Category: Chemical Weapons

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

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UN weapons inspectors have found conclusive evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria, by the insurgents:

Inspectors have conclusively identified mustard gas as the toxic agent used in an attack by insurgents in northern Syria this summer, according to a statement released Friday by an international chemical weapons watchdog.

The findings by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are the first confirmation that non-state actors have used mustard gas in Syria’s four-year-old conflict. They also are the first confirmation of the use of the toxin since the Syrian government agreed two years ago to destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons. Since then, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been accused of carrying out many attacks using chlorine gas, a choking agent.

The OPCW did not specify which group used mustard gas in the attack, which the organization said killed at least one person, an infant, on Aug. 21 in the village of Marea. Doctors and an aid organization in the village north of Aleppo blamed the attack on Islamic State militants who for months have been battling rebel groups in the area.

The use of mustard gas by either the Islamic State or rebels, or both, is a significant escalation in a conflict that has killed 250,000 people and displaced millions.

“In this case, the team was able to confirm with utmost confidence that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard, and that it is very likely that the effects of this chemical weapon resulted in the death of an infant,” the OPCW statement said.

Sy Hersh wrote about this over a year ago, noting that Turkey has been actively supporting chemical weapons development by ISIS and other Islamic insurgents in Syria.

The manufacture of mustard gas is not that difficult, particularly with state support.

I Can Do This Pissing in a Bucket of Bleach………

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After screwing it up by using Fascists to stage an at best marginally effective coup in the Ukraine, it looks like the Obama administration is
trying to use new dodgy allegations of chemical weapons use to try to create support for US action:

The United States has indications of the use of a toxic chemical, probably chlorine, in Syria this month and is examining indications that the Syrian government was responsible, the US State Department said on Monday.

 “We have indications of the use of a toxic industrial chemical” in the town of Kfar Zeita, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

 “We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she told reporters.

Earlier this month the Syrian regime and opposition forces accused each other of carrying out a chemical attack in Kfar Zeita, located in the embattled country’s western-central province of Hama.

 Opposition activists reported that dozens of residents suffered from symptoms of suffocation after air units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad targeted the town with explosive barrels allegedly containing toxic material.

 Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande said that his country had “information” that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has continued using chemical weapons, although Paris lacked proof, AFP reported.

 “We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof,” AFP quoted Hollande as telling the Europe 1 radio station.

And yes, you can create chlorine gas by peeing in a bucket of bleach.

Unlike the (blatantly false) allegations that the Syrian insurgents lacked the capabilities to make Sarin, making chlorine gas is pretty simple: (Pee has a low yield)

  1. Run DC current through sea water.
  2. Collect the oxygen and chlorine off of the anode.  (This is why, in chemistry class, they used something other than table salt, typically Epsom salt or lye).
  3. Either cool the mixture to less than -40°, or pressurize it at room temperature to more than about 100 psi. (or some combination of the two)
  4. When the chlorine condenses into a liquid, VERY carefully collect  it, and put in munitions.

Note that the provenance of the the Sarin is unclear, with Seymour Hersh detailing how the Obama administration chose to very suppress significant facts to in order to justify their abortive attempt to create a justification for a bombing campaign.

Hersh’s latest, The Red Line and the Rat Line, details how many inside and outside of the US state security apparatus are accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan of actively aiding the Islamist rebels in Syria develop chemical weapons capability.  (It appears that he objects both to Syria’s secular character, and wants the country to be a client state of Turkey).

Note that we have tapes of senior Turkish security officials planning an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb, technically Turkish soil, so as to justify direct Turkish (and possibly NATO) intervention.

Count me as tremendously dubious of the latest chemical weapons revelations.

    New York Times Walks Back Its Breathless Endorsement of Obama’s Dodgy Sarin Claims

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    I missed it, but the Times has published a remarkably circuitous retraction of its early reporting on the so called “slam dunk” fingering the Assad regime for the Sarin attack:

    A new analysis of rockets linked to the nerve-agent attack on Damascus, Syria, in August has concluded that the rockets were most likely fired by multiple launchers and had a range of about three kilometers, according to the two authors of the analysis.

     The authors said that their findings could help pinpoint accountability for the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades, but that they also raised questions about the American government’s claims about the locations of launching points, and the technical intelligence behind them.

    ………

     The authors of the new analysis —Theodore A. Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Richard M. Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories — evaluated the exteriors of the implicated rockets, visible in videos and photographs. The analysis suggested that they were propelled by motors taken from a common family of 122-millimeter conventional artillery rockets known as the BM-21, the authors said.

     The BM-21 line is a globally abundant system of ground-to-ground rockets, colloquially called Grads, that originated in the Soviet Union but have been reproduced and updated by many countries, including post-Soviet Russia, China, Egypt and Iran. Both the Syrian army and the rebels possess them.

    ………

     “It is clear that if the U.S. government’s claims that the allegedly observed launches came from ‘the heart’ of Syrian government controlled areas, there is a serious discrepancy between the meaning of this claim, the technical intelligence it relies on, and the technical properties of this munition,” he wrote.

    Using published data about characteristics of motors in various Grad rockets and derivatives, Dr. Postol and Mr. Lloyd calculated potential maximum ranges for the sarin-filled rockets, with an emphasis on a common Grad variant’s motor.

     “The dimensions of the inserted rocket motor very closely match the dimensions in the 9M22-U artillery rocket,” Dr. Postol wrote in an email on Thursday. “If the inserted motor is the same as the standard 9M22-U motor, then the maximum range of the munition would be no more than three kilometers, and likely less.”

    That would be less than the ranges of more than nine kilometers calculated separately by The New York Times and Human Rights Watch in mid-September, after the United States had dropped its push for a military strike. Those estimates had been based in part on connecting reported compass headings for two rockets cited in the United Nations’ initial report on the attacks.

     The published range for a 9M22-U rocket is about 20 kilometers, or 12.4 miles. But the Syrian rockets carried a bulky and apparently flat-nosed warhead — Dr. Postol called it “a soup can” — whose range would have been undermined by its large mass and by drag, the authors said.

     Depending on the motors propelling different Grad models, the projected maximum ranges can vary from 2.5 to 3.5 kilometers, or 1.5 to 2.2 miles, Dr. Postol and Mr. Lloyd said.

     The longer estimates seem unlikely, Dr. Postol said, because as a sarin-filled rocket was pushed to greater air speeds by a more powerful motor, the stresses created by its non-aerodynamic shape could cause it to tumble or break apart.

    As Robert Parry noted on Consortiumnews, the Times buried the story:

    The New York Times has, kind of, admitted that it messed up its big front-page story that used a “vector analysis” to pin the blame for the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government, an assertion that was treated by Official Washington as the slam-dunk proof that President Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people.

     But you’d be forgiven if you missed the Times’ embarrassing confession, since it was buried on page 8, below the fold, 18 paragraphs into a story under the not-so-eye-catching title, “New Study Refines View Of Sarin Attack in Syria.”

    Also, Seymour Hersh thoroughly documented the manipulation of the intelligence data, noting that, “A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening.”

    This official noted the similarities to the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident.

    Let’s see, we now have:

    • Obama attempting to lie us into a war.
    • Protecting Wall Street fat cats from meaningful consequences for their acts.
    • Get out of jail free cards for tortures in the US state security apparatus.
    • What looks increasingly like a full throated endorsement of the all encompassing security state.

    This is going somewhere, but I cannot quite put my finger on it.