August 31, 2023
(rough - edits pending)
Still Un-Refuted
I got sidetracked with this so it's now been 10 years and 10 days since the Ghouta chemical massacre in the wee hours of 21 August, 2013. The Syrian military allegedly fired rockets and shells containing sarin nerve gas on opposition-held areas in the Damascus suburbs of East and West Ghouta, killing hundreds of civilians - reportedly as many as 1,100, 1,429, or even 1,700. (I can attest to a visual minimum of around 500, mostly geolocated to Ghouta, and I suspect the true number is around or over 1,000) It was the deadliest chemical weapons attack of the war or ever, aside from Halabjah in 1988.
And yet, as many now complain, no one has been held directly to account or adequately punished, assuming this would be the Syrian government. They did already have to surrender their CW program, at least supposedly, to avoid US military strikes, and military aid to the insurgents increased due to the incident, among other detrimental effects. But none of the economic sanctions saddling the Syrian people, for example, were directly in response to this attack, but that could well change. No arrest warrants have been issued over it. And of course Assad was not deposed - there was no "ultimate price" paid. Folks are saying that needs to change.
The always-amazing Aaron Maté recently reminded his followers on Twitter (now "X") "Today is 10th anniversary of the Ghouta chemical massacre in Syria. US blamed Syrian gov't, but all evidence points to sectarian death squad rebels. That's why Obama didn't bomb. There are Western officials who know more about Ghouta than has been publicly disclosed. Just as the OPCW leaks exposed the Douma deception, perhaps they will find a way to tell the truth about Ghouta."
He followed with a shorth thread, concluding it with this note: "A 2021 open-source study from @MichaKobs , @CL4Syr and others traced all missile impact locations in Ghouta back to the most likely launch spot where they all intersected: a small area within insurgent-controlled territory. No one has refuted it."
As one involved in that study (I'm CL4Syr), I can boast that this study (embodied in TWO reports) is not perfect but actually pretty damn amazing. The material writes itself with the unfolding of reality, which is apparently pretty damn amazing - we're just there to transcribe it. Improvements can and have been made, but it remains the definitive work on the E. Ghouta volcano rocket attack.
Here at this blog I assessed the initial efforts to discredit it (general) (Prof. Scott Lucas in some detail). These were mainly irrelevant ad-hominem attacks, suggestions that we were bad people so our work was probably all wrong, or whatever. Essentially: "the findings could be true, for all we care, but these are such bad people with such dubious motives and characters - [we were called "Nazis"] - that just to spite them, you should go ahead and assume it's all wrong, or just refuse to even care. Take the risk of approving and continuing the coverup of this crime - the deliberate chemical mass-murder of several hundred Syrian citizens, including hundreds of women and children. Don't even worry how likely that risk is."
Such people are keenly aware that "Assad" and his "regime" and the people of Syria that rely on them need to be held accountable and punished further - punish them more - steal more oil & wheat, forbid rebuilding or any business interactions or any normalization, then maybe bring the war back in. To that end, guilt for as many crimes of the war as possible needs to be kept on Assad, by whatever fake news stories or backroom deals that requires, - especially as the alternative blame would tend to fall on foreign-backed "opposition" fighters and terrorists. Why complicate that imperative with any size a question?
And a question the size we offer ... these people don't want that in anyone's mind, nor any of its associated details. Discussing the evidence just breathes life into it. Better to embargo the evidence into silence, or you could say better to "suffocate the truth," Put it in a bag, perhaps mark it "Nazi," or something to that effect, and throw it in the river.
A few started to challenge the actual evidence early on (see general post), but not very well, considering the many supporting layers of it in our study. German (I think) regime-change activist Kostja Marschke is an extra-prolific critic who does engage the primary evidence, and at least pretends this is what drives him to the familiar blanket derision. His opinions don't matter much, but some. He's no slouch when it comes to declaring fraud over our work, even including a few valid questions raised along with dozens of bogus ones, with a pretty obvious gatekeeper kind of agenda.
But his efforts have offered more passed tests than we've gotten from everyone else combined, and merited a whole post already, besides mentions in the first debunks post, and now this post as well. Technically, he's been at it for years. Just recently, he's raised several bogus points based on imagining hard facts from unclear pixelated satellite views (grass where there should be concrete, no grass where there should be), reading some 3D models too literally and pretending these win some conflicts with the cases they're made to illustrate, not to replace, and other stupid tricks to invent all kinds of supposed fatal flaws.
He never stops to re-assess the balance of evidence in light of each debunk, pretending there never was any evidence except the one point he pretends to disprove at the moment, and maybe for comparison, a few others he remembers casually chuckling over. He'll say our "entire theory relies on" X which he finds wrong. And it also relies solely on Y, and on Z, he says at other times, and separately it relies totally on AA, BB, CC, and so on. Each basis is clearly and incredibly wrong, he says, with frequent typed indications of laughter. He makes a repeated show of kicking each solitary support out from under us, always supposedly knocking us down, when we've supposedly been down from blow 1. We should be ground deep into the dirt by now, to hear Kostja boast. Yet we remain worth all the effort to pretend, over and over, to have finally disrupted our actual, upright position.
Aaron Maté - in another recent reminder - had noted how "No one has refuted" our study. Marschke replied that it is "one of the most laughable "studies" ever produced" and essentially refutes itself. This baseless hyperbole is typical of his whole performance. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Two Top Reasons
Marschke selected just 2 favorite arguments to show Aaron's readers how "laughable" our work is:
"1) The evidence for the field being "insurgent-controlled" is that a tank "cautiously" moved in an allegedly surrounding area 15 months after the attack. That's it, that's the entirety of the "evidence" for that claim." (post)
Also: "This is exactly why I've blocked Kobs: He's a liar. Look at his reply to my rebuttal: He just simply lies about the date of the tank video (The only "evidence" from his "study" supposedly showing opposition control). Not disclosed in the "study" either, by the way."
There is no reason to "disclose" any "lie" about the video date. Co-author Michael Kobs said in a separate tweet that the video in question (from ANNA News) is from "August 24, 2013." I've said the same on a few occasions, following his lead on a point I hadn't followed. That was wrong, but we honestly misunderstood co-author Chris Kabusk's explanation, as accurately put in the report, citing a relevant date wrongly.
The video was posted about a year after the attack and might be recent or older - it compiles images of a whole military campaign to reclaim the wider area, running perhaps for months. But it shows damage to a certain building that, Kabusk decided and no one has disputed, did not exist yet in the August 23 Google Earth satellite view. So the video is from August 24, 2013 OR LATER, and perhaps months later. Someone more read-up on the course of the fighting could offer a decent guess for when, but it's not a pressing issue.
The salient point is the Syrian Arab Army was shooting towards this field from the north, as if opposition militants controlled the area, at some point at least 3 days after the chemical attack. That stands as evidence for opposition control on 21 August, although a longer time span would allow for possible back-and forth where the SAA - other details permitting - could have been in control of this field on the 21st.
Marschke suggests regime troops might have had control or access on the night of the attack - but of course this field had nothing to do with the attack (right?), so ... it just shows how wrong we are to make such a claim based on one video of unclear date.
But it was never the only evidence. Michael and I got sloppy with this point partly because it was never major or central like Marschke pretends. It was just a bonus illustration of the well-informed and generally-agreed situation that Marschke is pretty well alone in questioning. The fact that he doesn't seem to realize that makes me feel I really wasted too much time on this poser.
Michael replied: "I love such attacks from behind a block. But your claim is BS. For eight years, hordes of investigators (including Eliot Higgins) have investigated the Ghouta attack, but you're the first to question the line of demarcation. Do you have any valid reason for this?" I think Kostja un-blocked Michael then - some debate ensued. Michael showed Charles Wood's 2014 map as used in both our reports and available at A Closer Look on Syria, but with approximate launch spot added.
This map was based on numerous primary sources (published maps, reports, videos (notably by ANNA News), satellite imagery). As Wood explained for my report: “Contact lines are indications based on insurgent and ANNA videos and my training in basic infantry tactics. Narrow contact lines between Police College and Qaboun, and Syronics and Qaboun are an estimate based on no reported serious damage to either institution.”
The only real difference between these maps is in the upper part of black-dash area on Wood's map. This had tanks present on 23 August (Google Earth satellite view), likely a new development amid a fast-moving offensive that only started on the 20th. Bellingcat maps assume a presence here already on the 21st while Wood and I doubt it, although it is fairly possible, and likely enough in my opinion.
That minor dispute is only somewhat near our field in question. Neither map includes the field in question as government-held. This isn't gospel or certain fact, but a well-informed guess, with the disputed ANNA video just going to support that this field was rebel-held that night, and for some time after, probably continuously.
This "entirety of the evidence" claim is so stupid and easy to disprove I suspect it's no conscious deception - Marschke just wasn't paying good attention. He saw the note that this was the only video we had so close to the field itself, took it to that to mean it was the only evidence there was regarding the local control situation. He should know better by now, if he knows this case like he pretends to, after years of supposedly disproving us over it.
"2) The methodology on how the trajectories were "measured" by the study is laughable, too. Investigators on the ground couldn't measure the impact direction, but Kobs tried to do it using the size of bricks. Lol." https://twitter.com/KostjaMarschke/status/1688992180164001793
When I asked what he meant by "couldn't measure" - he meant the 2 sites out of 3 they visited in E. Ghouta but did no measure for, finding it "pointless," as he put it - not exactly impossible. https://twitter.com/KostjaMarschke/status/1692495054252728478
They actually said the other 2 sites “do not present physical characteristics allowing a successful study of the trajectories followed by the rockets involved, due to the configuration of the impact places."” We found one impact to an apartment wall and balcony extremely vague, but the other on a rooftop more useful, pointing northwest - and the investigators apparently agreed somewhat, citing it to Joby Warrick as if they had used it to find the northwest firing area. https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2013_553.pdf
But this brick issue refers to the garden wall impact investigators never even looked at (above, Wall 2, in magenta). Using a brick as a handy measure works fine when you're looking at basic proportions to set a basic angle for mapping purposes. The rocket impact in the ground is about 3 bricks right of where the rocket punched through the wall, and about 1.8 bricks out from the wall. The actual brick size doesn't matter - the proportion is roughly 3 to 1.8 (also = 5:3) of whatever unit.
People on the ground could do it better, but no one did, so this is the best we can do (Michael's work, and I follow and agree). It's not exact, but pretty good - a visual reading that sets an approximate angle that, like the others, points back roughly to the same field. Marschke doesn't even explicitly challenge the measure itself, or venture his own measure or method, Is it more like a 2:1 angle? Determined how? He doesn't care. It points to "hold Assad accountable" and it's politically biased and "insane" to look for yourself and find any differently.
He: "Just listen to yourself with your 1.8 bricks as measurement. Listen to yourself and consider what a person who isn't incredibly politically motivated would think about this. It might explain your disagreements with [UN investigator Åke] Sellström."
Me: "Any person who wants to form a basic idea of what happened. What's wrong about that? I'm s'posed to feel shame or something? F off w/such efforts. Shame. my dude."
He: "Any person who would want a "basic" idea" about what happened would start making insane measurements based on bricks?" He just couldn't explain what's actually insane about using a handy measurement unit to establish a basic proportional angle. He apparently doesn't even understand what we did here or how hollow his effort was. He just took another random chance to call us biased and insane.
"Disagreements with Sellström"
On the side with the above, another thread emerged - my "disagreements with Sellstrom." Pressed to specify, Marschke explained: "You haven't noticed how your entire theory relies on Sellström being wrong about both measured impact angles"
No ... it INCLUDES the UN-OPCW report being wrong about the one. The other doesn't matter. Maybe he thinks we argue the D30 howitzer was firing on Moadamiyah, and that both fronts of attack were from this one field. I'm not sure where he heard that, as we did discuss it some, but I don't see where it made it into the final collective report, and it sure isn't in my side report. I for one never agreed to this point, but then I didn't follow the evidence closely. Maybe "Sellstrom" was wrong about that angle and maybe it was fired from here. Marschke says "The D-30 doesn't support the caliber used in Moadamiyah," so not if he's correct. I really don't know and don't greatly care. My own take on our theory has no reliance or opinion on this point.
Anyway, our theory does include "Sellström" being wrong about the site 4 angle, and we definitely noticed that. We also noticed that he just signed off on it. The OPCW's representative, Mr. Scott Cairns, is a more likely source for the measurement and/or reporting of the rocket angle. And for what it's worth, Marschke - once adequately pressed - has to agree that this reading IS wrong after all. Did Marschke ever notice that his theory relies on "Sellström being wrong" about the same angle?
Me: "No more talk until after you've given some answer to the 8-degrees-blind-trust question. Review my latest tweets as needed. Otherwise, you've become completely pointless to me."
I've asked him several times to affirm or refute this alleged reading or to comment on his ally Eliot Higgins doing both. Until this point, Marschke had ignored the requests to press his urgent interrogation about a supposed shadow or something.
begin reply: "...As for your question: I don't think that angle is either 8° or 39°."
That's something I can my teeth into, finally. He thinks everyone was wrong until he had his layman's look. How clever! He gets to maintain we're wrong, even as he admits so was the UN-OPCW investigation - or at least he agrees that the printed and visible angles clearly do not match. Marschke hesitated for a while, but finally agreed his theory also includes Sellström being wrong. It's OK for him, he assumes, because he's still blaming "Assad" like good people do. He doesn't see a "conspiracy" to frame Assad. And neither do we, for sure. We admit it might be some coincidence in which they published an angle 30 degrees wrong that, intersected with their other angle, indicated a regime-controlled artillery base many sources like HRW and NYT pushed at the attack origin. It was a handy political effect, but possibly achieved on accident.
Kostja Marschke is not the first regime-changer to grudgingly or mutably acknowledge the fact of this angle mismatch. As related at Rocket Man: Just Blindly Trust the "UN Azimuth", Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins did as much in at least two comments from January, 2014, having seen all the images and some views of a quality 3D model produced by Chris Kabusk: "the UN azimuth for one of the rockets doesn't match the 3D model on those maps, seems 50 degrees off to the north." - "Based off the geolocated munitions the point of origin is from the north (even the UN one they said was from the NW)"
By September, Bellingcat was in effect and, perhaps coincidentally, Higgins had changed his tune. He seemed to be in basic agreement with Kabusk, until he noted this new estimate added to his emerging picture of NW origins, in fact near the site of an August 24 sarin attack on SAA troops - as the likely spot we identified in 2021 is. This had to be sitting poorly with Higgins. The overall angle, as Chris put it, is "like UN's presumed flight path but off a bit and 1.5-2.5km ranges." Higgins replied incredulously: "You still think the wall Volcano was measured wrong by the UN?" He was perplexed, if not appalled, to hear the real angles described as "off a bit" from what the trusted "UN" had reported. It's as if the reading had been shown correct somewhere since January, but that can hardly be. Higgins was insisting on deference to something he knew to be false. He would later accept praise from others for "replicating" the UN-OPCW finding with his open-source work that always pointed more to the north. And it was never very good - most of the good parts were copied from Kabusk (and 'til recently containing one of his errors we've since corrected).
Ok, back to Marschke. He gave some explanation for his disgreement with Sellstrom and everyone.
"Why do I think that? The shadow of the rocket...is at an [angle] > 90 degrees relative to the wall. As a layman, [I would] think the sun would've had to come from an almost orthogonal direction relative to the rocket to achieve that, given how small the shadows of the inspectors are. Where did the sun come from, though?"
"That's tough to say, given that we don't have the [exact] time the video was taken. But there's a clue: We can see the inspectors take a soil sample a few seconds later. Only two soil samples from the report match that, taken at 14:34 and 14:38, respectively."
"That also explains why there's not much of a shadow from the wall.
It also passes my eye test better than your angle which, needless to say, is quite clownishky [sic] measured."
"Now, does that say definitely where the rockets come from? No."
He was too responsible to specify an area or direction, of course, based on such limited information. But what WOULD his angle say? I read him wrong in haste, thinking he saw the rocket as roughly perpendicular to the wall like its shadow was. I had some laughs about that, then read it more carefully. ESRL Global Monitoring Laboratory - Global Radiation and Aerosols (noaa.gov) gives me, for August 24 at 2:34 PM a reverse azimuth (shadow angle on flat earth) about 27 degrees clockwise from north, or 20 deg clockwise from perpendicular with the wall. Orthogonal = at a right angle. A rocket orthogonal to that sunlight would be about 20 deg. from parallel. OK. I'm not sure how he reasoned it out, but that's actually not terrible. Not 8 or 39, but something like 20, right in between - just different enough to say no one got it right until Kostja had his look. Not even the trusted UN-OPCW inspectors.
That's 3 ways. Just now I tried another method that occurred to me. The tail end is visible at a 45-ish angle. With the wall running basically ahead, the circular tail would appear at a 2:1 vertical-horizontal ratio at a proper 45° angle and 1:1 ratio if parallel and seen from behind. 1.8:1 as seen is 1/5 of the way between those, so I reason 9°. less than a 45, or around 36 degrees. Exact 3D details maybe notwithstanding, that's probably close to the facts, and very close to the excellent measure we still go by. Again, the "precise" measurement endorsed by the trusted UN-OPCW was about EIGHT degrees from parallel. We'd see that rocket almost entirely from behind.
Note this isn't a vertical object, ground not level - shadow cast too complex for me to read. Here's a modeling Michael did including the rocket angle we estimate and the angle of sun at the time, plus his estimate for mound shape, all seeming to explain the video view quite well. This might help understand why the "perpendicular shadow" is a misleading illusion.
We have 4 different ways to say the angle is 55-60, ~45, 38/39, or ~36. That's a wide spread, but this totally wins over a single quick estimate that lets Kostja Marschke pretend he's the first one to ever get it kind of right. This is, as I said, vague, disingenuous, and very poser-ish. I could ask Marschke to "Just listen to yourself with your "rocket is kind of at a right angle to the sun" and consider what person who isn't incredibly politically motivated would think about this. It might explain your disagreement with Sellström and everybody else." His theory relies on Sellström being wrong and, as he had just explained, such disagreements might be motivated by the same extreme political bias that has one undertaking crude measurements and making insanely bold claims. Huh. He might be onto something after all.
But he has a solution where the OPCW got it right and only Chris. Michael and I - along with Eliot Higgins, Richard Lloyd and WhoGhouta - got it wrong. Or actually, we got it right enough or not and it doesn't matter - the original angle was just as reported, and simply never seen. It's an article of faith.
As I follow, he suggests the inspectors must've measured 105/285° "precisely" with "no form of lateral bending." first, then pulled the rocket aside, leaving it aligned 30° different than before - or he thinks more like 12° - and coincidentally pointing to the same field 7 other rockets point to - or he thinks pointing to a different spot, when the rest all point ... wherever we don't say they do. And then all known images were taken after that strange manipulation - the original correct angle Kostja proposes was never seen. It's mythical. And the photos and videos where it's 30° different, after whatever change ... it still shows no form of lateral bending nor any sign I've noticed of the engine having been pulled from its original angle.
That sounds plain absurd, but he had, in fact, just imagined this as a way around the whole problem.
"The inspectors could've moved the rocket after measuring the azimuth, for example, to inspect the side of the warhead. That renders everything you and I said moot anyway." https://twitter.com/KostjaMarschke/status/1692581076395262063
It's a very imaginative solution that probably sounds soothing to his ears - it's all "moot", like it was just a dream. I bet he'll settle on it as the answer to this whole problem. Inspectors coincidentally MADE the tube wind up pointing to that field 2km away, even as 7 other rockets also point there. Oh, and the 7 others must've been moved around too, coincidentally to point back to the same spot, rather than to their actual origin(s), which ...
He'll decided that the firing spot can never be known. It's way too complex and stuff, and will remain a mystery where faith alone matters. Kostja Marschke knows what good people should believe, and how that belief should "moot" the facts of the 3D world. Of course, we inhabit the 3D world, and are somehow interconnected with everyone else in it, and also with some hundreds of Syrian civilians who no longer inhabit it, after this not-so-mysterious crime 10 years and 10 days ago claimed their lives.
Done Talking
Me: "bump on this as more interesting. @KostjaMarschke what angle were you thinking, when you decided to question Sellstrom & everyone? 8 deg. from parallel would show the tail end at 1.2:1 ratio, and we see 1.8:1, = ~36 deg. or roughly what we got looking right down the tube (38/39)"
Marschke: "Nope, no more talk until we're done with the field."
We would never be done with the field until at least one of us stopped talking, and I was already just about ready to quit the game anyway. So I replied:
"Well I'm done with that, so we're done. I have you at something vague and disingenuous where you're the first person to get it right, but not specified, where the shadows and time mattered somehow, and you were apparently clueless. I'm good w/that." (I figured out the best reading, above, after that comment.)
He: "Of course you're done with that" because he was totally winning, listing absurdities in our work he claimed to have proven.
Me: "yep, your big ol' list I finally got bored with. Go play with that."
He: "Of course, you're not out of arguments, you're just "bored"."
Me: "just sick of it, for a bit before that ultimatum. I know it could go on forever and you'll always "win." Let's just cut to it. You "win" as always."
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