Syria: Ghouta Chemical Massacres (plural) {Masterlist}

May 26, 2015
(incomplete)
last edits August 27, 2017

Incident: Early hours of August 21, 2013: the simultaneous "chemical" death of x-hundred civilians in the suburbs of Damascus, east and west, by apparently varied and usually unclear "chemical" methods. Rebels blamed government-fired rockets, and buried all the dead in their own mass graves. 

The UN later found Sarin remains in dirt next to rockets that may be irrelevant to the basements these folks were gassed in. And they found seemingly token amounts of Sarin product in the blood of some rebel-supplied alleged survivors. Of the people who died from deadlier doses of whatever - x-hundred in number, widely-parroted as 1,429 - none were tested for what killed them. It's said this is because a "dead body can't tell you how the person died," and/or it was a hassle that wasn't necessary - but that's clearly not why the UN's investigators chose to rely on living, rebel-screened, alleged survivors to speak for the dead.  

One man who might've pulled through and be a credible witness to sample and interview apparently started waking up in the morgue - a located one in Kafr Batna shown above (later as it's being emptied). In the center here here is a blood-soaked bed sheet they wadded under his neck after rebels finished "Assad's" work with a cut to the throat. It was okay, they had stand-ins, and now they had another dead body that can't tell you who gassed him. And they didn't have to settle for 1,428 martyrs making their case for a military bailout.

The basement these folks were gassed in seems to be directly beneath the floor here (or maybe it is a bit behind here and below, whichever - it's the former tuberculosis hospital, rebels say - see first link below for a start at the full story).

(fuller/different intro perhaps forthcoming - I just need this post up now)

Existing posts here, in order of importance
* The Ghouta Massacre's Sarin Myth, Brightly Lit: Exploring Kafr Batna's... Rebel Gas Chambers?

* Visual Evidence that the Victims were Prisoners and Unflattering before-and-after images of those prisoners

* The Family Killed Ahead of Schedule (added 8-27-17): the only case where we see 8-9 victims where they allegedly died in the sarin attack - and they were murdered with weapons days earlier, started to decay, and then were dragged into place. This was done, apparently, to support the claim that victims died in their homes or walking at liberty on the streets. That claim needing lies to illustrate it would then seem untrue, and the options raised in the above post are highlighted.

* Was Phosphene used in the Ghouta Chemical Massacre? Adding a valid hypothesis that phosphine, for example (later found in rebel chemical stocks in Aleppo) might explain some or even most of the deaths

* Ghouta Massacres (plural) by District (lots of details here but broken up - will be 10 district sub-posts when done)
** Part 2: Jobar - One extra-interesting example

* (East Ghouta) Firing Directions {Masterlist} (added August, 2017): new research and findings, in progress, on where the alleged sarin rockets were fired from, based on looking at what they did, which is interesting in various other ways anyway. Seven verified and analyzed impacts, each one providing a fairly readable firing direction.

One example at right: best estimates are in the 40-50 degree range (relative to an impacted wall), yet one agency claimed a mere 8 degrees. That was the UN investigation, in a widely cited and unacknowledged error (see part 1). It's not a wall-relation or a site mix-up; they're clear which site, how it's the straight tube's orientation, as they were looking at it, and they give an absolute compass direction and clarify it in detail, giving the opposite angle as the one it was flying on. It was way wrong, but it pointed to an Assad missile base 10km (4.5 times the rocket's maximum flight distance) away. This clearly wrong (analysis?) was cited as proving that it had flown 4.5x its maximum distance from just that base (before it was accepted to be so badly out-of-range - that math took a bit longer for the people who actually did it). Further, they claim this was the only spot in east Ghouta that provided a readable firing direction, suggesting this could be a fit for all of them. And they claim to have found two impacts in Moadamiya, west Ghouta, that point north, exactly to the same missile base, roughly the same distance away. I'm not sure how wrong that is, but it confirms the other strange cluster of errors... 

This wrong angle to an impossible spot was hungrily consumed and defecated by the Western mainstream's corporate media presstitutes as coming from a credible and unbiased UN agency, "buried" in a report intent on not blaming anyone or pointing fingers, and so honestly implicating the Syrian government. This was back in Sept. 2013, as pressure was on to blame Assad, facts or no. Here it was no. 

* That well-summarized story, in long form with explanations: How UN-OPCW Falsely Fingered Syria for the Ghouta Attack

Other findings about the rockets and their firing location(s) are popping up as we progress.

* Ghouta Massacre Victims: Medical and Media Staffs Decimated? Killed in the line of duty, and/or with family, in Zamalka - strange clues of family-based targeting no wind can explain, clues we see in other sectors, but because of profession couched as an apocalyptic culling of the district's non-violent activists by Assad's chemical rockets.

* Death Toll and Estimates 
** Body Recycling: Shown strongly between certain body displays, so far. May mean little past helping to set a visual minimum body count. May mean more than that.