On today’s BradCast: Just days after the April 4 chemical attack in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, the U.S. launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the air base said to have been where Bashar al-Assad’s government launched an alleged sarin attack that reportedly killed some 80 civilians, including many children. But how much of the evidence of the chemical attack has actually been independently confirmed? My guest today charges that the evidence offered by the U.S. to justify its military response is entirely false. [Audio link to complete show is posted at end of article below.]
The horrific aftermath of the release of the nerve agent was seen in videos played around the world, and said to have been the impetus for Donald Trump reversing his position on Syria, which he had, for years (and even just days earlier), said we should stay out of. Nonetheless, without debate or Constitutional approval by the U.S. Congress, we launched a military assault on yet another sovereign nation and today the Administration announced a series of tough new sanctions against the regime. But there has yet to be any findings from an international investigation of the incident, and evidence supporting the allegations that it was Assad, not the rebels or terrorists he is fighting against, responsible for the attack, was laid out only in a brief, April 11 report issued by the White House — notably, not issued by the U.S. Intelligence services.
That report, charges my guest today, Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), cannot possibly be accurate. Furthermore, he says, the April 11 White House Report (WHR), as he details in now four separate analyses he has issued since its release, “was not properly vetted by the intelligence community.”
“The report contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft,” as the White House has claimed, Postol finds in his initial analysis [PDF], based on phographic evidence of the crater said to have been caused when Syria dropped a chemical munition. “In fact, the report contains absolutely no evidence that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this atrocity.”
Postol is a physicist and rocket trajectory expert who formerly served as a science advisor to the chief of Naval operations at the Pentagon, has been vindicated a number of times over the years concerning similarly skeptical analyses of claims concerning the U.S. military’s use of Patriot missile technology in the first Gulf War (see Charlie Pierce’s 2005 Boston Globe profile of Postol here), as well as the Obama White House claims about Assad’s alleged chemical weapons attack in 2013. He joins me today to explain his analyses and to speak to the remarkable lack of skeptical coverage by the U.S. mainstream media regarding the WHR on the April nerve agent incident.
On the day of Trump’s retaliatory attack on Syria, Peter Ford, Britain’s former Ambassador to Syria expressed skepticism on BBC News about Assad being behind the chemical attack (“Assad may be cruel, brutal, but he’s not mad. It defies belief that he would bring this all on his head for no military advantage,” he told BBC at the time.) But in the U.S. mainstream media, no such skepticism has been explored, despite well known misleading intelligence used to justify U.S. military action in the recent past, such as during the lead-up to the Iraq War (which, in turn, opened the door to so much of the violence and war in the Middle East ever since, including in Syria.)
“We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report,” Postol argues in his first report on the April 4 incident, issued after studying photographic evidence presented by the White House or otherwise publicly available. “What I can say for sure herein is that what the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true [emphasis in original] and the fact that this information has been provided in this format raises the most serious questions about the handling of our national security.”
Even the New York Times, which, Postol tells me today, used to cover his analyses in detail, have not bothered to contact him this time — even to debunk his claims — for reasons that remain unknown, despite his past track record. In fact, I’ve been able to find little if any coverage that attempts to debunk his assertions in response to the WHR.
“It is very disturbing to see how uncritical the mainstream press has been of this matter,” Postol tells me today. “From my point of view, this may be the most serious event — with regard to American democracy — from this whole incident. Because the only way American democracy can function is if the press performs the role of providing accurate information, and also raising questions if those questions deserve to be looked at. And there’s no question here that the questions deserved to be looked at.”
Writing over the weekend, in his 4th report [PDF] on the matter, Postol charged: “Without an independent media providing accurate and unbiased information to the nation’s citizens, the government can do what it chooses without being concerned about the reactions of citizens who elected it. The critical function of the mainstream media in the current situation should be to investigate and report the facts that clearly and unambiguously contradict the government’s claims on this matter.”
Though we are hardly “mainstream media”, we do our best today to fill a bit of the vacuum left by the woefully credulous U.S. reportage on this event — particularly since it’s virtually impossible to know what really went on in the absence of independent investigation — as the U.S. enters yet another war in the Middle East…
CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_TheodorePostol_SyriaChemicalAttack_042417.mp3]
Postol’s reports on the April 4 chemical incident, to date:
- 1) “A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report” [PDF, 4/11/2017 (Note: Postol confirms his typo in the header date-stamp. His first report was issued on April 11, not April 17.)]
- 2) Addendum to Report #1 [PDF, 4/13/2017]
- 3) Video Evidence of False Claims Made in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017 [PDF, 4/14/2017]
- 4) Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the Alleged Nerve Agent Attack on April 4, 2017 [PDF, 4/21/2017]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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What we, the world can do without integrity and honesty. how can we stop lyres and rogues. America was a nation, respected and honored but America made an about face hiding behind bushes, ( Weapons of mass destruction).
God bless you and your voice should be heard loud and clear in every corner exposing every one who lies abroad and at home.
I might have believed Assad might not be behind the attack, but
Postol lost all his chance at convincing me he wasn;t a jackass, when he titled it “The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur” i.e. not only was it perhaps not Assad, he is claiming no attack with nerve gas occurred at all.
Well, sorry. They’ve done chemical analyses and found sarin.
So the very title of his report is refuted.
In fact, there was no nerve agent attack at all. Assad obviously gave up all of his chemical weapons a while back after the last US-sponsored false flag attack in Ghouta.
He had no chemical weapons to use. Also you cannot drop those weapons as bombs out of airplanes. You have to shoot them as artillery. And anyway, the planes that Assad used could not have dropped a bomb like that anyway.
There are no signs of nerve agent poisoning among the victims. The victims were pro-government supporters killed with carbon monoxide by Al Qaeda in this false flag attack. 200 government supporters were kidnapped two weeks before this attack. A number of them have already been identified.
There was no attack in that city. That bomb crater is from a bomb, not a “chemical weapons bomb.” Chemical weapons need only 1/2 pound explosives to detonate them. That crater could not possibly be from a chemical weapons bomb.
There were no Syrian aircraft in the sky before dawn on that day. The media say the attack happened at night. Assad does not use his air force at night. They do not have the capabilities to operate at night. Assad and Russians attacked later at 11:30 AM. This is the attack they are calling the chemical weapons attack. It hit a rebel storehouse.
The director of the CIA told Trump that the CIA said that Assad did not do this attack. Trump went ahead and bombed anyway. Many sources in the US military state that there was no chemical weapons attack on that day. All intelligence officials were locked out of the meeting to shoot the missiles the next day because the intel officials all said there was no attack.
The symptoms of sarin poisoning are not evident in any of those victims. Instead it appears they have died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Warren D. Smith @2 writes:
Facts: None of the four reports which Brad linked to in the body of this article say that. In the very first report, Professor Postol wrote:
Professor Postol did issue a report on April 18, that Brad did no link to, that erroneously said otherwise. However, unlike our current President, who never admits error, Postol published his April 21 report in which he said he had “quite stupidly misinterpreted the wind-direction convention” and that “if there was a significant sarin released at the crater as alleged by ghe White House Intelligence Report…the immediate result would have been significant casualties immediately adjacent to the dispersion crater..”
Later, citing other evidence including video of a dead goat “upwind” from the crater, Postol questions whether the crater identified in the White House report was actually the source of the sarin gas dispersal.
He concludes:
Postol’s scientific conclusion that the sarin gas did not come from the site identified by the White House report is not the same thing as concluding that no attack occurred.
Fabulous interview, Brad.
Warren D. Smith @2 said:
Who is “they”?
Ashraf @1 and Ernie @5: Thanks, both of you.
Brad – Outstanding segment with Ted Postol! This is the kind of gutsy interviewing/reporting that our so-called mainstream media ought to feature first-up on their front pages.
I previously covered the first three Postol reports. MI Scientist: White House Lied, Manufactured Evidence to Justify Tomahawk Missile Strike.
Of course, there is a light side via Bill Maher who said the military told Trump they were launching tomahawks, and Trump replied, “Wouldn’t it be better to use missiles?”
Canning said
” None of the four reports which Brad linked to in the body of this article say that.” Wrong, here is the link
https://bradblog.com/Docs/AnalysisOfTheTimesAndLocationsOfCriticalEventsInTheAllegedNerveAgentAttack_TheodorePostol_042117.pdf
and the very first line says
“IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO
‘The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur:’ ”
He said it. Brad cited it. Canning, you are simply wrong.
Lindasy said: “Assad obviously gave up all of his chemical weapons a while back after the last US-sponsored false flag attack in Ghouta.
He had no chemical weapons to use”
I do not know why this is so “obvious” to Lindsay.
Who it the “they” who did chemical analysis finding Sarin gas?
Various Euorpean countries,
e.g.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-sarin-opcw/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/global-watchdog-sarin-was-used-in-deadly-syria-attack/2017/04/19/be6cf350-2528-11e7-836b-e91b113bf060_story.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/06/522896831/turkey-says-autopsies-of-syrian-victims-show-evidence-of-sarin-exposure
http://news.sky.com/story/syria-chemical-attack-british-sample-tests-detect-sarin-10834634
And by the way, the symptioms I saw myself on video did NOT look like CO poisoning and DID look like
Sarin poisoning, as anybody with the faintest acquaintance
would know.
Warren @9:
Thanks for the links. I’ve seen some of them (or similar) previously. The two most recent (CNN and WaPo) are similar, and site the OPCW’s assessment that they “found indications that [3 victims] had been exposed to Sarin or a Sarin-like substance” and “Asked by CNN whether its evidence amounted to proof that the Syrian regime carried out the attack, the OPCW said that it was still investigating the incident”.
The CNN report also says “UK scientists had already found that Sarin or a similar chemical had been used in the attack,” which seems to refer back to one of the earlier reports you cited, from Sky News, that finds “UK analysis of samples from the Syria chemical attack has detected sarin or a sarin-like substance, Britain’s UN ambassador has said.”
So, from that, both the OPCW and UK, reportedly, found a “sarin or sarin-like substance”. The SkyNews article was from 4/12 and reports:
But Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, said he was “amazed at this conclusion”.
“No one has yet visited the site. How do you know that?” he added.
So, the OPCW cites the UK assessment which, in turn, cites the U.S. assesment that was made without any actual evidence (or, evidence that is questionable, at least according to Postol) and, made without “visit[ing] the site”, according to Russia in the above.
All of that, of course, came after the U.S. bombed Syria (in violation of both U.S. and international law.)
(Moreover, in one of the reports, Russia also cites an OPCW investigation of a chemical attack alleged to have been carried out by rebels in 2016 that, apparently, the OPCW has still not completed — so Russia is questioning how it is that OPCW already has a conclusion on the attack that took place on April 4, 2017, but not the one from 2016. FWIW.)
Nonetheless, with all of that said, even if the claims of a “sarin or sarin-like substance” are eventually proven accurate — which would not surprise me — how does any of it support your original claim that “the very title of his report is refuted”?
You seem to be objecting to Postol’s use of the phrase “IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur”, in which he observes:
…
It is now clear that the publicly available evidence shows exactly where the mass nerve agent poisoning would have occurred if in fact there was an event where significant numbers of people were poisoned by a nerve agent release. This does not rule out the possibility of a nerve agent release somewhere else in the city. However, this completely discredits the WHR’s claims that they knew where the nerve agent release occurred and that they knew the nerve agent release was the result of a airdropped munition.
In other words, as I read the above, he is not saying that a nerve agent attack (of whatever sort) did not occur, as far as I can tell, but that the “The Nerve Agent Attack” specifically cited by the White House Report (launched via that crater in question, from a munition dropped there by an aircraft) “Did Not Occur”. He says none of it rules out the “possibility of a nerve agent release somewhere else in the city”, but that’s not the attack cited by the WHR. At least that’s how I both read his report and understood him during the interview.
And with all of that said, don’t you think this mess should have all been sorted out before the U.S. bombed a sovereign nation that there is still ZERO evidence (as far as I have seen) to prove that the sovereign nation in question was actually responsible for it? (Particularly given the many other reasons not discussed here, but discussed a bit more on today’s follow-up show, questioning what logical or strategical sense it would make for Assad to invoke international outrage by using Chemical Weapons in a war he has been largely winning on ground over recent months?)
Don’t you think that the U.S. media ought to be asking questions about all of this??? They haven’t, so I am. Seems to be the job of a journalist.
Brad @10 responding to Warren D. Smith wrote:
A subtle yet vital distinction that Mr. Smith either overlooked or refuses to acknowledge.
Brad Friedman @ 6: “[They’ve done chemical analyses and found sarin.] Who is ‘they’?”
Inter alia, the Turkish coroners, per ABC News 4/7/2017: word came from “the Turkish Health Ministry that autopsies on several victims of Tuesday’s attack confirmed the use of the nerve agent sarin in violation of international law….”