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The World Socialist Web Site reports
In 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre in which US troops slaughtered over 100 Vietnamese men, women and children--a story the US media at first refused to touch. He was also among the first to expose the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. And he exposed the Obama administration's lies about the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as the fabricated claims of a Syrian chemical weapons attack in 2013 that brought the US to the brink of another war.
[...] A full week has passed since the publication by a major German newspaper of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's thoroughgoing debunking of the false claim of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack on April 4. The supposed atrocity by the regime of Bashar al-Assad was used to justify the April 6 US cruise missile strike on the al-Shayat air base. At least nine civilians, including four children, died when 59 Tomahawk missiles rained down on the base in western Syria.
Since the German daily Die Welt published Hersh's article, titled "Trump's Red Line", on June 25, its contents have been subjected to a total blackout by the major newspapers and broadcast and cable news networks in the United States.
Hersh's account makes clear that, not only was there no objective evidence to back up Washington's charges of a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, the fact that there was no such attack was known to the US military and intelligence apparatus even before the cruise missile strike was ordered.
"The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives", Hersh wrote. "Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all US, allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region."
Basing himself on sources within the US intelligence apparatus who spoke on condition of anonymity, as well as access to "transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4", Hersh establishes that a Syrian government plane dropped a conventional 500-pound bomb, not a chemical weapon, on the site of the meeting, which included "representatives of Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra".
The target was a cinder block building that served as a "command and control center" for the so-called "rebels", who used its basement to store "rockets, weapons, and ammunition", as well as chlorine, fertilizers and insecticides, Hersh reports.
"A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the US military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground", he continues.
"Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely", a senior adviser to US intelligence told Hersh. "Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: 'We have a problem and let's look into it.' He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria."
[...] As the "mainstream" media has assumed the role of mouthpiece and stenographer for the capitalist state and its military and intelligence apparatus, its journalistic standards have continued to plummet, a tendency highlighted by last week's walkout by hundreds of New York Times workers in protest over the drive by the flagship of the capitalist press to "streamline" its editing process through the destruction of dozens of copy editors' jobs.
One result of the media's slavish subordination to the government and Wall Street has been the effective blacklisting of Hersh, who used to write regularly for the New Yorker magazine.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by KGIII on Tuesday July 04 2017, @05:34AM (12 children)
One of the things I like about Soylent, is that the articles often come with a good list of citations.
I notice this lacks all the citations. I am not even able to make a qualified opinion as to the veracity of this story. I simply don't know - and don't see the giant list of citations that often come with Soylent entries.
I have not now, nor will I ever, say that I am dissatisfied with this site. Truth be told, I don't actually expect much from it. And, frankly, that's okay. I can expect a very specific skillset with this site. That's fantastic and this isn't a complaint. I'm just curious if you're expecting us to take this at face value, without serious citations - given the claims within, and expecting us to do stuff like find our own sources? Hogwash...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @06:00AM (11 children)
What sort of citations do you expect? While much of the mainstream media has begun to use anonymous sources as the default, this is the sort of story where if the sources were revealed it is extremely likely that they would face retribution.
The article itself not only references numerous sources, putting Hersh's very significant reputation on the line, but also reference numerous logical inconsistencies in the mainstream media reporting. For instance numerous outlets/groups reported a smell of chlorine around the site of the bombing even though Sarin is odorless. It also explains why our attack was incredibly inept. These sort of inconsistencies and questions are the sort of things that our media should themselves be seeking the answer to. But instead of having an independent investigative media we have some sort of strange bastardization of collusion and propaganda that seems to exist only to try to drive home certain views to the exclusion of all else. It's like people forget how the media behaved over Iraq. The evidence there was dubious at best, yet they were pounding the wardrums louder than anybody. The repeated claims of '16 intelligence agencies have proof Iraq has and continues to develop WMD' ring eerily similar to the claims of today - just with a new target. The only difference this time is we don't have a president so eager to drag us into yet another war.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday July 04 2017, @08:28AM (3 children)
I sympathise but there's a logical fallacy in your argument. Certain sections of the media and politicians may have been wrong about Iraq but that doesn't mean the same ones are wrong about Syria. I'm older and wiser than when the Iraq WMD claims were being made, and I'm much more critical of what I hear, see and read. Some sources are more trustworthy than others and some sources present their information in a way that's open to honest scruitiny and they usually stand up to that scruitiny. I don't know what to make of this yet.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @09:18AM
It does, however, mean that anyone who honestly believes the propaganda this time had better still be in Iraq digging through the desert looking for weapons of mass destruction.
Anyone who isn't still digging, but still claims to believe the propaganda must be assumed to be a part of the propaganda machine.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @09:19AM
It's not about right or wrong. People and organizations make mistakes, and that is fine. It's about a complete lack of investigative vigor in lieu of simply repeating the official line.
In Iraq the media was completely unified in their pursuit for war. There were many major questions that needed to be asked, 'intelligence' that needed to be questioned, and various issues that needed to be investigated. These were, at best, mentioned in passing with no pursuit given - even though these questions and issues were undoubtedly the single most important ones of the time. It is the same thing today. There were major logical flaws in the official story of what happened in Syria. Why was there no investigation here? Why was the official line reported without even mentioning contradictory information?
Why was there no attempt to explain basic questions? For instance literally 1 week before the bomb attack, the US representative at the UN stated that removing Assad was no longer considered a top priority. Assad, for some time, had been making steady progress retaking and stabilizing his country. If the status quo continued he would be undoubtedly come out on top. Why would he put all of this at risk with a chemical weapons attack that was a complete lose-lose option? Even if he wanted to, for whatever reason, go kill some random civilians - then a conventional weapons attack would have resulted in minimal to no possible retribution. The chemical attack stood a very real chance of dragging the US openly into the war (to say nothing of other countries) which would have all but certainly resulted in Assad's demise and certainly the loss of control of his country. Every single thing that is officially reported about that attack relies almost entirely on an appeal to authority. Logically it makes no sense and the evidence is questionable, at best.
I don't care if the media gets it 'right' or 'wrong.' I'm not expecting prescience. What I am expecting is something even vaguely resembling due diligence and investigative pursuit. A media that simply unquestioningly reports war messaging is not a media - it's a propaganda machine. I hate using that term since it is so incredibly loaded, but that is exactly what this is.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 04 2017, @03:19PM
I'll remind you that during and after the Iraq war, the warhawks insisted that the reason they didn't find WMD's in Iraq, was that Saddam shipped it all out to Syria.
I was and still am skeptical of that claim. If Saddam had a credible weapons stock, he almost certainly would have used that stock against the US. He was already marked as a dead man by the US, he couldn't have made things any worse for himself by using NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) warfare against us. I have other reasons for being skeptical, but that leads the list.
So depending on your political views, those reports of heavy truck traffic into Syria will support the claim that Syria has those NBC weapons available. Or, those reports will help to support the view that "Gubbermint is lying again!"
Also, consider UN says US-backed opposition, not Syrian regime, used poison gas https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/07/syri-m07.html [wsws.org]
And, of course, that last fits right in with the fact that we actually SUPPLIED Saddam Hussein with all the materials needed to manufacture chem and bio weapons. Gotta ask ourselves - "Is our government supplying chem/bio to the rebels, so that we have an excuse to invade Syria?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 04 2017, @12:26PM (2 children)
The story always stank. The most obvious problem - assuming you know what Sarin is - was watching the footage of the rescue workers immediately after the bombing. Sarin is a contact poison, and yet the rescue workers were handling debris, victims, etc, with their bare hands. No protection whatsoever.
It was always clear that the US government was - once again - lying through its teeth. My best guess is that this is just a continuation of the desire to topple Syria's government. It's just such a problem, though, because you can't be seen to be on the side of ISIS, so you need some other excuse to attack the government forces.
Toppling governments worked out soooooo well in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Maybe Syria could launch missiles at D.C.? Oh, but that would be terrorism or something, whereas when the US does it, it's a just and righteous act.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @01:10PM (1 child)
It's still the same reason why they went into Iraq and it will be the same reason they are readying up to go into Iran.
$$$
Oil & gas and sphere of influence. As it currently stands, and the US does nothing, Syria will revert back to its old regime and continue to be in the influence sphere of Russia, which somehow has regained it's status of enemy of the US. If in several months IS is defeated and routed out of Syria, Syria and Russia will make it very clear to the US and the world that the US no longer has any business there and should start packing up. However, war is very profitable for the US rulers. War and control over oil & gas. I'm also suspecting that the US hopes to get a reason to invade Iran out of the Syrian conflict. So far it hasn't happened, so they hope dragging out the wars in the region will eventually give them some reason.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:01PM
It's not really oil and gas. That's just the first level deception. The real reason is that Israel does not want any of its neighbors to have stable, reasonable governments or civilised populations.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 04 2017, @12:32PM (1 child)
Investigative journalism costs money. If you aren't willing to pay for it, for sure it won't happen.
If you are willing to pay for it, there's no warranty it will happen, propaganda and lies are far cheaper and potentially more profitable on short term.
Oh, I bet he'll wag the dog alright. It's only 2017, Twitter is enough for now. We'll see closer to 2020 how the things evolve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @06:56PM
And if I were willing to pay for it, I'm sure my grand contribution would only line the pockets of management, and not a dime would be spent on any journalist.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:22PM
at the time the attack was ordered, the evidence was weak.
But after i read the OPCW report (linked in my post below) I am pretty convinced sarin was involved. I tend to trust the measurements of the chemicals more than anonymous sources.
Just because some chlorine and stuff was also detected (it may well have been from stored supplies, or as byproduct from their sarin synthesis) does not mean at all there was no nerve agent used.
I agree with all you say about the media etc, but I still think Hersh is wrong here.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:23AM
Actually, no, it doesn't. For example:
We have no chain of communication by how Hersh allegedly learned of this statement. And notice how he just takes Russian/Syrian claims at face value:
That just may be a transparent excuse for the flight path of a plane that deployed sarin.
In other words, an outside source told Hersh this, supposedly. Who knows who the source worked for at the time, or even if the source was real.
The shtick here is that Hersh supposedly is speaking to intelligence sources in the US government. Then their admission would be typical adversarial evidence that things aren't as presented since one side is admitting evidence harmful to its side. But that only works if those sources exist and really are working for the US government. It wouldn't be hard for either Russia to fake such sources or for Hersh to outright lie.
All I can say here is that piling your leadership on top of such a pile of hazardous gear and chemicals as is alleged here would be remarkably foolhardy. Hard to believe that such leadership could survive in the environment of the Syrian civil war.
Which let us note would also be ideal weather for a sarin attack.
Sarin need not be pure in order to kill. For example, natural gas has a strong odor because of an impurity added to give it a scent - methane and ethane, the principle components of natural gas, don't have an odor. So just because some chemical mixture has an odor of chlorine doesn't mean that it doesn't have sarin in it.
Finally, I'll note the complete lack of physical evidence to support Hersh's assertion. Where's aerial photos of the bombed regional headquarters? Supposed the UN has determined that victims were exposed to sarin. That seems fairly strong evidence though it doesn't rule out sarin stored locally by this rebellion group.
What's Hersh's counterclaim? Anonymous experts who may not exist and who may not work for the US, if they do exist.