by Adam Larson (AKA Caustic Logic)
August 11, 2019
last edits: same day
Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), the surprisingly awesome 2020 presidential candidate, is taking flak for heresy against the U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy. It's not the first time, but maybe the first tie I can be of much help. Recently, the Tulsi 2010 website ran a critique of the evidence behind the April CW allegations president Trump has twice attacked Syria over - Khan Sheikhoun in 2017 and Douma in 2018.
"Reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria" - a short read.
This is a brave move, if imperfectly executed, with a laudable goal of frustrating what she rightly sees as a continuing pattern of lies supporting endless war. In that spirit of encouraging skepticism, I had to weigh in with some refinements of what she's said. This is not such a short read, and I've forced a late start to any review by taking so long to assemble it. The case for a decent skim read is quite strong.
Unlike those cited in the Tulsi 2020 article, I have no university degree or job experience to indicate credibility, except what I've built through years of volunteer reasearch on events in Syria, with work at this blog (Monitor on Massacre Marketing), the research wiki A Closer Look On Syria (ACLOS), in various articles at 21st Century Wire, The Indicter, and others, and most recently with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM).
Chemical weapons allegations have been a special area of interest since December, 2012, so I have a rather full understanding of the field. As such, my thoughts on the matter are bound to be of some value.
Long, semi-optional prelude: who to trust?
I'll start with a lame critical analysis of the Tulsi 2020 article penned by the highly-promoted "OSINT" investigator and regime-change hacktivist Eliot Higgins, at Bellingcat.
As usual, Higgins spends most of his time going off on Dr. Postol, Maram Susli, Dan Kaszeta, and their ongoing dispute over the role of "hexamine" in the sarin findings out of Syria. I've never tried to understand this well, but I think if one party can make sarin a certain way, someone else can use the same or similar method; a recipe is not a fingerprint. I'm not even sure about recipe similarity, and greatly doubt this can prove the government's guilt, especially when there's so much else contraindicating that, from general motive to all the case specifics. It seems to me like we "know" this impure stuff with hexamine in it is "Assad's sarin" because it keeps turning up and being blamed on him. But it also seems that this blame keeps being wrongly placed.
Higgins promotional tweet: "I just wrote 4000 words ... it's really bad." Yes it's really bad, but sadly, Mr. Higgins was also able to raise some valid problems with the Gabbard 2020 article (which he of course referred to). This is largely due to her impressive-seeming sources. For Douma, Gabbard relies mainly on a leaked internal OPCW engineering report. For Khan Sheikhoun she primarily cites Theodore Postol, esteemed professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at MIT, an expert who's never afraid to rock the boat. The headings for both sections say "Inconsistencies found by Dr Postol, et al."
Higgins was able to show nothing wrong with the leaked OPCW report. No one can, really. But he's quite right about some of Postol's blunders like conflating two incidents years apart, for a big deal with an infographic - he did that. More relevant are several errors in his Khan Sheikhoun analysis, which leaves Rep. Gabbard's dependent position on it rather weak. These are partly explained below, but perhaps the worst was the poorly-considered wrong-sized-bombs theory I thoroughly refuted in the first half of this article, before my own reading of the related blast damage.
Postol has also weighed in on Douma, but belatedly and confusedly. Anyone overly-convinced of the professor's analytical prowess needs to read this passage from an interesting article by James Harkin for The Intercept back in February. After nearly a year to consider the case for himself, it seems Postol did little or none of that prior to a prompt from Harkin, who wrote:
"When I showed videos of the canisters to Theodore Postol in Boston, he was immediately certain that both had been launched from the sky by the Syrian military and that any “brouhaha” from the Russians to the contrary could be safely ignored. ... he immediately concurred with the analysis of internet investigators like Higgins, with whom he often ferociously disagrees."
What a strange position to adopt. As presented by Harkin, Dr. Postol thought it was unexpected how a hole was barely created in the roof (at location 2) after that fall from a regime helicopter. That unexpected turn allowing some gas to be released into the "enclosed" room below, "creating a gas chamber" with "several hundred times higher than a lethal dose." This is so wrong.
There's no "lethal dose" exactly. Chlorine is simply a gas that turns to acid on contact with water. It has no neurological effect and does not cause sudden death, paralysis, or diminished consciousness, despite frequent claims to that effect in Syria (claims there vs. reality everywhere else considered here in some detail). It burns the airways to varying degrees, causing physical damage and the production of protective mucous that combine to cause possibly fatal impairment of breathing. The risk therefore is all about severity and duration of exposure, and the quality of medical response. In the most extreme cases of sudden and total damage, and some fluke cases of laryngospasm, death can be just as quick as basic suffocation. But most fatal cases take longer to finish; in a hospital with constant suction, it can be drawn out for days (far more often, it's averted altogether). Absent medical help, death could happen much quicker, but not instantly.
In a vast majority of cases, people exposed to chlorine are bothered, walk away from it, and survive with little to no long-term effects. But circumstance that don't usually exist might come into play here. Anyone tied up in a sealed room with chlorine gas could die - eventually - from almost any amount. Conversely, anyone at liberty with only dispersed creeping gas - as the Douma victims allegedly were - would leave the scene and not die, again at nearly any level. Recovery times would vary, and a death or two out of ~50 is plausible, maybe more depending on the details. But zero remains the usual expected death toll in a case like the one the opposition alleges. Illogically, they staffed with 35 dead at location 2, plus 7+ others who died somewhere else with an explanation no one seems to have provided. This fits better with a different, deadlier poison, and/or with planned killings in a gas chamber type of scenario.
Furthermore, Postol makes it sound like everyone was crammed in the room under the cylinder at impact. But allegedly the 50 or so inhabitants were sheltering in the basement at the time, three floors below this super-deadly "gas chamber." Allegedly, the gas spread like this... through the ceiling hole, into and across the third floor as shown below - through an open door, or under a closed one - down the hall and the stairs, then a bit into second floor, down and into the ground floor, and out into the street, before some overflow would make it down into the basement - all before anyone smelled it. Some heard the valve 'pop' prior to the smell. Hmm. I guess that proves it all lines up?
Professor Postol - to be fair, with limited knowledge of these details - found it all quite likely. Or does he still? Is he torn here? After that leaked engineering report came out in mid-May, he came back whistling a different tune. Thanks to real scientist(s) and servants of the good who are still working somewhere in that Byzantine ruin of the OPCW - and no thanks to his own independent analysis - Postol seems to have decided the Russian case is not so easily-dismissed after all. His ensuing analysis appears to be pretty useful, while his prior thinking was far off-the-mark, so his overall current position on Douma is a bit unclear.
Former weapons inspector, anti-war and truth activist Scott Ritter tweeted "Dr. Postol confirmed he has been advising Tulsi’s campaign on these and other issues. After listening to Dr. Postol, I believe Tulsi is in good hands." Clearly, I'm not so sure. He's made too many important errors to ignore, including those I'll explain below. People keep citing his work, and especially the erred parts, and that's bad for the cause of truth. He's done good work, especially in 2013 with the late Richard Lloyd, whatever else I haven't assessed, and any number of his new and future arguments on varied topics might be spot-on. But anymore his assertions needs to be critically considered and double-checked, not credited blindly.
Shouldn't I take these criticisms directly to Dr. Postol and see if he can refute my findings or adjust his own? I tried once, and he made it clear to me he had no interest. Blaming my supposed bad attitude, the good professor imposed a learning embargo on himself. Too bad for him and his followers. I remain open to hearing back that it was a misunderstanding, but as it stands, further efforts on my part seem fruitless.
No one is perfect. I've made many mistakes. However, I try to learn and correct them, and so far my voice doesn't carry as much weight - and thus responsibility - as Prof. Postol's does.
When Postol debated Eliot Higgins in late 2018 (hosted by James Harkin, as it happens), it was a mess with no clear winner except ongoing confusion. When Tulsi Gabbard cites half of that problem as part of her foreign policy platform, and Higgins gets to play his familiar tricks in response, to the campaign's detriment, I needed to step in. I support Tulsi, and also I'm sick and tired of this being a long-running debate between Postol and Higgins and that stupid hexamine thing always brought to the front, eclipsing so much solid evidence ignored by both of them. Or as with Douma pre-leak, when these opponents were left agreeing on the ridiculous opposition narrative. I still don't know what to make of that, except that it underlines my point: we should not let these two men keep defining the discourse to such a degree.
My own analysis below is heavy on disputing Dr. Postol, an ostensible ally in the information war. So I thought it best preface and explained by this overview. Yes, it's an "attack," and one he can defend himself from just fine - if he actually can. If not...
Who else has the right credentials to cite? Maybe a new and improved Prof. Postol. And/or some of the sharp minds working with the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda, and Media. Our excellent approach to weighing evidence (including some of my own work) is some part of what secured the confidence of whistleblowers at OPCW and the leaked engineering assessment, allowing the latest shift in perspective that finally got prof. Postol on (the right page?) The findings were quite in line with the result of our own research at the time - some of us never did concur with Higgins, and have been on about the same page from the start up to now. Who has PhDs and professorships to make them more credible? Not me, but most other people in the WGSPM including Dr. Piers Robinson, Prof. David Miller, Prof. Paul McKiegue, and several others. None of them necessarily endorses this "attack" on Postol's credibility, but they do tend to agree on the points upon which it's based - as far as I know anyway.
In both of Trump's April CW stories, my approach is primarily based on strongest evidence - especially visual - read well and deeply. Whoever's holding it and telling whatever story, the camera in itself still does not lie. I also try to specialize in prioritizing evidence - visual and otherwise - as the best avenues to the truth of events. These are the leads I primarily follow and recommend to others, even if prof. Postol or whoever disagrees - other points I've skipped might be quite important. In those cases, someone else could be cited, or it could maybe be skipped.
Also note: The findings behind my suggested points didn't all originate with me - I'll adopt points raised in open sources, and points brought to me by fellow researchers, and it's hardly possible to cite the source for each idea. Especially in this article, I just present the amalgamated best I know. Fuller explanations by subject are available on request. I'll present raised points (with notes) and suggested points for each of the two CW incidents, for four long sections, followed by a shorter conclusion.
People with more scientific training (used properly), more "credibility" and with better tools, could improve on these findings, and maybe should.
Khan Sheikhoun, 2017: raised points
KS1: "The size and shape of the crater and the damage to the cylinder is inconsistent with an aerial bomb, but rather with an IED which was placed on the ground, and then detonated."
- First, this shows she is aware an airstrike is alleged - above is written "The OPCW report states that the chemical weapons were delivered by an airstrike at Douma, and by an artillery strike at Khan Sheikhun." Airstrike alleged in both cases. Was it a pipe bomb? No - Postol himself later backed off this point (as noted in debate with Higgins, and as Higgins reminds in his rebuttal, noting Gabbard also gives a wrong link to his later - and better - findings).He now thinks a rocket was responsible (a type of artillery, FWIW)
As for what it does look like: There's no "cylinder," just a half-tube of rolled-up metal - looks like a rocket tube bent forward on impact, but that's probably illusion. Original remnants are probably gone with these pieces set there later. A filling cap, other minimal details have led to various IDs, but I never formed a firm conclusion. These fragments are most likely planted, but could be parts of the relevant weapon, which could point either way, depending on what irrefutable ID ever emerges. And even that pointing could be true or "false-flag" ( a unique bomb, seized from the Syrian military somewhere, modified into a rocket and fired, for example). I'm not the one to cite here, but those are some thoughts.
Impact damage to the pavement to me (non-expert but somewhat versed) suggests a surface rocket from the north (roughly - signs too mixed for me to be more exact), not like the alleged gravity bomb, which usually has virtually no direction but down. Postol's revised view suggests a rocket impact, as Higgins noted, involving computer modeling. That sounds like valuable work. I'm curious what direction they found, and embarrassed now that I haven't even checked. Two explosive impacts look to me like small FAE weapons by damage, and are both clearer in suggesting a north or NNW firing direction (when these too are supposed to be gravity bombs). Those are probably not from the same firing spot as the (sarin rocket?), but a related one, obviously, all somewhere north of town. The third impact way in the south of town also looks different, with no clear firing direction suggested. It would be too far off to hit with the same rocket launcher. I don't claim to have the full picture here, but you can see how it would be a good picture to get clarity on. One could start from my work. (scene analysis, plus first Postol ctricism over his own.)
KS2:"Videos of smoke plumes show the wind blowing in a different direction than weather reports for the day of the attack, suggesting the videos were taken on a different day."
- Actually, "weather reports for the day of the attack" are of limited value. Some are unreliable, modeled predictions (a historically informed guess), others might be actual readings at a nearby time at an airport x miles away. One needs to check. And one direction "reported" is a wind from the northeast that's built into the opposition's claims, with an unusual emphasis on where people died, all southwest of the alleged sarin impact point. The best method to know the wind is to measure it at the site, or estimate it from video, if that's available (it is!). And when you do this well, you find videos show a wind opposite of that needed - it blew to the northeast. Carefully established from multiple angles to account for all directions and degrees of movement with the single wind direction there can be at one time and place, this is a fact (estimated, not precise but accurate, open to refinement). No one can show otherwise, so far or ever. (Serious challenges are best brought here.)
Below: my graphic - later revisions suggest this is the right direction for upper-level wind, while at ground level, it's harder to read but similar - a bit more to the east and less to the north, but still essentially opposite of what it "should be."
For their part, the OPCW's approved investigations concluded without basis that there was "no discernable wind" (activists likely aware of the problem described the wind as roughly nil = whole basis, except for citing the result...) so they decided the sarin vapor would roll downhill to the SW, and fit the given story, which in turn supported that guess (circular reasoning and besides, OPCW mapped it wrong, making their case look plausible - by coincidence? see below). But it would roll just west or maybe northwest in general by topography, perhaps killing to the SW but also in other areas never reported - IF there were no real wind. But many activists and "survivors" claimed there was a wind to the southwest, and the video shows one as well, just opposite of what they said. You can't just take those two opposite and average them to zero.
Now, it's hard to imagine someone actually reading that wind so far off it's opposite, or by chance finding some other reason to decide on a wind that happens to be opposite of the true one. By far the most logical reason is a simple and common misreading the same mistake Prof. Postol made in his first analysis: he misread an irrelevant wind prediction - given properly by direction of origin, but misread (as many do) as the direction it blows to , which makes for opposite of the prediction. (He corrected that error and flipped his arrows, but persisted in taking that prediction as the actual wind). I suppose their narrative spinners wanted to make the wind spread a central point of proof here. One person was tasked with assessing the wind for that. Then he or the next person, through some misunderstanding, made the same basic error so a wind FROM SW meant they would map their fatalities as living TO the SW. Oops.
Perhaps there's another cause, but I can't think of what it would be. Either way, elaborate stories, filmed returns to the scene, and mapped areas from multiple sources materialized, all based on this inversion of reality. The opposition's story - and the basis for US-led missile strikes - was built around this gross error. It's been stuck that way this whole time, and hardly anyone has noticed.
KS3: "Photographs indicate that the crater had been tampered with."
- This is probably so - original munition remnants likely removed from the area, a couple discrete chunks of another set right in the crater. It's possible that sarin traces were planted there then, or never, but ...
KS4: "Photographs show persons standing around the bomb casing wearing only gloves and dust masks, which would not be sufficient to protect them from sarin residue in the crater."
- It might be safe enough within a few hours - it evaporates
Proposed: terrorists fired a rocket, likely releasing a small amount of the same black fluid often released in incidents that yields positive results for sarin (see here). Any sarin released here would not spread widely enough to kill many (the black splash says it simply splashed - no real mist, just large droplets = very little dispersion and spread). Furthermore, no one at all was reported to be affected downwind, to the northeast. The only alleged exposures are the falsely-reported upwind cases.
It's plausible the massacre managers would use sarin to kill their victims, so everything lines up. Some autopsies are said to turn up sarin traces. But it's most likely those were a few special cases killed that way for that reason. The bulk we were shown dead and dying that day lack in consistent visual details ... the last work of my colleague, neuropharmacologist Dr. Denis O'Brien in 2017 was to argue against sarin as the cause in some detail.
http://logophere.com/Topics2017/17-04/17_017-BLA-Sarin.htm
KS5: "Other inconsistencies include a picture of a dead goat which, judging by the rope around its neck and marks in the ground, had been killed and then dragged to the scene from another location."
- Was the goat dragged? I didn't look into that. It might have walked. It was very close to release point, may have been closer, may show little to nothing about spread direction. It might show planting, but I'd like to see the evidence, and I may just skip the goat as I mainly have.
KS6: "There are also inconsistencies of timing, where hospital records show victims arriving before the air strike had supposedly occurred."
- I once suspected this is a false lead, but heard some counter-arguments that made me doubt that. But I forget where that left off exactly. My first question came after looking over the discrepancies and noting they were one hour too early - perhaps exactly - to match with the opposition story. It seemed some time-zone confusion and/or variance with the recent DST time change could explain it. Has this been ruled out? Sorry, I'm not sure myself. The other option, proven or not, always seemed dubious to me; a bunch of people were gassed or sent in to act like it, an hour before the planned attack? That would show planning, and a lot of faith. What if things didn't line up right to openly claim the attack? What if the explosions on video couldn't be managed, or matched-up right, or there was no jet pass even nearby at the right time to help their story? The smartest option always seemed; plan it out with the deaths, wait for the exact time of an expected jet pass near by, launch the rockets, release their special effects fog, cause any genuine open-air exposure, and/or send out the actors to put on nebulizer masks, move the bodies to presentable spots and present them, all at the right basic time on the right day. But if something this important was proven, then it would be. I should probably know that with more certainty ...
Khan Sheikhoun, 2017: suggested points
Obviously without a full grasp of all points, I would presume anyway to offer this imperfect roster of seen suggested points of evidence.
KSS1 - wrong wind: as eagerly pre-explained above, this is a crucial fact and lucky break that cannot be challenged, and yet one that hardly anyone has noticed.
KSS2 - inflicted wounds: Strange, acute injuries appear on several of the victims, especially children. Some to the head and neck appear likely fatal, some others are perhaps unseen, and some are superfical or to the arms, for example. In at least two clear cases, young children suffered serious wounds to the face and head after "rescue" by the White Helmets, suggesting those lauded "heroes" caused or allowed this further harm. It's not obvious due to the apparent randomness involved, but this all might suggest abuse of hated prisoners and/or deliberate killing those the gas didn't finish off (because the Islamist opposition forces, the White Helmets, and the poison were all on the same side in this effort).
There's a well-illustrated precedent for this in other CW attacks reported by Islamists in Syria. In the big one at East Ghouta, 2013, a man in Kafr Batna who survived the gas was placed alongside the dead in a morgue, until he finally died of a very bloody neck injury inflicted right there between allowed images. (my video explanation (graphic), based on findings from the late Dr. Denis O'Brien.
KSS3 - other signs of managed massacre of captives: In-line with suspicions of a managed massacre, there was in Khan Sheikhoun a notable lack of in-situ body imagery; corpses appear suddenly in the beds of pickup trucks and at the White Helmets mud "hospital." It's said several hundred were affected, and nearly 100 died, yet victims are never seen in their homes or where they fell in streets. That could just be a curiously total omission, or suggest they were killed centrally at a place the responsible terrorists don't want us to see, and were then driven to White Helmets places for the public footage.
Some 250 civilians, including women and children, were reportedly abducted just days before, during brief occupation of nearby towns led by HTS (al-Nusra Front). The shown victims are quite likely from a different pool of captive, or you'd think the government side would know about the match-up and prove it somehow. You might think wrong if so, but still ... This might connect, or just illustrate the general idea - the Islamist terrorists freely abduct their fellow citizens, especially along sectarian lines, but often targeting Sunnis who support the government or just oppose the militants' agenda. Then, in this case and others, they seem to use abducted citizens to provide the corpses for their CW allegations, if not for other allegations as well.
However, detailed research disproves the widespread claims that Alawite civilians kidnapped in Latakia province in August, 2013, were used as the bodies for the Ghouta massacre later in the month. Widely-parroted claims had a few dozen of them gassed and shown in videos filmed near Latakia, perhaps in Turkey. However, no proposed visual matches were definitive, and several were clearly wrong. The Latakia victims were mostly accounted for after, and were always too few in number; the bodies shown for Ghouta numbered well into the hundreds, and most can be geolocated to the Damascus suburbs, clear across the country. Therefore, I reason the captives used for that were from a larger, less-known pool of prisoners held in that area, presumably by the dominant Jaish al-Islam, who are heavily implicated in that massacre. A similar less-obvious source for the victims may be at play in Khan Sheikhoun.
KSS4 - radar questions: After some deeper analysis, this is not the smoking gun lead I once thought, but still a valid question: this jet seen on radar passing near or perhaps over Khan Sheikhoun - can it possibly explain the gravity bombs dropped on those four spots (three explosive, one sarin), when "witnesses" said it took two jets and more passes, and even then disagree on flight directions and fail to account for the pattern of impacts ? Not likely, and it can't explain the alleged spread exactly against the observed wind.
KSS5 - various problems with "eyewitness" accounts: This guy counts as a more distant "witness" - Mahmoud al-Hasna makes several weird and suspicious claims. But there's just one compound example of a survivor-witness from my own work, on a crucial player in the story: Abdelhamid Al-Yousef, analysis with a lot of detail and sub-posts, including a number of serious issues raised about his testimony and claim to have lost hos wife and two young children. Others have done more work on him and other alleged witnesses, reported fatalities, and relations between them, but I'd have to dig for where.
KSS6 - Event timing: This is mentioned for Douma, but applies for KS as well. A number of context points are included here at ACLOS, working to similar effect on the Trump end: amid signs of terrorist plots to re-emerge sarin allegations, Trump threatens to allow Syria's government to stay in power, until Damascus has to go and change that and force a Trump attack, here for the first time (with Douma it was just a repetition)
KSS7 - alternate origins for "sarin fog": I find this all very important, but so far it's hard to get others to see it. There were several accounts of a caustic, poisonous fog coating the town, reportedly the deadly sarin itself. In videos of the day, vast fields of white mist or smoke can be seen coating most of the town, including the area of reported deaths (besides other areas with no reported deaths). It loks a bit like a natural fog, but has no natural reason to appear in those areas, and so suddenly (span between videos, presuming same day, in 15-30 minutes). My analysis clearly suggests this mist originated in two or more "wrong" (unexplained) locations - one well south of the city, and one in the north, where I think it can be seen starting to form in the accepted some plumes video (connecting the fog scene to the same day). This "fog" spreads east and north from these areas on that wrong wind noted in the other videos (same wind also support same day). Possibly toxic, but surely not sarin, this fog seems to be released as a visual effect for their CW attack fakery, but it makes little sense by immense volume and observable release points. For whatever reason, it was never clearly explained with videos linked to accounts, and the whole fog issue went virtually unnoticed, not to mention poorly-understood. (Initial fog explanation - refining the origin of the SW fog field) Below: panoramic views from roughly the same spot, facing south or SSE, showing post-attack (smoke plumes slant left = east, north slant not so visible), then 15-30 min. later (fog spreading north and east, but less so at the flat hill ("tel"), which casts a 'wind shadow' at billowing fog origin just NE of it.
End suggested points. See also: Indicter article
Douma, 2018: raised points
D1: (from the intro) "...Douma was attacked with chlorine gas bombs that were dropped from a helicopter onto the roofs of multi-story apartment buildings, where they exploded, propelling chlorine gas down into the building, and killing the people inside."
- This is all just alleged and could stand clearer marking to that effect, and refers only to the one uilding dubbed location 2. Noting how Gabbard reportedly worked with Prof. Postol, I have to wonder - did he still, recently, confirm all that so it could be stated as fact? If so, that's bad for the cause of truth.
FWIW no one alleges the cylinders "exploded" - the tanks or valves were damaged or just opened, (having suffered extremely minor damage maybe months earlier...) and pressurized 'liquid' gas would pour or drip out, depending, instantly expanding into chlorine gas that would slowly expand and flow - outward with pressure and downward with gravity - to cause its almost totally non-fatal irritation of the eyes and airways of anyone it rolled over. Most or all of them would cough, leave, recover. Chlorine has no neurological effect, is not an incapacitant. It burns, mildly to badly, compelling and allowing escape to fresh air, normally. 35 dropping dead is entirely unexpected.
D2: "A leaked engineer’s assessment, which was completely omitted from the OPCW report, contradicted the report’s findings."
- Indeed, and it did so in a way that reads completely sane to those of us who had already reached about the same conclusions from the available evidence. It's hard to deny the conclusion of all reasonable observers; these cylinders did not fall from the sky to cause this damage. They were simply placed near some damage in hopes it would look right. But as the FFM's engineering sub-team found, it didn't look right. The clearly political decision to suppress these findings, to allow for unchallenged nonsense, is a major scandal.
To this observer, it seems this kind of thing happens frequently at OPCW. The difference with the Douma case is for once the scandal was exposed from within by whistleblower(s). While we're in their debt for the clarity this leak has brought to the picture, it's worth noting we were able to largely solve the crime on our own from open sources, as we have before. Going forward, more people yet have to be prepared to do the same in the near totality of cases (including Khan Sheikhoun) where we never get such a lucky break.
D3: "A cylinder dropped from a helicopter would not have lodged partway into a hole punched into the roof, but would have penetrated the roof and possibly one or more floors below."
- Indeed - it could hardly make a hole while also stopping outside of it. Those remaining bits of re-bar in the top layer didn't stop it - some force went further down, scattering the concrete below that, breaking the rebar below that and bending it in past 90 degrees. For a heavy, air-dropped gas cylinder to do that with just a tap to the surface before tipping over there just defies the laws of physics.
D4: "The size of the hole was too big. An explosive device in the shape of a cylinder dropped from height would have created a hole just slightly bigger than its own diameter."
- "The hole" at location 4 is, noted by the engineering report and others (including WGSPM's Michael Kobs) as too small to allow entry for the assembled gas cylinder bomb alleged. At the central loc. 2, I'm not aware of the hole size being an issue. At entry it's close to the right size, while being wider at the bottom of the roof slab, likely because it was excavated by an explosive blast wave radiating outward. Note that a blast wave, unlike a physical object, could do all this while passing around some rebar, leavit it intact as we see. It's such details of the damage more than its basic size that raise problems.
D5: "The hole in the roof at Douma is consistent with an artillery rather than an airstrike, which suggests that the cylinder was placed in an opening created by an earlier artillery attack, and its contents released into the building below."
- "The hole" at loc. 2 is well-noted as such, loc. 4 not as clear but most likely the same. Loc. 2 has extreme rebar bend, with some rebar intact, radial disruption of concrete, marks from that (secondary fragmentation), all most consistent with a blast wave, not an object, moving through. There's also a clear patterns of primary fragmentation (sharp, deep, unifrom "shrapnel" holes in a dense, radial pattern) around the balcony, between first impact and the hole in the cieling the cylinder was found next to. It's obvious this was an explosive device, not just a heavy thing hitting. Below: the damage as seen from inside/below, then the primary fragmentation as seen above.
D6: "The official OPCW report failed to include the discovery of a nearby weapons lab that contained several identical yellow gas cylinders, which clearly suggests that the terrorists themselves were in possession of chemical weapons devices."
- Hm. It did include mention of the place where one cylinder of a different kind was seen. The lab didn't contain sarin or any key ingredients. It might still relate, depending what toxin actually killed these folks, but it's far from proven. This is a bungled point for team Tulsi. It deserves that "Hm."
Douma, 2018: suggested points
DS1 - Damage mismatch at both locations demonstrates likely planting of cylinders at sites of prior blast damage, as pre-explained above and largely grasped by Rep. Gabbard and thankfully by many others now. We're on track here, but not finished.
DS2 - Unexplained mass death: Only chlorine-related compounds were found at location 2, no sign of a quickly fatal agent like sarin. As explained above, chlorine is rarely fatal and never kills instantly. There's no place at loc. 2 that looks like the gas chamber they could use to make chlorine more deadly. Therefore, the chemical findings suggest the victims were probably killed elsewhere in what we're calling a managed massacre, using what could be called a gas chamber, with the toxin unknown. Verbal accounts and much visual evidence suggests the same - the bodies were brought here already dead and arranged at the site. Khan Sheikhoun had no victims shown in-situ (where they fell). In Douma they tried to show that, perhaps to avoid the same criticism, but it had to be faked, because they still don't want us to see where they actually died.
Below: what may be the last 4 victims unloaded, laid along the curb prior to placement, barefoot -shoe or boot prints in the dust (best seen on the metal hatch lid, center), to no bare footprints or signs of crawling out. The woman appears more like she was being dragged in by the elbows. The older man of course is on a stretcher. Prepared for early rescue? Whatever kind, it seems that effort was abandoned suddenly - perhaps the 7 left on the truck were dumped somewhere else nearby to flesh out the 42 bodies they were able to confirm? Inconclusive, but compelling...
An older woman apparently dragged some by the ankles, just outside the ground floor washroom entrance - note how someone took this door off its hinges and set it aside...
... which would make it much easier to drag in a number of bodies. And this is where the largest portion of them was found. For example, they might pile some bodies on a big rug (below, marked with green) and drag it right up to the shower, to help wash them for some reason (see below). They might use rags, a green air-filter mask, etc. and maybe just leave these clues all laying there.
DS3 - "mask of death" An unexpected and strange point of great power, that's still hard to grasp, is best explained here - yellow-brown discoloration and red irritation corresponding to a liquid flow from the mouth and nose across the upper face, except for an area around the eyes just the size and shape of small swimming goggles, in fact darkest and sharpest in a ring where they would be. Looking a bit like a "domino" mask, this pattern only appears clearly on some half-dozen victims, but various mixtures of its sub-features appear on many more, suggesting to me these clues apply to all seen fatalities; it left no visible signs in perhaps 1/4 of the cases, mixed signs in at least half the cases, and a very clear "mask" pattern in the other 1/4. This pattern has no natural cause to appear on living or dead people, but it's perhaps universal in this pool. This is a unique and valuable clue to their manner of death.
Below: the basic pattern, extracted from the clearest example, a woman, with colored areas singled out, the rest faded. Lighter or non-selected areas had faster flow of fluid = less contact time = less discoloration. Where it slows, it's darker: under the goggles and behind that, rolling around the goggles, perhaps pooling before dripping off the brow or forehead. Here the exclusions show likely goggles, and tight straps across the cheeks, crossing up the nose (besides a likely random bit of something on her nose). These areas were unaffected.
So again, eyes should be red, considering burned lungs and also irritated, discolored skin, but they aren't. Natural clenching of the lids can't explain it; that usually happens after first contact, so even the best efforts would yield many pink eyes, and some very red, perhaps even worse-off under closed lids swollen with mysterious orange fluid - this does happen, if the exposure is severe. The only possibility anyone has suggested is eye protection. It needn't be, but might be, as total as that from goggles, which the exclusions in the mask pattern already indicated. Exactly why that was decided on isn't obvious, but we have at least a few thoughts on it, and it's essentially proven, motives aside.
Any goggles and face-straps, etc. were of course removed at the gas chambers, or prior to display, constituting a cover-up. Furthermore, a denied last-minute washing of victims' faces and hair suggests an effort to erase these signs of - perhaps - a botched mass-killing.
This theory raises many questions, but I'm confident they are or can all be answered. A more formal assessment of the clinical signs, pathologist opinions, etc. is in progress, and will hopefully pave the way for this important lead to be understood and taken up by others. So even if one is tempted to, one should not discard this notion until seeing the better explanation.
DS4 - staging of hospital scene: From Hassan Diab to Riam Dalati, pretty much everyone agrees on this. Therefore, I haven't bothered with much detailed consideration of the whole hospital scene, nor even a ready list of good links. I looked enough to note no red eyes, so no serious chlorine exposure - a common pattern suggesting these scenes are often faked with unaffected children, who are given carrots over sticks for taking part (as described amply in relation to the Douma incident). And why would the opposition need fake scenes to show supposedly poisoned people? Because they lacked real ones they were willing to show?
DS5 - timing: noted fairly well.
DS6 - enemy family targeted? A rare family name - Bakriyeh - is given for 12 of the 35 identified fatalities. The same name appears in the records of the Douma-based VDC at an average rate of about one death per year prior to that, including an opposition military commander, Mohamed Diab Bakriyeh. In 2012 he founded a Douma Martyrs' Brigade to fight government, but by late 2014 DMB had come into open conflict with the ruling Islamists of Jaish al-Islam (JaI - Army of Islam, Saudi-backed). In fact the Douma Martyrs' Brigade spearheaded the most ambitious rebellion against JaI which, sadly, was crushed in short order. All fighters who survived re-grouped and sided with the Syrian Government, helping them shut down the rebellion they were once part of.
Fascinating story. That began a few months after commander Bakriyeh's death in battle, as they say, on 4 April, 2014. But a likely brother (Haitham Diab Bakriyeh) is listed as dying the same day from random "shelling." Perhaps they were both murdered over growing friction with JaI that had the commander's family targeted. Years later, at least 12 other apparent relatives died at once in this shady incident. A few names include other parts of the commander's, suggesting a close relation. Considering the unclear number of maiden-name wives of Bakriyeh men, and husbands of Bakriyeh women (where he and any children they have will bear a different name) it's possible a majority of the dead, or even all of them, were relatives. Were they kidnapped and finally gassed to death over the same friction initiated in 2014? We can't be certain these are even the real names, nor that it relates in such a way. But it seems likely they are and do, and the power of this possible lead begs for more exposure and, if possible, some further investigation to clarify the matter.
DS7 - bigger massacre claims called-off: Several sources gave a rising death toll that climbed to 70, 85, 100+, 120, 150, all with expected rises to come. Finally an estimate of 180 sounded final. A couple reports of 185, 190, and a rounded 200 appeared, but nothing higher, before the White Helmets and all 'credible' soures settled on "more than" 42 killed, but no more than that verified. (35 with IDs, 7 without). (see-sawing death toll reports) A year later, the story stood except for knowledgeable Islamist insiders reviving the other count to claim 187 people had in fact were killed. Until the 2019 allegations, no one indicated how many "more" than 42 had died, or explains why the rest were never "confirmed" despite so surely existing. Were those higher numbers made up or were that many truly killed? Did they suffer this botched job and "mask of death" even worse, too horribly to show off or even "confirm"? That's plausible. Did they realize too late they couldn't lace the site with sarin, had to drop sarin and claim chlorine, and realize 187 was far too many deaths to claim? That's possible, considering even the number they settled on is about 40 times bigger than it should be.
End suggested points. See also: Indicter article
Conclusion
The Tulsi 2020 article explains in its intro: "There is evidence that both the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad as well as the armed opposition groups aligned against him have used chemical weapons (CW) during the Syrian war."
That's a safe starting point prior to flipping the picture right-side up like it deserves. But we should note that "evidence" is a word with little inherent meaning - some kinds are strong and true, others can be totally fake. Furthermore, evidence in both directions - or even actual guilt in both directions - doesn't mean an equal division of blame. One side is probably more guilty, or exclusively guilty. The evidence for government use tends to fall apart on closer inspection, in favor of use by terrorists in false-flag events. If there's any one side to blame, and I suspect there is, it's the foreign-backed Islamist "opposition."
"The bottom line is that I and thousands of my brothers and sisters-in-arms went to war in Iraq based on false intelligence and lies from our leaders—our president, our military officials, and our political leaders. We should have been skeptical then, but we weren’t... "
Weren't we? There was a lot of skepticism then, as there is now. But soldiers have to fight either way, and missiles fly regularly, sanctions are imposed somewhere with a shrug every week, etc., all regardless of the truth. It takes more than skepticism to prevent false wars. But what it takes does have to start there, and start well.
"... The cost in blood and treasure was thousands of lives lost and trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars down the drain. I believe it is my duty, as a veteran and member of the House Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Affairs, to make sure such false intelligence and lies are never again used to justify use of American military force."
Yes, or something towards that end. Never again, and ensured - that would be quite a feat. It's hardly ever been stopped before. What the public and its servants need is this kind of skepticism, followed up on, and more of it. We're several steps behind the warmongers and their lying lackies and need to not only catch up but get out ahead of them.
Congresswoman Gabbard, responsible assistants on such matters, thank you for your time. I hope I didn't take too much for too little gain. Any intriguing points that seemed worth a fuller explanation, let me know.
- Adam Larson, independent researcher
Spokane, WA
August 10, 2019
@CL4Syr on Twitter
e-mail: caustic_logic@yahoo.com
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