CoI Report Dismantling at the Indicter

September 18, 2017

last edits Sept. 26

This post is to announce my second article at Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli's The Indicter and to comment, invite comments, etc.
Syria Sarin Allegation: How An UN-Panel Report Twists and Omits Evidence

This stuff sort-of writes itself, but it does take some careful reading, transcribing, and then formatting, collecting sources, etc. There were still a few typos when I got this in behind the hoped schedule, but it's damn close to a perfect piece - basically an improved re-write of my recent review here of the CoI's"meaningless" report. That was good, but I'm calling this, sure to be more widely seen, the Khan Sheikhoun debunk we need, after months of futile confusion mixed progress by the skeptic community.

I assembled this piece at the invitation of professor De Noli, and have the honor of sharing the September Issue with his firsthand account of the U.S.-backed September 11, 1973 coup d'etat in Chile and following repression. De Noli was photographed in detention near martyred regional governor Fernando Alvarez, but was far luckier, released to become an important witness and lifetime activist. He now runs the Indicter, and invited me back for a second article on Syria chemical weapons allegations. 

Points worth adding: 
White House radar track: Was not included IN the report, just published alongside it, and shown at a press conference (good resolution copy and some sources here at ACLOS).


We were lucky this time: This Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack case was exceptionally sloppy. Most allegations of massacres and so on that I've investigated fall apart to some degree, but few of them as badly as this important event. But then, it was the same with Ghouta - maybe it's the extra attention that turns up the best debunks. And the abundance of material to find clues in...

Anyway, still, we got a lucky break as investigators with their backwards wind reading, with their inability to get the jets above the spots they blew up, etc. In the future they could learn and improve, map the gas spread accurately, etc. and still they could be and probably would be re-packaging one of their sectarian massacres. If we can't even spot it when they fail this badly, what hope is there for securing any semblance of truth-based justice. Collectively, despite all the deliberate impediments to it, we need to get smarter than this.

More Fudging by OPCW: a problem I noticed too late to include - as the OPCW used this topographic map to show why sarin would flow SW from the origin spot, they did two serious things
1) as noted, exaggerate the relief to make slopes look steeper and more relevant. than they were
2) just now noticed: they misplaced the release point, if that's what the blue area is supposed to be. Rather it seems this is the bakery, a bit south of release point, which is right where that curving street meets the straight one.

The difference matters (or it would IF THERE WAS NO WIND, but there was...): From this wrong spot, it would flow sw like rebels need, IF the air was still as the OPCW wrongly decided. From the correct spot, more than likely it would all roll NW, especially if the OPCW's wind direction guess (mild to the NW) was right (it wasn't). Rather, it blew uphill, not as steep as it looks here, northeast (here: to the right and away), until it got too steep, and then I guess it would bend more north along the highway and into that (not so) dramatic gorge there.