Examining the Evidence for Chemical Attack in Syria
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With conflicting reports coming from all angles is there any way to make sense of what is taking place in Syria?
The American public (and the world at large) is swimming in a sea of misinformation, disinformation, conjecture, assumptions, and outright lies. This is not only an accurate description of the situation in regards to the conflict in Syria, but also essentially describes the daily reality of living in a world full of corporate shill media, lying politicians, and a distracted and/or propagandized public. This essay is an attempt to cut through the partisan voices, the emotion on all sides of the discussion, and the deceptive corporate broadcasts in hopes of finding some sliver of truth. I advise all readers to follow every link and read all source material.
A brief recap: The so-called Syrian Civil War has been raging since the 2011 “Arab Spring,” when various groups began revolting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The conflict is wide-ranging and includes several different factions vying for power or independence. From the Rojava revolution to the Islamic State, aka ISIS, the conflict has been full of resistance, chaos, and confusion. Generally, there are “rebels” fighting under several different names. The United States government has opted to fund these rebels, some of whom have been proven to be ISIS and al-Nusra front. The U.S. and these groups are supported by Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, the Russian and Iranian governments have backed Syrian President Assad. The U.S. and Russia have used these groups to wage an indirect conflict, or proxy war, against each other. In the last six years Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons against his own people more than a handful of times. These alleged attacks include Aleppo in March 2013, Ghouta in 2013, Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, Douma in April 2018, and several other alleged attacks.
This essay is not going to explore the full history of the conflicts in Syria preceding the Arab Spring. Rather, we will be examining the conflict with a focus on this alleged use of chemical weapons in 2013, 2017, and 2018.
Conflicting Evidence
In February 2018, the Associated Press reported that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis stated there was “no evidence” that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in the 2017 incident in Khan Sheikhoun. “We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “We do not have evidence of it.” This means, nearly a year after the U.S. launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base which they claimed was the source of the alleged chemical weapons, there is still no evidence linking Assad to the weapons. Ian Wilkie, a veteran and former intelligence contractor, noticed the admission by Mattis and described the situation in an article for Newsweek:
This assertion flies in the face of the White House (NSC) Memorandum which was rapidly produced and declassified to justify an American Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airbase in Syria.
Mattis offered no temporal qualifications, which means that both the 2017 event in Khan Sheikhoun and the 2013 tragedy in Ghouta are unsolved cases in the eyes of the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency.
Wilkie goes on to note that, “Serious, experienced chemical weapons experts and investigators such as Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Gareth Porter and Theodore Postol have all cast doubt on ‘official’ American narratives regarding President Assad employing Sarin.”
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