The US, UK and France launched missile strikes against Syria in April 2018, after ‘White Helmets’ and jihadist rebels accused the government of a chemical attack in the town of Douma. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons eventually published a report saying its investigators may have found traces of chlorine, which was trumpeted as proof of the accusations in mainstream Western media.
Emails published by WikiLeaks on Friday, however, show that a senior OPCW official ordered to “remove all traces” of the engineering assessment questioning the report’s conclusions. Moreover, the observations by toxicologists who ruled out exposure to chlorine or any other chemical weapon could have caused the symptoms shown on White Helmets videos were likewise buried.
“It’s difficult to look at that email exchange without thinking at least there’s a whiff of a coverup,” security analyst Charles Shoebridge told RT, adding that the documents show the OPCW has been “subverted and led astray.”
While the experts seem to have done their job honorably and properly, it looks like the OPCW officials twisted and manipulated their work to fit the pre-ordained narrative, on behalf of the countries that carried out the strikes, and have been backing the militants in Syria against the government in Damascus.
Afshin Rattansi@afshinrattansiTrump used #FakeNews promoted like this to bomb Syria. https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/850368736414576640 …
Bernie Sanders
✔@SenSanders
Syria’s Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons against the men, women and children of his country makes him a war criminal.
The OPCW “right now looks awful,” Max Abrahms, a scholar at the Quincy Institute, told RT. “They have a lot of explaining to do.”
US officials seem to have pressured the OPCW to find the Syrian military responsible for the alleged chemical attack “regardless of what the actual scientists on the ground discovered,” according to Abrahms.
It is notable that the US, UK and France launched their missile strikes before the OPCW investigators even reached Douma. The final report, published in March 2019, provided an after-the-fact rationalization for the attack.
“This is a very conscious coverup at the very high level of the OPCW,” former UK intelligence officer Annie Machon told RT. It is unlikely that the OPCW will ever issue a follow-up in light of the new revelations, much less that any apology will be forthcoming from London, Paris and Washington.
The bigger problem, Machon points out, is that the OPCW suppressing evidence means that the chemical weapons watchdog is no longer credible. If they can’t be trusted about Douma, why should they be trusted about, say, the use of “novichok” in Salisbury just weeks before that incident?
London has accused Moscow of “highly likely” trying to assassinate former double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the nerve agent, which Russia has denied. Meanwhile, the very same people who blamed the Syrian government for Douma – including the “open source intelligence” outfit Bellingcat – have promoted the official Skripal narrative as well.
For Shoebridge, the implications of the apparent cover-up go far beyond OPCW’s credibility, also raising the question of who might have been behind what amounts to a war crime in Douma.
“If a chemical attack did not kill all of those victims, mostly children, then what on earth did?” he told RT.
This question becomes especially relevant now, as the Syrian army is making a push against the last militant stronghold in Idlib. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is warning Damascus to back off and accusing Syria, Russia and Iran of being “on their way to killing thousands of innocent civilians.”
WikiLeaks
✔@wikileaks
Email from the Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, demanding deletion of dissenting engineering assessment: “Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]… And please
remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/#OPCW-DOUMA%20-%20Release%20Part%204 …
Trump is making his decisions “based on what is a pack of lies,” former US diplomat Jim Jatras tells RT. These outrageous claims come from Al-Qaeda terrorists that control Idlib, and their public relations arm, the ‘White Helmets,’ but are taken at face value by the Western mainstream media.
“Any rational person would want the Syrian army and the Russian air force go clear out Al-Qaeda from this area,” said Jatras.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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wjabbe:
“Slavery was legal” as if the enslavement of MY ancestors just wasn’t a big deal! Well, your “enslavement”, just a fraction of my ancestors…well, that’s legal in today’s world, too! Just suck it up, since it’s legal, right? Gordon Duff is 100% correct about the RT website: It’s become a platform for White Supremacists & their irrational hatred of black people.
A paraphrasing of Alan Moore’s Watchmen is so appropriate here:
“But the country’s disintegrating! What happen to Conservatism? What happen to Reagan’s Dream?”
“It came true. You’re looking at it.”
Is this really any different than our behavior in virtually every war from Viet Nam , WWiI, WWI and back to the Civil War where psychopath Sherman seemed to enjoy killing and raping innocent civilians in and around Atlanta and Georgia? Sherman evidently got his kicks out of causing unarmed civilians to suffer. All of these thugs, Sherman, Grant and Lincoln are unindicted war criminals too. Lincoln’s whole personality changed during this war which was the first ratcheting up of federal power against all the good intentions of the Founders. Monuments to this war criminal are the ones which should come down.
Dishonest Abe was “elected”, if you can dignify it with that, by 39%. How is that for “majority” rule?
Slavery was totally legal at the time. New York was built by black slave labor. Today are not we all virtual slaves to government working over half of our lives to pay taxes to a totally corrupt war government committing horrible false flag attacks against its own citizens.
What was the official statement. That would be the one from the man with his finger on the trigger.
‘daddy they are gassing the children’ Ivanka
President Donald Trump – I ordered the bombing.
Moral of the story. Act boldly don’t let your daughter down. F— all Be tough and decisive. Show those terrorist bastards who’s boss. THIS IS OUR FOREIGN POLICY. Act tough, show ’em who’s boss. No diplomacy. No intelligence. And the world shakes! Laughing in disgust at the most powerful nation in the world falling apart before their eyes. And still most Americans don’t believe they are lies.
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