A Change of Thinking on the Douma Chemical Massacre?

February 17, 2019
(rough, incomplete)
Completed enough March 3

The last week or so saw a rather interesting turn of events in the information war, and it's taken me this long even to make this space for the issue, comments from the brilliant Andrew and others, and maybe better thoughts from me.

Riam Dalati's Investigation Bombshell
As Charles Shoebridge tweeted
"Notable how journalists who for years were at the forefront of pushing #Syria rebel narratives and smearing those who had the courage to question them, are now belatedly coming clean eg re #Douma, fearing perhaps the truth will soon emerge and leave their reputations in tatters"

That refers to the BBC's Syria editor Riam Dalati, with new findings regarding the Douma incident from a (personal?) 6-month investigation, creating controversy. He sparked a bit last year, complaining how activists pose the Douma incident dead for emotional effect (tweet deleted under criticism). But this new turn was far more dramatic. Four 13 February tweets collected by Beyond Party Politics:
https://twitter.com/beyondpartypolt/status/1095683810627325952

Is this Dr. Hanan maybe related to the star witness with the stupid survival story, Naser Hanan? This all sounds intriguingly plausible, for a change, and merits more explanation - from Mr. Dalati, when and how that's possible. I sense he has a serious motivation to finish that work. The criticism this time left him going non-public with all his tweets, amid concerns he's wrecked or risks his career to try and raise these points. Some call for the BBC to "sever ties with this troll" (crypto-Islamist Idrees Ahmad. As for Ahmad's claim of a BBC distancing - they say it's his personal opinion, but defend it by pointing out he's not denying the attack (per a BBC spokesperson's comments to Sputnik News), and they may come around to embrace his limited revelations in the end. 

Harkin's Investigation 
It seems this 6-month investigation was concluded about the same time as another prominent article had raised new questions, in this area we were led to believe was pretty well understood. As Zero Hedge noted:

"The BBC’s Dalati made the statements in response to a lengthy investigative report by James Harkin writing for The Intercept. Harkin had examined the scenes and physical environs of the alleged Douma attack and interviewed eyewitnesses on site. His report paints a complex picture of propaganda and deeply compromised rebel sources such as Saudi-backed Jaish al Islam, which had control of Douma amidst a Syrian government onslaught to retake the town."
https://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-producers-syria-bombshell-douma-gas-attack-footage-was-staged/5668724

James Harkin is a (director?) at the Centre For Investigative Journalism, who personally hosted the
Higgins-Postol debate last year, the winner of which I declared to be confusion. I don't blame Harkin for that - directly anyway. His sprawling article at The Intercept, published on 9 February, raises some interesting points I didn't even know, but also manages to achieve confusion, and little in the way of a clear overall narrative that makes sense. I will need to review it more closely sometime, but - for example - he decided the famous and disputed hospital scene was the result of natural confusion and panic. But it was a staged faux-crisis, as described by the boy Hassan Diab and several medics seen in the videos, as could be seen by intelligent observers, and as Dalati has now claimed proof for.

Again, I still haven't reviewed Harkin's piece in detail, but one thing that struck me in a quick read was the odd inversion where the good points come from an OPCW investigator (unnamed), and some of the worst from revisionist hero Ted Postol, whose reasoning I was already questioning (see debate review link above). He's sure the regime dropped that chlorine tank from on high, it made a hole because the roof was weak (and stayed outside the hole why?), it filled the room with 'fatal concentration' of chlorine in a couple of minutes (but was still frosted/releasing after 10pm), and people died because of the building layout and stuff (it made them drop dead from just chlorine? weird house...) - it was sort of a fluke, he thinks, probably not basis for airstrikes, but neither can the opposition be held to account for much in the line of fakery or murder. But this comes nowhere near explaining any of the evidence, as the OPCW investigator notes in a some spots.

GPPI's holistic logic and some gaps in it
On the other side, the Germany-based Global Public Policy Institute releases a report on "the logic of chemical weapons use in Syria."
https://www.gppi.net/2019/02/17/the-logic-of-chemical-weapons-use-in-syria

This compiles 300+ reported chemical attacks, including and ending with the most recent one;  07/04/2018 - Douma - Chlorine - Assad regime. It has a verification level of 3 - extra clear in its documentation and well-placed to draw logic lessons from. Stupid stuff. A quick review shows they have these 300+ CW attacks listed, 98% by "Assad regime," 2% by ISIS/Daesh, ZERO by anyone else. The Jaish Al-Islam attack on Sheik Maqsoud in April 2016 (sort-of admitted), is listed as Assad regime, who weren't in on the Islamist assault, using chlorine (wrong properties, wrong symptoms and death toll). Khan al-Assal in March, 2013, is noted as sarin, but said to be launched by the regime, killing their own soldiers and protected Shia civilians. This had Assad demanding an OPCW probe, finally getting inspectors there on 19 August - just in time to distract them with the 21 August sarin attack next door that killed a supposed 1,000+ civilians. A string of chemical attacks on Syrian soldiers in the same area and following days is poorly treated here: Bahariya on the 22nd was by the regime itself, they feel. No sarin was verified, so it's "unknown." Soldiers were attacked nearby on 24-8 from the approximate firing spot for the missiles of 21-8. OPCW later verified sarin. The GPPI list somehow missed this event, doesn't pin blame. Soldiers were hit again in Daraya on 25-8, again verified as sarin by OPCW, but the GPPI list somehow missed this event, doesn't pin blame. 

But 15/02/2015 in Darayya, the GPPI notes an attack, that was on SAA soldiers (none of whom died - see here). They admit it was sarin used, as the OPCW verified - and that's also part of the 98% by "Assad regime." It goes on like that. 

Countless details crucial to determining the case logic - that will build up the campaign logic - are glossed over. Consider Sept. 24, 2014 in Adra, East Ghouta - no explanation for the logic of Assad's chlorine poking holes in the left sides of the chests on at least 3-4 men described as "prisoners" (forced labor workers?), among a reported 7 men from different places who died there. We see one who's old, one who's ill, one with a hand and leg injuries, all left behind as the ruling Islamists here packed up their valuable and fled the area under government assault the following day. More valuable (workers?) probably were brought along, but not these ones.
https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2019/01/fall-2014-east-ghouta-cw-attacks.html

Because what does this say about the logic of Assad chemical attacks, particularly in the East Ghouta area run by the Saudi-backed Jaish Al-Islam? When their forces are about to flee an area, Assad conveniently gasses some prisoners that weren't worth taking? Because in 2018, the coming surrender was total. They couldn't take any prisoners. As every prisoner becomes expendable, to be killed or just released, some 35+ men, women, and children wind up dead under a staged chlorine attack scene, inexplicably dropped dead with bizarre symptoms someone tried to wash off...

None are claimed as prisoners this time, but this man has wrist marks suggesting he spent some time shackled. I think that was previous, since healed, and he then spent some time with no shackles, along with these others who don't have such marks that I noticed. (the arm posture here looks perhaps recently cuffed, frozen that way, but is likely just from post-mortem body position and/or movement).

SMART News photo, mid-day 8 April, located just recently by Qoppa999, showing victim #20 or M2 an numbered here, seen in situ with woman and baby - he's one of those with a clear 'mask of death' pattern. He's mask 4, like most with a washed-off face, but note in one view the underside of his nose still appears smoke-stained. Some but not all of the seen victims were kept somewhere with a lot of smoke and soot, I think. From his fingers, I'd say this man was there for some time, doing things in the ashes with no washing available. 

But that's all got nothing to do with the logic of Assad's chlorine killing him in his own home, right? 

Between these, ratings up for:
* BBC Syria editor Dalati + (a bit ambiguous)
* Harkin at CIJ + (2 bits ambiguous)
* unnamed OPCW investigator +  (unambiguous)

Ratings down or steady for:
* Ted Postol -  (unambiguous)
* GPPI and their "logic" study  (unambiguous)
* The usual diehard apologist for every Islamist crime or deception  (unambiguous)
* Bellingcat/Higgins were barely even cited... Eliot verified Harkin's video as the same place, and that's it, aside from their noted role in shaping the early understanding by which US missiles were fired.

My thoughts on what this means, if anything
Considering these 2 mainstream people in journalism but sort of above it (producer, center director), turn to fresh skepticism with an oddly sudden onset in a few days, it's reasonable to wonder if they're assisting in some planned change of thinking. Considering the many problems with this case, it's possible some parts of that proved unsustainable under scrutiny. The way the OPCW's final report still refused to appear, going on a year after the event. already suggested a problem like this. Damage control would be called for to keep the full truth from emerging.

Consciously or not, exercises like those of Harkin and Dalati may serve a purpose in the larger script. For example, they could conceal a managed massacres of hostages, which holes in the evidence point towards, by connecting some of those holes to other, more innocent explanations. Both still suggest the government did launch chemicals and that is what killed the people, and that seems to be the central flaw in even these "off-script" analyses.

Now that the OPCW final report comes out March 1 (my in-progress review), less than 3 weeks since Harkin started the counter-noise 10 months after the incident, suspicions of coordination will be sharpened. But that could just be a leading illusion. There some natural reasons for this turn:

- For once, government control over Douma makes reporting from there relatively safe and feasible. People can go, ask around, gather information they could have learned with other attacks, except it was never safe to do so. Same applies to media and OPCW, who were able to do their own site inspection for once, and find none of the necessary sarin, etc.. It could be deduced from this limited example that access reveals opposition lies, or at least the seams of them.

- The open questions largely forced by Russian-backed infowar counter-measures that continue to resonate with the global public, the exceptionally large stakes of the incident, and no high-profile CW incidents since then to distract us, allows for more clarity than usual. Perhaps that chance was simply taken?

Anyway, guesses aside, it means what it does, and no one can be sure what that is, as events move on and I have finally finished this post.