US attacks on Syria

[Gorgon]

This one sums it up nicely..

 

One of the first things he says is that Syria hasn't got chemical weapons. 

 

mmhmm.

 

The process was simply Assad going 'here's what I got, come and get it'. No inspectors no nothing. 

[Zoraptor]

The OPCW definitely did inspections, and the list of sites was not only from Syria since they got a list from at least the US as well; which probably incorporated Israeli intelligence. There's just inherent difficulties in carrying out inspections in a war zone, the government doesn't control the whole country and there isn't actually a lot of explicitly CW equipment- except delivery systems such as missiles/ bombs- or chemicals, much of it can be of legitimate use. Think I posted a list of the Tabun's basic precursors a page or so back, none of them are explicit indicators for Tabun and all of them have multiple (almost all common as well) uses.

 

There's very little doubt that the government either wanted to retain some of or be able to quickly rebuild some of its program though. There certainly isn't a convincing argument that Syria doesn't have, or could not have recently made, nerve agents. The only argument would be what quality they'd be, how they could be delivered and most importantly whether they actually used them.

[Agiel]

It pretty much cannot be one local commander alone. Even by the old US version CW were held in reserves, then distributed as needed which requires at least two local commanders to act in concert in their use. That scenario is not impossible, but still runs into the same obvious logical flaws as if Assad himself ordered it; why would they, and why in that manner.

 

 

Errr...

 

 

 

A second senior defense official explained to reporters the background of the air strikes, as the U.S. has watched the Syrian regime escalate its chemical-related attacks on its own civilians in recent weeks as opposition forces threatened to take an important military airfield in Homa.

 

- “The Syrian regime has been under intense pressure. There’s a significant opposition offensive in Homa province, and connecting opposition lodgments in Homa province to Idlib province to the north is something that the opposition is trying to do. And they had significant pressure on the regime,” the official said. “So the regime was at risk of losing Homa Airfield, which is a significant airfield for them, where they fly rotary-wing helicopters out of there, it’s suspected to be a barrel bomb manufacturing facility, and so this was a significant risk to the regime. They were under a lot of pressure. We think this attack was linked to a battlefield desperation decision to stop the opposition from seizing those key regime elements.”

 

- On March 25, the Syrian regime dropped chlorine industrial chemicals on Homa.

 

- On March 30, the regime dropped an unconfirmed chemical on Homa, which a non-governmental organization on the ground said was consistent with a nerve agent.

 

Take it or leave it given that it's coming from a US official, but much the same conclusions have been reached by most serious independent international press from Al Jazeera and Le Monde, whom I can't say are in the business of functioning as proxies for US interests. And given the character of previous claims by the Kremlin that had previously fed us "MH-17 false flag" and "vacationing soldiers" narratives the idea that anyone can not be at least as leery towards their claims as towards that of the Trump administration really is laughable.

 

As for the "who benefits?" line of reasoning (which, strangely enough, was what I kept hearing when "MH-17 false flag" theories were being thrown around), well, the expectation was that Donald "bomb-the-s***-out-of-them" Trump was willing to give Assad a carte blanche to do what he pleased to quell the rebellion so long as it meant the endgame was some weird "Holy Alliance" (as I'm sure Steve Bannon likes to think of it) with the Kremlin. After all no matter where you are, where you're going, or where you're coming from the attraction of expedient, cheap, but dirty solutions to your problems are always enticing. One can't help but read something from Lavrov's comments on the need for the Trump administration to clarify their position on Syria as something to the effect of "I thought we had an arrangement." Well, as David Frum put it when you get Trump (whether or not you think SVR interference in the election played a role in putting Trump in the White House doesn't change the fact that he was the Kremlin's preferred candidate), you "get Donald Trump, in all his Trumpery and Trumpiness." In other words, Trump in all his capricious and self-assured glory, which is sort of why I'm not surprised in the least by Trump's reversals on the Ex-Im Bank and labeling China as a currency manipulator. 

 

Further observation: Though by no means do I consider it a lock, but after Tillerson's meeting with Lavrov and Putin I rate the chances of the airspace deconfliction agreement being quietly re-instated after the outrage in Russia is played out quite high. The attitude in serious foreign policy circles is that the limited nature of the strikes and Trump's warning was meant to leave avenues open for de-escalation and to signal that the Third Reset was still on the cards. That said, many have posited that given problems at home Putin might need antagonism with the US more than he needs Trump as a friend. As Philip Roth wrote: "Terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides."

Edited April 15, 2017 by Agiel

[Zoraptor]

 

It pretty much cannot be one local commander alone. Even by the old US version CW were held in reserves, then distributed as needed which requires at least two local commanders to act in concert in their use. That scenario is not impossible, but still runs into the same obvious logical flaws as if Assad himself ordered it; why would they, and why in that manner.

 

Errr...

 

 

 

A second senior defense official explained to reporters the background of the air strikes, as the U.S. has watched the Syrian regime escalate its chemical-related attacks on its own civilians in recent weeks as opposition forces threatened to take an important military airfield in Homa.

 

- “The Syrian regime has been under intense pressure. There’s a significant opposition offensive in Homa province, and connecting opposition lodgments in Homa province to Idlib province to the north is something that the opposition is trying to do.

 

They launched that attack on 21 March. By the 23rd it had reached its maximum extent, and never got anywhere close to the Rastan pocket. They certainly posed a threat to the airport, on March 23 to maybe Mar 26, after that they were pushed back nearly to original positions. As of April 4, ~85% of the HTS gains had been reversed and their sole gain was Souran, which is a decent sized town but otherwise utterly unimportant. They had a far more effective attack last year which took important flanking positions such as Ma'an yet failed to prompt chemical weapons, and was also largely reversed later. There was still fighting after April 4 and still ongoing, but the situation on April 4 is ~the same situation as now and ~the same situation as two months ago.

 

Frankly the senior defence official's analysis is a load of old bollocks.

 

If it's a battlefield decision it's used on the battlefield where at least you force the people fighting you to do so in gas masks, at most you kill a lot of them and make good gains. There's no military benefit to dropping a cw bomb on KS- that won't change the battlefield situation one iota.

 

('Homa' is also the literally the worst transliteration possible, since it doesn't distinguish neighbouring Hama and Homs clearly and I have an automatic negative reaction to any article using it)

 

Take it or leave it given that it's coming from a US official, but much the same conclusions have been reached by most serious independent international press from Al Jazeera and Le Monde, whom I can't say are in the business of functioning as proxies for US interests.

 

My deep scepticism about 'unnamed officials' is for precisely that sort of reason- the unnamed official in this case is either deeply misinformed or outright lying about the facts. My deep scepticism about media is that they repeat such stuff with no critical thought whatsoever and this illustrates that perfectly.

 

Further observation: Though by no means do I consider it a lock, but after Tillerson's meeting with Lavrov and Putin I rate the chances of the airspace deconfliction agreement being quietly re-instated after the outrage in Russia is played out quite high.

I'd put the chances of the deconfliction agreement being reinstated as 99%, and 100% if nothing else changes.

[Agiel]

 

 

My deep scepticism about 'unnamed officials' is for precisely that sort of reason- the unnamed official in this case is either deeply misinformed or outright lying about the facts. My deep scepticism about media is that they repeat such stuff with no critical thought whatsoever and this illustrates that perfectly.

 

 

You sure about that?

 

Note that an English reader can get by reasonably well with a machine translation of the Le Monde article, and that Al Jazeera seems to be treating Bellingcat's analysis as fairly credible.

Edited April 15, 2017 by Agiel

[Zoraptor]

You sure about that?

 

Note that an English reader can get by reasonably well with a machine translation of the Le Monde article, and that Al Jazeera seems to be treating Bellingcat's analysis as fairly credible.

 

 

I speak french adequately, that article is no problem to understand. Al Jazeera- even the far better English rather than the ludicrously sectarian Arabic version- is pretty pointless though in this context, HTS is itself a Qatari project to unite the rebels and make Al Qaeda acceptable; and they're always going to back stuff that makes the Syrian government look bad. Bellingcat is... amusing, since it's basically bizarro oby in its russophobia. Anyway, I'll go through both the Bellingcat reports (April 5, April 10), since they're most 'authoritative'.

 

It was claimed that airstrikes in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, had included the use of a chemical agent, which many sources began describing as Sarin.

 

 

No mention of MSF saying there was also chlorine present. Fair enough in an early article, but there's also no mention in the later article either. Also cherry picks a 'typical summary'.

 

In the below video, in English, Dr Shajul Islam from Binnish hospital, explains the situation in the hospital as it was treating victims of the attack.

 

 

Ah, yes, Dr Shajul Islam. TBDR, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act, accused of kidnapping John Cantlie- and escaped trial when Cantlie was subsequently rekidnapped and could not give evidence. Rekidnapped by ISIS, who at the time included Al Nusra, who became HTS who control Khan Shiekhoun and Binnish- and he was  summarily struck off the medical register in the UK. Not exactly an unbiased medical practitioner. Though, of course, Bellingcat and nearly everyone who used him (credit to- cringe- the scum and the daily fail of all people, plus the Times who did) failed to mention any of that.

 

Photos and videos published on social media and news agency website showed the impact site where the rocket hit.

 

 

Well that's right at least, and explains the cherry picked 'typical summary' saying rockets instead of the multiple others than say they saw bombs (and heard/ saw the jets immediately beforehand etc) since the debris is clearly part of a rocket, and very similar- what there is of it at least- to the grads used in Ghouta. It would have to be a S-13 though, and they haven't been seen on Syrian Su22, only the S-8 (far too small) and S-24 (far too large) have. For the sake of argument I'll accept that it's possible they have S-13s on their Su22s though, however there's also no evidence of anyone making a S-13 CW warhead, only ground based grads of the same calibre plus  there's no rocket engine present only the warhead etc.

 

There's also a significant unmentioned logical problem with using a rocket from an aircraft to deliver CW- simply put, why on earth would you? There's a good reason to have CW weapons in a ground based rockets, namely the laws of physics dictate you need significant velocity to get from A to B and to stop you hitting the ground on the way there whether you use standard artillery or rocket artillery. Neither of those are considerations for an air based rocket though since the plane is, well, flying and can just fly to the right point. Conventional air borne rockets have an advantage in some situations over conventional bombs of course, but none of those advantages apply significantly to CW rockets. For a rocket you have maybe 30% of its weight being CW agent taking casing, rocket engine, propellant and bursting charge into account, with a bomb you get 80%+.

 

Anyway, later article

 

There are three sources saying that a Sukhoi 22 (Su-22), a Soviet variable-sweep wing fighter-bomber, conducted the attack: witnesses on the ground, an organisation of aircraft spotters, and the Pentagon.

 

Only one of those is an actual source, the witnesses. The observers have a plane taking off at the right time while the Pentagon's radar trace is not great.

 

The Pentagon map can be used an overlay in Google Earth to gain a better understanding where the radar blips are located with regards to Khan Sheikhoun. However, it is important to mention that it is difficult to connect two-dimensional dots to a three dimensional flight path. Besides, the data appears to be incomplete making a proper analysis of the map probably not accurate.

 

 

Yeah, it's a crap trace, but it is clear that the closest any point supplied comes to correct orientation for a strike on N Khan Sheikhoun is ~8km. That's basically impossible for a bomb, and highly unlikely even for a missile since their designated range is far less than that.

 

If you looked at that trace without knowing where it was meant to show being attacked I think anyone would pick Souran, Kfar Zita, Kfar Nbul, Kernaz and Morek as being targets before KS.

 

Two days after the attack, a rumour started spreading that Col. Hasouri was killed “by a bomb blast under his car”,

 

 

That claim was 100% fake, not unclear.

 

Time discrepancies

 

 

Are hardly insurmountable. As with pretty much everything they do the fundamental problem with Bellingcat is that they start from a conclusion and work backwards instead of the reverse. That's fine for a mental exercise that nobody cares about, it's dreadful practice if you're trying to actually find the truth though. As above it's still required to prove that the Su22 was there at the claimed time and dropped the bombs/ fired the missiles containing CW, and witnesses vary very considerably in their descriptions of what hit and have differing recollections of other aspects. There are also significant issues in the 'official' narrative that they do not address at all- the radar trace appears to make the attack as stated unlikely and is basically just dismissed without further question despite supposedly being key evidence earlier, claims from MSF that two CW agents were present etc. Something like the Postol theory (either improvised or actual grad CW warhead detonated on ground; though personally I'd expect a basic cylinder + nebuliser system to actually deliver the CW if it were false flag) would also fit the evidence as would other ground based source.

 

There are other unaddressed problems as well- KS is not a densely populated town and the area hit is clearly not dense residential yet more people were killed on a per rocket basis that in Ghouta, which is entirely low to mid rise buildings and apartments with several hundred thousand population. None of it is conclusive, but then nothing anyone has said has been conclusive.

[Gorgon]

The OPCW definitely did inspections, and the list of sites was not only from Syria since they got a list from at least the US as well; which probably incorporated Israeli intelligence. There's just inherent difficulties in carrying out inspections in a war zone, the government doesn't control the whole country and there isn't actually a lot of explicitly CW equipment- except delivery systems such as missiles/ bombs- or chemicals, much of it can be of legitimate use. Think I posted a list of the Tabun's basic precursors a page or so back, none of them are explicit indicators for Tabun and all of them have multiple (almost all common as well) uses.

 

There's very little doubt that the government either wanted to retain some of or be able to quickly rebuild some of its program though. There certainly isn't a convincing argument that Syria doesn't have, or could not have recently made, nerve agents. The only argument would be what quality they'd be, how they could be delivered and most importantly whether they actually used them.

Point being that it's completely meaningless without doing what it takes. If you remember Iraq, that could mean hundreds of people with free range to go wherever they please. 

[Zoraptor]

You can't really do that in a civil war though, it's simply too dangerous. Iraq in 2002-3 was stable enough for Blix to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted, you cannot say the same about Syria in 2013-4.

[JFSOCC]

just out of curiosity, did anyone, anyone, bueller? watch the documentary I linked?

[Azdeus]

just out of curiosity, did anyone, anyone, bueller? watch the documentary I linked?

 

 

I encourage anyone who is interested in what is really going on in the world to watch "Putin, Russia and the West" an EXCELLENT 4 part documentary featuring interviews with Putin's inner circle like Lavrov and Medvedev, Obama, Colin Powell, **** Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Mikheil Saakashvili, Condaleezza Rice, Nicolas Sarkozy and many other prominent figures.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2iscmt

 

This one you mean? Yeah, all four or so hours. Didn't blow my mind, but I enjoyed it. I had watched a similar, but more compressed documentary on Swedish TV a couple of years ago.

I thanked you for the link, but in the wrong thread.

[Zoraptor]

Dear France,

 

Hexamine is not a diagnostic for specifying who made Sarin. The head of the UN Chemical Weapons investigation pointed this out 3 years ago. So why do you use it in your 'definitive proof' as the 'definitive proof'? 'Cos it ain't.

 

(Also 1/3 of their definitive proof deals with an attack on Saraqib which, since hexamine is not diagnostic, is irrelevant. Unsurprisingly, the rest is pure assertion based on their erroneous 'proof'. The analysis of Saraqib is complete with colour photos, crater analysis of a sort, specifies delivery etc. They have literally nothing like that on Khan Sheikhoun though, they don't even specify whether it was rockets or bombs except now there were 6 of whatever instead of the 4 shown in footage; so instead of clearing things up they've just confounded things more. Must be la flimme flamme razzelle dazzelle or quelquechose)

[Zoraptor]

So the US shot down a Syrian Su 22 yesterday. Most of the articles on it are a load of old bollocks, of course. eg from the Beeb

 

The Su-22 fighter bomber was engaged by an F/A-18E Super Hornet after it dropped bombs near the town of Tabqa in Raqqa province on Sunday afternoon, the Pentagon said.

 

 

Nope, the supposed bombing happened at 430pm the shootdown occurred at 630pm from OIR's own timeline. Practically this makes it definite it wasn't the same jet, as it would need to be unarmed to have 2 hours flight time in the area; plus time distance to and from, heh, ShayratAB is a third of its loaded range. There were two separate jets, the one which was shot down dropped no bombs. Also, the actual Pentagon/ OIR statement said the first jet dropped bombs "near" SDF troops, not on or at them. There was a bombing incident a week earlier, but that was a one off, about 20km away, almost certainly accidental and didn't result in any US action.

 

The Su22 is not a fighter bomber by any meaningful definition of the term. It couldn't meaningfully defend itself against even contemporary fighters and wasn't ever intended to be used as a fighter.

 

A statement from the coalition's Operation Inherent Resolve said pro-government militiamen had attacked SDF units, driving them from the town of Ja'Din.

 

 

Best evidence is that this never happened and it was ISIS driven out by the government. SDF never claimed to hold Jadin and there were no reports of clashes between the SDF and SAA either prior to the shootdown. There have been some post facto claims of 'heavy ongoing clashes' from twitter (lol) but these have been contradicted by others and are highly unlikely for other reasons- primarily, SDF Afrin canton and Sheikh Maqsud rely on government territories for supplies plus there are Russian/ Syrian troops discouraging Turkey from attacking therm; and on the government side Hasaka and Qamishli are in a similar situation. It's in neither side's interest to fight each other, at least yet. The US definitely wanted SDF to grab Jadin and especially nearby Resafa though, as it's a critical road junction and would make it a lot harder for the government to get to the Euphrates' south bank, close off Raqqa and eventually get to Deir Ez Zor city and the Iraqi border.

 

[Map]

 

 

Is comically out of date and shows the government as being nearly 100km away from Jadin/ Resafa. Whether it's incompetence or deliberate that it was used who knows...

 

It does however illustrate that the claim that the SDF were trying to surround Raqqa- subsequently edited out- is rubbish, as their frontline around Tabqa hasn't moved in a month, which is how it's known that they didn't hold Jadin. They don't want to surround Raqqa, if every ISIS guy left Raqqa through the gap they've left they would be literally ecstatic (note: that's the exact same tactic the SAA and Russia use repeatedly as well, it's perfectly sensible but isn't the story of ISIS obliteration the coalition wants out there).

 

Plus of course the US bombed militia in southern Syria. Funny though, the legal justification for US presence is that Syria cannot control its borders, yet when they try to the US bombs them for violating an entirely self declared 'deconfliction zone'.

 

And of course, no news on the chemical weapon attack in Khan Sheikhoun either.