when he needed it badly. Before the attack, the major news story in the US was the growing scandal about Trump's ties to Moscow. The new revelations around this story haven't stopped coming since the sarin attack. Two days after the attack, Rep. Devin Nunes attempts to sabotage the congressional investigation fell apart and he was forced to step aside. Then Paul Manafort announced he was registering as a foreign agent. It was revealed that a FISA warrant had been issued for Carter Page. European intelligence agencies started talking about what they had, and we found out the FBI has an investigation going. Most likely both Trump and Putin knew this, and much more was about to be coming out as the sarin attack was being planned. The sarin attack, at a cost of 87 Syrian lives, was just the set up, the payoff was Trump's attack on the airbase.

a very polite way to make war...

Two things make the attack on Shayrat airbase look like a staged rather than a real confrontation:

1.) We know that Trump gave the Russians plenty of advanced notice, so they and the Syrians could get their people and planes safely away before the attack. As a result, they suffered really minimal losses. Trump didn't even bomb the runways. As a result, they were able to resume air operations from the base the very next day.

2.)  Russia has its most advanced air defence systems in Syria, S-300s and S-400s, and they didn't even try to shoot down Trump's cruise missiles.

The Aviationist reported:
[L]ater reports say that most of the aircraft based there were evacuated before the strike, and initial footage from Shayrat seems to show at least some areas of the airports, including taxiways, shelters, aprons, etc. with little or no damages.
...
According to Pentagon, the Russians were informed ahead of strike.
...
Noteworthy, the TLAMs [BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles ] flew across the MEZ (Missile Engagement Zone) of the S-400 missile battery the Russians deployed to Latakia to protect the Russian air contingent deployed there in 2015.

Did Russia’s most advanced anti-aircraft defense system detect the missiles? For sure there are no reports of any of the BGM-109 intercepted by the S-400.

Designated SA-21 “Growler” by NATO, the S-400 is believed to be able to engage all types of aerial targets including aircraft (someone says even VLO – Very Low Observable ones), drones and ballistic and cruise missiles within the range of 250 miles at an altitude of nearly 19 miles. Equipped with 3 different types of missiles and an acquisition radar capable of tracking up to 300 targets within the range of over 370 miles, the Triumph (or Triumf) is a system made of 8 launchers and a control station.

Supported by effective EW (Electronic Warfare) capabilities, the S-400 fires missiles against aerial targets flying at 17,000 km/h.

So, at least on paper, all non-stealth aircraft and missiles would hardly be able to dodge S-400 missiles. Assuming that the Russians probably detected at least some of the Tomahawks flying fast and low towards their targets at Shayrat Airbase it’s not clear why the Triumf did not attempt to intercept any of the TLAMs launched by the US destroyers,
...
Perhaps, considered that they were informed beforehand, they simply decided to let them pass.
Why would they do that? They would have been shooting down drones, not even killing US pilots. They had that capability. Why didn't they use it? One can only conclude that they allowed the Syrian base to be attacked, and maybe that was because, as the Aviationist speculates, Trump was so nice and polite about notifying them in advance about his attack. That's warfare in the Milo Minderbinder tradition. If ever an attack seemed staged, this was it.

If we apply the "Cui Bono" test to Assad's opposition, it just doesn't work. If the argument favored by the "anti-imperialist" Left is that 2013 sarin attack that killed 1400 opposition supporters was staged by the opposition to get Obama to intervene in the name defending his "red-line," how much sense does it make for them to try the same thing with a lot less casualties with Trump, who hates Obama, after his administration just announced three times its support for Assad remaining in power? It just doesn't fly.

If we ask instead: "How would Putin benefit?" We can provide answers that really takes off. That is how Cui Bono answers the question of what happened and why in this particular chain of events.

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Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Why is Russia Today attacking Rep. Maxine Waters?

In Sunday's post I noted that if the sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun and the US attack on the Shayrat airbase was given the cui bono, or "who benefits" test, clearly Donald Trump won out big time. Before the sarin deaths and his cruise missile response, he was way down in the polls. Most importantly, things had been coming to a head in the investigation into his ties to Vladimir Putin. Trump's Nunes gambit had fallen apart, and although we didn't know it at the time, Paul Manafort was preparing to register as a foreign agent, we were about to find out that a FISA warrant had been issued on Carter Page, European intelligence agencies were about to weigh in, and much, much more. He badly needed to be rescued. Just about any mass casualty event that allowed him to look presidential would do, and Bashar al-Assad, at Putin's prodding, was only too happy to help him out.

There is some evidence that the Trump and Putin were cooperating on the airbase strike. Rawstory said:
Two U.S. military officials told Matthew Cole at The Intercept Thursday that this plan would “overwhelm Russian air defense systems used by the Syrian military.” 
Although Russia has some of its most advanced air defense systems in Syria, the need to overwhelm them proved unnecessary because they stood down and never even tried to shoot down Trump's Tomahawks. Rawstory also stated:
ABC News reported early Friday that the Syrian military seemed to know that something might happen. Eyewitnesses claim the military then evacuated personnel and moved equipment before the strike took place.
I said this scenario was highly conspiratorial and therefore pretty unlikely because it sees Assad doing the sarin attack so that Trump could bomb the quickly emptied airbase and have a big show of falling out with Russia, proving to everyone that there couldn't possibly be any collusion between Trump and Putin.


While it is clear that 86 civilians were murdered and hundreds injuried, this far-fetched idea that the whole Syrian sarin thing just might be a show hatched up to divert our attention away from Trump's Moscow ties has been gaining some currency. Lawrence O'Donnell has been saying that the Trump-Putin theory can't be ruled out on his MSNBC show. The Washington Post reported on it in "MSNBC host’s conspiracy theory: What if Putin planned the Syrian chemical attack to help Trump?", 8 April 2017. It says:
“Wouldn't it be nice,” O'Donnell asked a nodding, smiling Rachel Maddow, “if it was just completely, totally, absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week — so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all the praises he's picked up over the past 24 hours?”

The theory was impossible to rule out, O'Donnell said, because of the Trump campaign's ties to the Russian government.
According to the Washington Post, O'Donnell picked up this conspiracy theory from Bill Palmer. On 8 April early AM he published "Syria gas attack and Donald Trump’s military response don’t add up – unless Putin orchestrated it." In it he opined:
But Vladimir Putin knows full well that a gas attack like this was likely to prompt at least some kind U.S. military response against Assad. So Putin wouldn’t have been behind this unless he wanted the U.S. to take military action in Syria. And the only logical reason for Putin to want that is if he was trying to set up a win for Donald Trump, which could boost his historically low approval rating. It would also allow Trump to paint himself as being willing to go against Russian interests, as an argument against the most serious charges in the worsening Trump-Russia scandal.
Maxine Waters
Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a African American Democrat from Los Angeles with a long history of activist, has made the impeachment of Donald Trump her new mission in life. She spoke at the Tax Rally in Washington, DC on Saturday, April 15th. Heather Digby Parton reported on that in Salon, 17 April 2017:
The anti-Trump resistance is very much a grassroots effort, but there are leaders emerging. One of the most vocal is Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat who represents Los Angeles. Appearing at the Washington Tax Day march last Saturday, Waters put it bluntly: “I don’t respect this president,” she said. “I don’t trust this president. He’s not working in the best interests of the American people. I will fight every day until he is impeached!” Then she led the crowd in a chant of “Impeach 45!” It doesn’t get any more resistant than that.
She is also starting to raise these questions about the Syria strike. Reporting for the Huffington Post, Lauren Windsor wrote:
At the rally before the march, Waters vowed to fight every day until Trump is impeached and questioned the motives behind the U.S. attack on Syria. She believes Syria to be “phony tension between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, all being hyped up by the White House, still trying to distract us.”

After her speech, I asked the congresswoman whether she believes Putin and Assad were colluding to help take the heat off of Trump from the investigations into his ties with Russia. She believes that Putin and Trump are “tied at the hip,” the tension is a charade, and that the end-game is getting the oil sanctions lifted for drilling in the Arctic.



She must have hit a nerve because RT.com, formerly known as Russia Today, came down on her like a ton of Brexits. It published this vicious attack on her, 17 April 2017:
‘People like Maxine Waters put Democratic Party at risk by proposing loony conspiracies’

17 Apr, 2017 16:44
The Democratic Party should not give any more publicity to Congresswoman Maxine Waters because she is discrediting the Party among thinking Americans and people around the world, says Charles Ortel, geo-politics writer.

US Representative Maxine Waters has accused President Trump on of being “in bed” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At a rally on Saturday in Washington, DC, Waters said she considered Syria to be “phony tension between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, all being hyped up by the White House, still trying to distract us.”

The Democrat from Los Angeles added: “They [The Russians] see Trump as helping them to lift the sanctions so they can drill in the Arctic for the oil that Tillerson negotiated on behalf of Exxon with Putin.”
I've seen RT be insulting before, but this piece is just downright mean spirited:
Charles Ortel, the private investor, and writer said that Maxine Waters is a lady “who has had many firsts to her credit.”

“For that, some people do respect her. But when she opens her mouth and says things that are this stupid – she deserves to be fully exposed and fully criticized,” Ortel told RT.

In his opinion, some of the comments by the Democratic congresswoman are just “bizarre ravings.”

“This is the kind of raving that comes out of people on the right and the left frankly, who walk around wearing tin foil hats. It makes no sense whatsoever that the president of the US and the Russian president would engage in this type of loony conspiracy theory putting many lives at risk,” he said.

He added that on both sides of the political spectrum “there are people who are not deep thinkers, who surround themselves with other simple minded people, who fall victim to the type of loony theories that many people like to think about.” More...
In a piece titled "Donald Trump's War Crimes", 5 April 2017, Truthout, Marjorie Cohn reports:
Over the past month, the US-led coalition has killed an inordinate number of civilians.

"Almost 1,000 non-combatant deaths have already been alleged from coalition actions across Iraq and Syria in March -- a record claim," according to Airwars, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that monitors civilian casualties from airstrikes in the Middle East. "These reported casualty levels are comparable with some of the worst periods of Russian activity in Syria."
This reality makes the claim that the presidents of the US and Russian would refuse to take such self-serving actions because they wouldn't want to put many lives at risk, ring hollow.

Personally, I am coming to believe that Trump's empty airbase strike was "a play within a play," which would make this four hundred year old observation by Hamlet's mother still the perfect response to Mother Russia's slander of Maxine Waters:


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Sunday, April 16, 2017

Why would Assad use sarin in Syria now?

This question is again being raised by those that don't think the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the sarin attack that killed 86 civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province on 4 April 2017. In Assad's defense they argue that he was already winning the war and had nothing to gain by such a provocative act, for example in a piece published by Portside on 15 April 2017, titled "Cui Bono, Who Benefits," Uri Avnery asks the question:
Why did Assad do it? What did he have to gain?

The simple answer is: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
...
With the help of Russia, Iran and Hizbullah, Assad is slowly winning the civil war that has been ravishing Syria for years, He already holds almost all the major cities that constitute the core of Syria. He has enough weapons to kill as many enemy civilians as his heart desires.

So why, for Allah's sake, should he use gas to kill a few dozen more? Why arouse the anger of the entire world, inviting American intervention?

There is no way to deny the conclusion: Assad had the least to gain from the dastardly deed. On the list of "cui bono", he is the very last.
Some think this apparent lack of motive makes for a compelling argument for Assad's innocence. Dina Formentini and Chris Ernesto make the same argument in a Counterpunch piece titled "Assad Had the Upper Hand So Why Would He Gas His Own People?," 11 April 2017:
This major policy statement by the US took regime change off the table, and was obviously great news for Bashar al-Assad. Combined with Syrian military gains on the ground, Assad was in the strongest position he’d been in since the war in Syria began.

So, why 5 days later would he gas his own people?
These are just two examples but the Internet is crawling with many more because it is a staple of all of the Assad defenders. Whether they are from the "anti-imperialist" Left, or the Alt-Right, whether they agree Assad bombed a terrorist warehouse that released the sarin, or claim the sarin was released by the terrorists after Assad dropped a conventional bomb on the street, they all agree that it is ridiculous to think Assad would risk the outrage when the is so close to winning without it.

The principal flaw in this argument, this time, is that it was made by many of these same personalities after the sarin attack that killed more than 1400 on 21 August 2013. It was widely held then also, that he was so close to winning that it would be ridiculous for him to risk direct Western military intervention by carrying out the sarin attack he was then accused of. Here are a few examples of that era from just one source, Counterpunch. Andrew Levine used "Cui Bono" to defend Assad in that attack, 27 August 2013:
Maybe Assad really is culpable; he has never been a leader who bothered much about ethical side constraints, and he does seem intent on holding onto power by any means necessary.

But the cui bono? (who benefits?) principle suggests the opposite. The Syrian government plainly has enough popular support to withstand the forces arrayed against it. Indeed, it seems to be winning the war.
Stanly Johny chimed in, 30 August 2013:
The Assad government says it is rebels who used chemical weapons. Backers of the regime asks why it should use such weapons at a time when it’s already making gains in the civil war.
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, 2 September 2013:
The justification for this breech of the United Nations Charter is based on the dubious claims made by an insurgency, armed and trained by those same western powers and their regional allies, that a chemical attack was launched by the al-Assad government. An attack that illogically and irrationally took place at the precise moment the Syrian government was clearly winning the war against the so-called rebel forces and when United Nations inspectors were already in the country.
Now do you see the problem with this argument? It seems rather lame to have argued after the 2013 sarin attack that Assad wouldn't have done it because he was on the verge of winning, and then come back after the civil war has been raging on for another four years to make that same argument, that he wouldn't have done it in April 2017 because he is still on the verge of winning. It just has a kind of "fool me twice, shame on me" feel to it. So maybe we should start looking at some reasons why Assad may have used sarin.

In past blog posts, I have pointed out that chemical weapons, while relatively ineffective against a prepared enemy force, are a preferred weapon for use in the suppression of rebellious civilian populations because it can injure or kill people without destroying property. For precisely that reason, milder chemical agents like tear gas and pepper spray are legal and used by almost every government on the planet. Given the growing intensity of the class struggle worldwide, it is not much of a stretch to imagine a bourgeois desire to bring back stronger toxics, and a plan to use the Syrian conflict to normalize their return. This is in fact, what has been happening. Chemical weapons, once effectively banned, have now been used dozens and dozens of times in the past 5 years, and not just in Syria anymore.

Since Assad's concerns are more immediate, I don't think his desire to normalize the use of CW would play a big role in his decision to use them, but I do think those with broader concerns, in Moscow, Tehran, and even Washington, might see the normalization of CW use as a big win, and be willing to push Assad in that direction. That argument applies to all the CW attacks but also explains why some must be so massive and graphic as to make the news. If people don't know chemical weapons are being used with impunity, their return can't be normalize.

With regards to this most recent attack and response, the cui bono question gets much more complicated. Clearly Donald Trump benefited big time. Before the sarin deaths and his cruise missile response, he was way down in the polls. Most importantly, things had been coming to a head in the investigation into his ties to Putin. Trump's Nunes gambit had fallen apart, and although we didn't know it at the time, Paul Manafort was preparing to register as a foreign agent, we were about to find out that a FISA warrant had been issued on Carter Page, European intelligence agencies were about to weigh in, and much, much more. He badly needed to be rescued. Just about any mass casualty event that allowed him to look presidential would do, and Assad, at Putin's prodding, was only too happy to help him out. I admit this scenario is highly conspiratorial and therefore pretty unlikely. It sees Assad doing the sarin attack so that Trump could bomb the empty airbase and have a big show of falling out with Russia, proving to everyone that there couldn't possibly be any collusion between Trump and Putin. Assad isn't the prime beneficiary in this scenario either, again he would be doing it at the behest of a patron, but that happens quite often. Those gifts are rarely free.

But perhaps the best argument for why Assad would use sarin again in spite of all the downsides, can be found in a couple of tweets I saw this morning:



These tweets mean that after all these years, and all they have been through, the revolutionary cultural movement we have come to associate with Kafranbel is not dead. That means the people's democratic movement that is the Syrian Revolution is not dead! Shooting unarmed protesters couldn't kill it. The arrests and tortures in his Gulag couldn't break it. His sarin attack on a Damascus suburb in 2013 couldn't kill it. He unleashed the jihadists but ISIS couldn't kill it. All his barrel bombs and cluster bombs since couldn't kill it. Even with massive military aid from Russia and Iran, they still can't kill it, and the cowardly attack on the civilian convoy won't break it either! To hear Assad, and his supporters tell it, he has been on the verge of winning since day one, and here we are, having sacrificed six years and half a million Syrian lives, and he still can't kill it!

That is because the spirit of revolution lives in the hearts of the people. It is not a question of numbers killed or territory conquered, as long as the flames of liberty remain alive in the people, the revolution is not defeated. In point of fact, it can never be defeated, only delayed. Braking the revolution requires breaking the people's spirit. This is why such horrific violence is employed against civilians. LBJ-Nixon thought they could whip the rebellion out of the Vietnamese and killed more than three million trying. Assad has killed a half million of his own people and still they will not bow down to him. A sarin attack, especially if there is no effective response from the world, is extremely demoralizing, and after six years he is becoming increasingly desperate and willing to try anything. I think that is the main reason why he used sarin on civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, 4 April 2017.

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Friday, April 14, 2017

Did Trump just kill thousands of people in Afghanistan?

MOAB blast radius on New York City
The big news yesterday was that United States President Donald Trump dropped the largest bomb on people since the atomic bombs dropped on Japan to end World War II. The MOAB also known as the mother of all bombs, is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal. It has a blast radius of more than a mile, which is to say that if it were set off in lower Manhattan it would destroy most everything on the lower half of the island. Fortunately, it didn't go off in New York City, it went off in the Achin district of Nangarhar, Afghanistan. We are told that the MOAB was tasked with taking out a deep ISIS tunnel network, and early reports say that 36 ISIS members were killed.
So far there has been little talk of civilian casualties and the feeling is given that this was an isolated mountain valley up in the northeastern corner of Afghanistan with nobody around except these terrorists. Otherwise Trump never would have used a weapon designed for Iraq but never used by Bush or Obama for fear of massive collateral damage, right?

Even in the time I have to Google before work this morning, I have found something that indicates that may not be the case. Pajhwok Afghan News put the population of the district at 150,000 less than a year ago:
Why Daesh chose Achin district as its base in Afghanistan

By Pajhwok
May 09, 2016 - 18:01
JALALABAD (Pajhwok): The Islamic State (IS) -- or so called Daesh -- has chosen the Achin district of eastern Nangarhar province as its headquarters for a variety of reasons.

The district’s proximity to the Durand Line, a contested borderline haunted by militants of all stripes, and easy weapons and logistical supply routes seem to have driven the rebel group’s choice of its HQ..

Geography and tribal structure

Achin district is located 35 kilometers southeast of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar. The Durand Line, Kurram Tribal Agency and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lie cheek by jowl with Nazyan Kot, Ghanikhel and Spin Ghar and Achin district.

Achin has an area of 350 square kilometers and a population of 150,000 --all of them Pashtuns from Shinwari and Alisher Khel tribes. Majority of residents of the district are reliant on agricultural, cultivating wheat, maize, potatoes, cotton, onion and others crops.

Where Daesh fighters came from

A source close to the group confided to Pajhwok Afghan News that five years ago when Pakistani forces launched operations in Orakzai and Khyber agencies, families of Daesh fighters started sneaking into Achin. Most of them were Pakistani militants.

The rebels then built seminaries and cultivated local residents, as well as the Taliban, the source said, adding the predominantly Salafi fighter gradually joined forces with Daesh. The move caused differences within the Taliban groups.

Salafis from Kunar, Nuristan, Nangarhar and a number other provinces joined Daesh in Achin and converted the district into their stronghold. Daesh wanted to extend sweep to the north through Sarobi and Tagab districts, but its plans had been foiled by Afghan and foreign forces, the source revealed.

Despite losing many dreaded commanders and leaders, Daesh still has several training centres in Achin. Nangarhar police spokesman, Col. Hazrat Hussain Mashraqiwal said: “Daesh has chosen Achin as its base where the rebels could easily receive supplies from across the Durand Line.” More...
For those interested in what ISIS is going in Afghanistan, this article is well worth reading in full. The point I want to make is that this was no empty place, no doubt civilian were killed and the potential that thousands were killed is real and the media should stop acting like that is not even an issue until we know a lot more. Clearly, this was an important ISIS stronghold, but if thousands of civilians were slaughtered in the process of wiping it out, it will prove to be both a humanitarian and political disaster.



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