New exposé by Seymour Hersh: Turkey staged gas attack to provoke US war on Syria
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Source: World Socialist Web Site
In a lengthy article published Sunday by the London Review of Books, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21, 2013 was actually carried out by Syrian “rebel” forces acting at the behest of Turkey, for the purpose of providing a pretext for a US attack on Syria.
The gas attack killed many hundreds of people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, and the Obama administration and the corporate-controlled US media immediately blamed the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad for the atrocity. The New York Times, in particular, published a lengthy analysis by its military “expert,” C. J. Chivers, which purported to show, based on rocket trajectories, prevailing winds and other technical factors, that the gas shells could only have been fired from Syrian army artillery positions.
For several weeks, the Ghouta attack became the pretext for a warmongering campaign by the White House and the US and European media. Obama threatened immediate air strikes, claiming that the Syrian government had crossed a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons, which he had laid down in 2012.
The US president then abruptly reversed himself and announced he would seek congressional approval first, only to call off any overt military action in favor of a deal brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Assad agreed to the supervised dismantling of his chemical weapons stockpiles.
By Hersh’s account, “Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff… As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.”
Read more: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/07/syri-a07.html
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aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)I wonder what "Cowboy Bush" and his sidekick "war criminal" Cheney would have done?
cstanleytech
(26,240 posts)
Sternbar
(4 posts)amandabeech
(9,893 posts)I read the Hersh piece in the London Review of Books with no problem.
The paragraphs here from the wsws website do not do the original justice.
This is not the first time that journalistic or academic papers from US sources have popped up in the UK but not here. This piece is very, very hot, but not too surprising.
Anansi1171
(793 posts)America will continue to criticize and sleep.
This won't even get a mention in our "lame"stream media.
Manuel Beingman
(10 posts)It's devilish.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)According to Hersh, the US DID NOT give the sarin or its precursor chemicals to the Syrians.
I cannot get into the wsws website, but if that's what it says, it is NOT an accurate reflection of what Hersh wrote.
I cannot suggest strongly enough that you read the LRB piece itself.
Manuel Beingman
(10 posts)I subscribe to LBN, but my copy has not arrived yet.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)Nothing that I could write would do Hersh justice.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)uh, who?
Rumold
(69 posts)the question you should be asking is why the NYT isn't publishing this
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Better to find a direct source. This article reports on a Sunday LRB piece without providing a link. Recommend reposting in GD or Good Reads. Thanks for understanding!
