Eric Zuesse

On April 18th, Washingtonsblog received from MIT’s Dr. Theodore Postol a detailed scientific analysis of the source-material for the White House Report on the gas-attack that occurred in Syria on April 4th. In it, he essentially accuses the Trump White House of having perpetrated a fraud so as to ‘justify’ its bombing of the Syrian Army’s air base. His article (along with a brief introduction about Dr. Postol’s background in the subject) can be found here: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/67102.html

My summary of it by excerpts from it, highlights certain passages with boldface type, in order to expedite a reader’s understanding Dr. Postol’s analysis.

The cover-letter of his full analysis states:

This analysis contains a detailed description of the times and locations of critical events in the alleged nerve agent attack of April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria – assuming that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued on April 11, 2017 correctly identified the alleged sarin release site.

Analysis using weather data from the time of the attack shows that a small hamlet about 300 m to the east southeast of the crater is the only location that could be affected by the alleged nerve agent release. Video data of suffocating and dead victims lying on the ground shows a different location from the predicted sarin dispersal site if it had been correctly identified by the White House.

The conclusion is that the nerve agent attack described in the White House Intelligence Report did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR.
The findings of this expanded analysis can serve two important purposes:

1 It shows exactly what needs to be determined in an international investigation of this alleged atrocity.
In particular, if an international investigation can determine where casualties from the nerve agent attack lived, it will confirm that the findings reported by the White House Report are incompatible with its own cited data.

2 It also establishes that the White House Report did not utilize simple and widely agreed upon intelligence analysis procedures to determine its conclusions.

This raises troubling questions about how the US political and military leadership determined that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack. It is particularly of concern that the White House Report presented itself as a report with “high confidence” findings and that numerous high-level officials in the US government have confirmed their belief that the report was correct and executed to a standard of high confidence
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This is Dr. Postal’s fourth report on the matter. Each of the prior three reports is also linked-to in the latest article.

Highlights of this, the fourth Postol analysis of the White-House-alleged Syrian gas attack, include:

"The conclusion of this summary of data is obvious – the nerve agent attack described in the W[hite] H[ouse] R[eport] did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the W[hite] H[ouse] R[eport].”

"At the time of the sarin release, the temperature of the air was about 60°F and the sun was at an angle of only 8° relative to local horizontal. This means that liquid sarin left on the ground from the dispersal event would remain mostly unevaporated. By 11 AM, the temperature of the air had risen to 75° and the angle of the sun relative to horizontal was at 66°. Thus, one would expect that the combination of the rise in air temperature and the sun on the crater would lead to significant evaporation of liquid sarin left behind from the initial dispersal event. The air temperature and sun angle are such that the area around the crater should have been quite dangerous for anybody without protection to operate.”

“Media is hiding this from us! Share this with the world.” [Photo here is shown, of an alleged rescue-worker at the alleged crater of the alleged sarin-bomb. Caption is:] “Man without protective equipment standing next to the crater at 10:50 AM on April 4 —roughly 4 hours after the sarin release alleged by White House Report”

"Thus, the Hamlet area 300 m downwind of the crater is the only area where mass casualties could occur if there had been a sarin release at the crater as alleged bythe WHR!”

"Unprotected civilians with clothing that have logos of the Idlib Health Directorate are tampering with the contents of the crater that the WHR alleges was the source of the sarin release. All of the indicators point to a ruptured tube that could have contained no more than 8 to 10 liters of sarin. This is the only container shown in any videos from this scene.”

"What is absolutely clear from the videos is that the location of the sarin dispersal site alleged by WHR and the mass casualty site that would have had to be generated if the sarin dispersal actually occurred [in the way that the White House alleges], are not in any way related to the scenes of victims shown in the other videos. The conclusion is obvious: the alleged attack described in WHR never occurred.”

"Final Comments

This abbreviated summary of the facts has been constructed entirely from basic physics, video evidence, and absolutely solid analytical methods. It demonstrates without doubt that the sarin dispersal site alleged as the source of the April 4, 2017 sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun was not a nerve agent attack site.

It also shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only mass casualty site that could have resulted from this mass attack [as alleged by the White House] is not in any way related to the sites that are shown in video following a poisoning event of some kind at Khan Sheikhoun.
This means that the allegedly “high confidence” White House intelligence assessment issued on April 11 that led to the conclusion that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack is not correct. For such a report to be so egregiously in error, it could not possibly have followed the most simple and proven intelligence methodologies to determine the veracity of its findings.
Since the United States justified attacking a Syrian airfield on April 7, four days before the flawed National Security Council intelligence report was released to the Congress and the public, the conclusion that follows is that the United States took military actions without the intelligence to support its decision. Furthermore, it is clear that the WHR was not an intelligence report."

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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