Here’s a set of arti­cles that should raise an eye­brow or two regard­ing evi­dence of the alleged chem­i­cal weapons attack in Douma. In addi­tion to the arti­cles by Robert Fisk and Rick Ster­ling ref­er­enced in the OP, we’re also going to look at an impor­tant piece by Max Blu­men­thal about the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS), a group that, like the White Hel­mets, has close ties to both neo­con­ser­v­a­tive forces is DC and Islamist forces with­in the rebel­lion push­ing for regime change in Syr­ia. As we’ll see, much of the ini­tial evi­dence used to con­clude a chem­i­cal attack took place was pro­vid­ed by SAMS and the White Hel­mets:

So as we should expect at this point, there were some sig­nif­i­cant gaps in the actu­al evi­dence. For instance, as we’re going to see in the first arti­cle, one rea­son the US air strikes against the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment was less exten­sive than many in the West were expect­ing and demand­ing is that the US did­n’t actu­al­ly have con­clu­sive evi­dence chem­i­cal weapons were used. And that lack of cer­tain­ty appeared to play a major role in choos­ing the scope of the attack (rel­a­tive­ly lim­it­ed) and tak­ing extra pre­cau­tions to ensure no Russ­ian forces were poten­tial­ly going to be hit.

Yes, the US gov­ern­ment is stat­ing with cer­tain­ty that chlo­rine gas was used, but the gov­ern­ment is also not at all cer­tain sarin gas was used. And as the first arti­cle makes clear, the US did receive phys­i­cal sam­ples it was told was from Douma, but there was no chain of cus­tody for those sam­ple and no access was giv­en to the site. The phys­i­cal sam­ples were all giv­en by allies oper­at­ing in the area do to that lack of access and there­fore there is no chain of cus­tody and the US had to trust those allies oper­at­ing in the area.

And as we’re going to see in the fifth and final arti­cle excerpt, that’s prob­a­bly ques­tion­ably placed trust in those allies on the ground because much of the evi­dence appears to have come from the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS). And SAMS isn’t just a big recip­i­ent of USAID funds (90 per­cent of its bud­get is from USAID at this point). SAMS is also a strong advo­cate for regime change, with ties to US lob­by­ing efforts to see the US to mil­i­tar­i­ly com­mit to over­throw­ing the Assad regime and has close ties to the Islamist extremist/al Qae­da ele­ment of the Syr­i­an rebels. So the US gov­ern­men­t’s evi­dence was based on evi­dence pro­vid­ed by a pro-regime-change al Qae­da-friend­ly group with ties to al Qae­da. Hence the chain of cus­tody issues.

And as we’re going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from SAMS was express­ing skep­ti­cism that any mean­ing­ful evi­dence for what was actu­al­ly used in the attack will prob­a­bly nev­er come out because the vast major­i­ty of the wit­ness­es left Douma for the al Nus­ra-con­trolled city of Idlib as part of the agree­ment with the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment that the rebels and their sup­port­ers could leave for Idlib on bus­es.

As we’re also going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt, part of the rea­son there is so much sus­pi­cion that it was a chlo­rine and sarin attack is that peo­ple report­ed a heavy smell of chlo­rine but the symp­toms were unusu­al for a chlo­rine attack and appeared to be con­sis­tent with some sort of nerve agent and the over­all dead­li­ness of the attack was much more severe than a chlo­rine attack. But as the sec­ond arti­cle points out, the most com­pelling evi­dence that a nerve agent was used come from video. Specif­i­cal­ly, the images of dead bod­ies with foam­ing mouths.

And as the sec­ond arti­cle also points out, there were actu­al­ly two sep­a­rate alleged chem­i­cal attacks and they were qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent. The first alleged chlo­rine attack hap­pened at about 4 PM. But it was a sec­ond attack, sev­er­al hours lat­er, that result­ed in the large num­bers of peo­ple report­ing unusu­al symp­toms nev­er seen before and not asso­ci­at­ed with chlo­rine. It’s only dur­ing that sec­ond attack that sarin or some oth­er nerve agent is sus­pect­ed and the nerve agent is sus­pect­ed because the symp­toms report­ed are not at all con­sis­tent with a chlo­rine-only attack. In oth­er words, the videos the world has seen of dead bod­ies with foam­ing mouths is not con­sis­tent with a chlo­rine-only chem­i­cal attack. That’s why there is so much sus­pi­cion that sarin or anoth­er nerve agent was used.

But when you read the state­ment from the US intel­li­gence assess­ment in the first arti­cle excerpt about the evi­dence the US based the mis­sile strike on, it only men­tions visu­al evi­dence and eye­wit­ness reports. Phys­i­cal evi­dence of a nerve agent is not cit­ed: “this con­clu­sion is based on descrip­tions of the attack in mul­ti­ple media sources, the report­ed symp­toms expe­ri­enced by vic­tims, videos and images show­ing two assessed bar­rel bombs from the attack, and reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack. A sig­nif­i­cant body of infor­ma­tion points to the regime using chlo­rine in its bom­bard­ment of Duma, while some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.”

So that evi­dence described in the US intel­li­gence assess­ment state­ment was:

1. Descrip­tions of the attack in mul­ti­ple media sources.

2. The report­ed symp­toms expe­ri­enced by vic­tims.

3. Videos and images show­ing two assessed bar­rel bombs from the attack.

4. Reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack.

Media reports, videos and “reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack.” No men­tion of analy­sis of phys­i­cal spec­i­mens, which makes sense giv­en chain of cus­tody issue.

And if you think about it, video evi­dence and media reports also suf­fer from a chain of cus­tody issue when we’re talk­ing about reports from areas where the only peo­ple allowed to give the reports are more or less on the same side as the Islamist/al Qae­da fac­tions of Syr­i­an rebels or at risk of reprisals if they don’t fol­low orders. After all, the same skep­ti­cism that applies to local wit­ness­es who poten­tial­ly face reprisals from the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment should most assured­ly apply to the peo­ple who were, at the time of the attack, at risk of reprisals from the Islamist extrem­ist rebels.

At the same time, the “reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack” the US intel­li­gence assess­ment relied might be just that and indi­cate a real mil­i­tary attack by the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. As we’re going to see the third arti­cle, a report by Robert Fisk from Douma, the evi­dence and eye­wit­ness reports do point towards a real Syr­i­an heli­copter bomb­ing attack in Douma. But the peo­ple on the ground he talked to sug­gest what actu­al­ly hap­pened was a non-chem­i­cal bomb­ing that immersed the peo­ple in the imme­di­ate sur­round­ing in a dead­ly cloud of par­ti­cles. In oth­er words, under this sce­nario the video evi­dence of peo­ple chok­ing is real. The peo­ple real­ly did choke to death and respond to a chem­i­cal assault on their bod­ies. But that chem­i­cal assault was an indi­rect con­se­quence of a non-chem­i­cal bomb explo­sion cre­at­ing a dead­ly cloud. So the “reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack” might be legit­i­mate intel­li­gence indi­cat­ing a Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment attack but not nec­es­sar­i­ly a chem­i­cal weapons attack.

Addi­tion­al­ly, as we’re also going to see in the first arti­cle, one of the admis­sions the US has made is that, while wit­ness­es report­ed see­ing at least one heli­copter over­head at the time of the Syr­i­an attack, intel­li­gence offi­cials acknowl­edge that they did­n’t have a full pic­ture of the event, which would have includ­ed inter­cepts of con­ver­sa­tions and ver­i­fied paths that heli­copters flew. We are told that this is because the US did not read­i­ly have elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence show­ing the track of the heli­copters, as it would with fixed-wing jets. So the nature of that “reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack” remains ambigu­ous.

Adding to the con­fu­sion around this, as we’re going to see in the fourth arti­cle excerpt, is that the Chief of Russia’s Gen­er­al Staff, Valery Gerasi­mov, pub­licly stat­ed on March 13th that, “Rus­sia has hard facts about prepa­ra­tions for stag­ing the use of chem­i­cal weapons against civil­ians by the gov­ern­ment forces. After the provo­ca­tion, the US plans to accuse Syria’s gov­ern­ment forces of using chem­i­cal weapons … fur­nish the so-called ‘evi­dence’ … and Wash­ing­ton plans to deliv­er a mis­sile and bomb strike against Dam­as­cus’ gov­ern­ment dis­tricts.”

Now, obvi­ous­ly we have to take such pre­dic­tions from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment with a grain of salt. Who knows if there real­ly was “hard facts about prepa­ra­tions”. But when you con­sid­er that the dom­i­nant rebel forces in Douma, Jaish el-Islam (the Army of Islam), are indeed hard core Islamist extrem­ists who no one should trust, it’s hard to ignore the real­i­ty that this is the type of group that is more than will­ing to do exact­ly what the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment pre­dict­ed slaugh­ter inno­cent civil­ians if that helps them achieve their goals or just fak­ing evi­dence if need be. It’s not as if this is the first time we’ve have an alleged chem­i­cal weapons attack on an area con­trolled by jihadists who are more than will­ing to slaugh­ter civil­ians.

It’s one of the meta-issues with the Syr­i­an con­flict and war in gen­er­al: the stakes are so high it’s hard to assume any side is above reproach. That’s why estab­lish­ing con­clu­sive evi­dence of a chem­i­cal attack is so impor­tant. And as the first arti­cle makes like, that con­clu­sive evi­dence was not actu­al­ly avail­able when Trump ordered those airstrikes:

CNN

US struck Syr­ia with­out cer­tain­ty on sarin

By Bar­bara Starr, CNN Pen­ta­gon Cor­re­spon­dent

Updat­ed 12:25 AM ET, Wed April 18, 2018

(CNN)Even though US intel­li­gence agen­cies did not have absolute cer­tain­ty Syr­i­a’s regime had used the nerve agent sarin against civil­ians, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion still felt there was enough evi­dence to jus­ti­fy retal­ia­to­ry strikes last Fri­day, sev­er­al intel­li­gence and defense offi­cials tell CNN.

The deci­sion to pro­ceed with mil­i­tary action met a stan­dard of evi­dence need­ed that offi­cials felt they could accept, these sources said.

Offi­cials are adamant that what­ev­er was used by Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad’s forces to attack civil­ians was a chem­i­cal agent and that alone jus­ti­fied tak­ing action.

The lack of com­plete infor­ma­tion played a role in decid­ing not to strike a larg­er set of tar­gets includ­ing air­fields, air­craft and heli­copters, one defense offi­cial said. Oth­ers fac­tors, like Russ­ian posi­tion­ing, also played a role in the deci­sions.

On Tues­day after­noon, Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis and Joint Chiefs Chair Joseph Dun­ford held a clas­si­fied brief­ing for sen­a­tors on the Syr­ia strike. Before the brief­ing, offi­cials would not com­ment on whether the intel­li­gence had become more cer­tain post-strike.

Wit­ness­es report­ed see­ing at least one heli­copter over­head at the time of the Syr­i­an attack that had tak­en off from an air­field. But at the time, intel­li­gence offi­cials did not have a full pic­ture of the event, which would have includ­ed inter­cepts of con­ver­sa­tions and ver­i­fied paths that heli­copters flew, offi­cials said.

But the real­i­ty was that pri­or to the US strike, full con­fir­ma­tion could not be made of whether Syr­ia had used sarin in its attack.

“It’s a hard, long process, espe­cial­ly in an attack like this with­out phys­i­cal access to vic­tims, site. There­fore we had to work with clos­est allies quick­ly to ensure we had con­fi­dence in the intel­li­gence pic­ture, enabling pol­i­cy­mak­ers to choose best course of action,” an intel­li­gence offi­cial told CNN.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion deter­mined a “stan­dard of evi­dence had been met,” the offi­cial said.

The admin­is­tra­tion has said the strike by US, UK and French forces aimed to send a mes­sage to the Assad regime to stop using chem­i­cal weapons.

The US did have an analy­sis of test sam­ples that sug­gest­ed the pres­ence of chlo­rine and sarin, but offi­cials told CNN the US was not able to obtain sam­ples direct­ly from the scene and ensure a strict chain of cus­tody to con­duct its own test­ing. There were sam­ples that had been smug­gled out, but the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty did not have sol­id intel­li­gence on where the mate­r­i­al came from and whose hands it was in the entire time, offi­cials said.

French author­i­ties were also involved in assess­ing sam­ples that had been brought out of the area.

Pen­tagon’s assess­ment and Trump’s deci­sion

Trump’s accep­tance of a mil­i­tary option to con­duct mis­sile strikes against three sus­pect­ed Syr­i­an chem­i­cal research, devel­op­ment and stor­age sites was shaped by the Pen­tagon’s clas­si­fied intel­li­gence assess­ment.

Video assessed by US intel­li­gence after the Syr­i­an regime’s attack and wit­ness state­ments pro­vide sub­stan­tial evi­dence that vic­tims most like­ly suf­fered the effects of an attack with chlo­rine and a nerve agent that was like­ly sarin, the offi­cials said.

The US had con­sis­tent­ly looked for intel­li­gence from three areas: sam­ples of the chem­i­cal used, pos­si­ble elec­tron­ic inter­cepts of Syr­i­an offi­cials involved in the attack or elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence on air­craft fly­ing at the time of the attack.

Even at a late-night news con­fer­ence just hours after the strike, Mat­tis said that while he was “absolute­ly con­fi­dent” the Syr­i­an regime had con­duct­ed a chem­i­cal attack, he was pub­licly less cer­tain about what was used.

“We are very much aware of one of the agents. There may have been more than one agent used. We are not clear on that yet. We know at least one chem­i­cal agent was used,” said Mat­tis. The sec­re­tary went on to say that “we’re very con­fi­dent that chlo­rine was used. We are not rul­ing out sarin right now.”

A senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial expressed even more con­fi­dence the fol­low­ing day, telling reporters that “we assess that both sarin and chlo­rine were used in this attack, and while the avail­able infor­ma­tion is much greater on the chlo­rine use, we do have sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion that also points to sarin use.”

Still, that same day, Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence held out on a final judg­ment about whether sarin gas was deployed in his remarks Sat­ur­day after­noon.

“Chlo­rine and pos­si­bly nerve agents were used,” Pence said dur­ing his address at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Lima, Peru.

The Pen­ta­gon has pro­vid­ed no update on any test­ing of chem­i­cal sam­ples, say­ing it’s still look­ing at the intel­li­gence.

On Tues­day, State Depart­ment spokes­woman Heather Nauert echoed the senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial’s Sat­ur­day com­ments, say­ing, “We have infor­ma­tion that leads us to believe that both chlo­rine and sarin were used in the attack.”

Con­cerns over Rus­sia

The attack by Assad’s forces killed dozens of men, women and chil­dren and injured hun­dreds more in the east­ern Dam­as­cus sub­urb of Douma on April 7.

...

Unlike the US strike a year ago after Syr­i­an jets struck civil­ians with nerve agent bombs, this time heli­copters were used.

That meant that, unlike last year, the US did not read­i­ly have elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence show­ing the track of the heli­copters, as it would with fixed-wing jets.

All these fac­tors were part of the case made by the Pen­ta­gon to pick a list of tar­gets dif­fer­ent from those struck in the pre­vi­ous response attack, but also tar­gets that did not risk Russ­ian esca­la­tion. There was wor­ry that the US did not have a full under­stand­ing of whether some loca­tions of Syr­i­an air­craft and heli­copters includ­ed a Russ­ian pres­ence. In the days pri­or to the coali­tion strike, there was con­firmed intel­li­gence that the Syr­i­ans had moved some air­craft to dif­fer­ent loca­tions, the offi­cials said.

This entire intel­li­gence assess­ment formed the back­bone of Fri­day’s White House state­ment, which said in part, “this con­clu­sion is based on descrip­tions of the attack in mul­ti­ple media sources, the report­ed symp­toms expe­ri­enced by vic­tims, videos and images show­ing two assessed bar­rel bombs from the attack, and reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack. A sig­nif­i­cant body of infor­ma­tion points to the regime using chlo­rine in its bom­bard­ment of Duma, while some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.”

Offi­cials said the assess­ment that the Syr­i­an regime was behind the attack, with Russ­ian com­plic­i­ty, was based on the intel­li­gence con­clu­sion that only the Syr­i­an regime had the chem­i­cal inven­to­ry and the means to attack with bar­rel bombs from heli­copters.

———-

“US struck Syr­ia with­out cer­tain­ty on sarin” by Bar­bara Starr; CNN; 04/18/2018

“This entire intel­li­gence assess­ment formed the back­bone of Fri­day’s White House state­ment, which said in part, “this con­clu­sion is based on descrip­tions of the attack in mul­ti­ple media sources, the report­ed symp­toms expe­ri­enced by vic­tims, videos and images show­ing two assessed bar­rel bombs from the attack, and reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack. A sig­nif­i­cant body of infor­ma­tion points to the regime using chlo­rine in its bom­bard­ment of Duma, while some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.””

And that’s how the US gov­ern­ment char­ac­ter­ized its own intel­li­gence assess­ment: It was pri­mar­i­ly based on media reports of the symp­toms. Symp­toms that, as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, were unprece­dent­ed for a chlo­rine-only attack, hence the sus­pi­cion of a nerve agent.

The evi­dence also includes wit­ness reports of at least one heli­copter over­head, but it does­n’t appear to include inter­cept­ed con­ver­sa­tions and ver­i­fied paths. In oth­er words, it’s also based on eye wit­ness reports:

...

Wit­ness­es report­ed see­ing at least one heli­copter over­head at the time of the Syr­i­an attack that had tak­en off from an air­field. But at the time, intel­li­gence offi­cials did not have a full pic­ture of the event, which would have includ­ed inter­cepts of con­ver­sa­tions and ver­i­fied paths that heli­copters flew, offi­cials said.

But the real­i­ty was that pri­or to the US strike, full con­fir­ma­tion could not be made of whether Syr­ia had used sarin in its attack.

...

Unlike the US strike a year ago after Syr­i­an jets struck civil­ians with nerve agent bombs, this time heli­copters were used.

That meant that, unlike last year, the US did not read­i­ly have elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence show­ing the track of the heli­copters, as it would with fixed-wing jets.

...

And while the US did have “an analy­sis of test sam­ples that sug­gest­ed the pres­ence of chlo­rine and sarin,” these sam­ples were not obtained direct­ly and did not have a strict chain of cus­tody. So the phys­i­cal sam­ples that were smug­gled out could have come from any­where:

...
“It’s a hard, long process, espe­cial­ly in an attack like this with­out phys­i­cal access to vic­tims, site. There­fore we had to work with clos­est allies quick­ly to ensure we had con­fi­dence in the intel­li­gence pic­ture, enabling pol­i­cy­mak­ers to choose best course of action,” an intel­li­gence offi­cial told CNN.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion deter­mined a “stan­dard of evi­dence had been met,” the offi­cial said.

The admin­is­tra­tion has said the strike by US, UK and French forces aimed to send a mes­sage to the Assad regime to stop using chem­i­cal weapons.

The US did have an analy­sis of test sam­ples that sug­gest­ed the pres­ence of chlo­rine and sarin, but offi­cials told CNN the US was not able to obtain sam­ples direct­ly from the scene and ensure a strict chain of cus­tody to con­duct its own test­ing. There were sam­ples that had been smug­gled out, but the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty did not have sol­id intel­li­gence on where the mate­r­i­al came from and whose hands it was in the entire time, offi­cials said.

French author­i­ties were also involved in assess­ing sam­ples that had been brought out of the area.
...

Instead of phys­i­cal evi­dence, the con­clu­sion of chlo­rine and sarin is based on video evi­dence:

...
Pen­tagon’s assess­ment and Trump’s deci­sion

Trump’s accep­tance of a mil­i­tary option to con­duct mis­sile strikes against three sus­pect­ed Syr­i­an chem­i­cal research, devel­op­ment and stor­age sites was shaped by the Pen­tagon’s clas­si­fied intel­li­gence assess­ment.

Video assessed by US intel­li­gence after the Syr­i­an regime’s attack and wit­ness state­ments pro­vide sub­stan­tial evi­dence that vic­tims most like­ly suf­fered the effects of an attack with chlo­rine and a nerve agent that was like­ly sarin, the offi­cials said.
...

And based on that video evi­dence and the eye­wit­ness tes­ti­monies the US has con­clud­ed with “absolute con­fi­dence” that some sort of chem­i­cal attack took place, and is “very con­fi­dent” chlo­rine was used. But far less con­fi­dent about sarin:

...
Even at a late-night news con­fer­ence just hours after the strike, Mat­tis said that while he was “absolute­ly con­fi­dent” the Syr­i­an regime had con­duct­ed a chem­i­cal attack, he was pub­licly less cer­tain about what was used.

“We are very much aware of one of the agents. There may have been more than one agent used. We are not clear on that yet. We know at least one chem­i­cal agent was used,” said Mat­tis. The sec­re­tary went on to say that “we’re very con­fi­dent that chlo­rine was used. We are not rul­ing out sarin right now.”

A senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial expressed even more con­fi­dence the fol­low­ing day, telling reporters that “we assess that both sarin and chlo­rine were used in this attack, and while the avail­able infor­ma­tion is much greater on the chlo­rine use, we do have sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion that also points to sarin use.”

Still, that same day, Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence held out on a final judg­ment about whether sarin gas was deployed in his remarks Sat­ur­day after­noon.

“Chlo­rine and pos­si­bly nerve agents were used,” Pence said dur­ing his address at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Lima, Peru.
...

Recall that, as we’ll see in the next arti­cle, the rush of vic­tims from the sec­ond attack did not exhib­it symp­toms or a lev­el of lethal­i­ty con­sis­tent with a chlo­rine-only attack.

And at the time of this report, there was no US update on the test­ing of the phys­i­cal sam­ples. Which appears to be a way of indi­cat­ing that the videos and eye wit­ness state­ments are pri­ma­ry evi­dence at this point:

...
The Pen­ta­gon has pro­vid­ed no update on any test­ing of chem­i­cal sam­ples, say­ing it’s still look­ing at the intel­li­gence.

On Tues­day, State Depart­ment spokes­woman Heather Nauert echoed the senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial’s Sat­ur­day com­ments, say­ing, “We have infor­ma­tion that leads us to believe that both chlo­rine and sarin were used in the attack.”
...

And it’s crit­i­cal to keep in mind that this ambi­gu­i­ty played a big role in why the US did­n’t con­duct a more exten­sive retal­ia­to­ry bomb­ing of Dam­as­cus:

...
All these fac­tors were part of the case made by the Pen­ta­gon to pick a list of tar­gets dif­fer­ent from those struck in the pre­vi­ous response attack, but also tar­gets that did not risk Russ­ian esca­la­tion. There was wor­ry that the US did not have a full under­stand­ing of whether some loca­tions of Syr­i­an air­craft and heli­copters includ­ed a Russ­ian pres­ence. In the days pri­or to the coali­tion strike, there was con­firmed intel­li­gence that the Syr­i­ans had moved some air­craft to dif­fer­ent loca­tions, the offi­cials said.
...

This is a crit­i­cal point because there is more or less a per­ma­nent din of advo­ca­cy for a deep­er US mil­i­tary involve­ment in Syr­ia and when Pres­i­dent Trump does­n’t meet those expec­ta­tions it’s wide­ly assumed that it’s because he’s Putin’s pup­pet, which is a dan­ger­ous­ly provoca­tive assump­tion in this case.

Ok, now let’s take a look at the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt from just a few days after the attack. As the arti­cle also notes in an inter­view with a mem­ber from Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS), he doubt­ed whether any mean­ing­ful evi­dence would remain (recall that, as we’ll see if the fifth arti­cle below, SAMS is both heav­i­ly fund­ed by USAID and a strong advo­cate of US mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia). He said local staffers are afraid to give tes­ti­mo­ny and, “in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion,” an inves­ti­ga­tion “is too hard.” He also not­ed that many of the activists, med­ical staffers and res­cue work­ers with infor­ma­tion about the attacks have since scat­tered, with many leav­ing Douma on bus­es head­ed north to rebel-held ter­ri­to­ry under the terms of the sur­ren­der deal reached Sun­day between the rebels and the Rus­sians. So a large por­tion of the eye wit­ness­es are either allied with the rebels or remain under their con­trol after leav­ing Douma as part of the agree­ment with the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment.

As the arti­cle also notes, there were two sep­a­rate assumed chem­i­cal attacks. One alleged chem­i­cal weapons bomb attack at 4 PM that wit­ness­es believe was chlo­rine only — and with­out reports of heavy casu­al­ties — and a sec­ond far more lethal attack a few hours lat­er that with symp­toms incon­sis­tent with chlo­rine-only attacks:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Nerve gas used in Syr­ia attack, leav­ing vic­tims ‘foam­ing at the mouth,’ evi­dence sug­gests

by Liz Sly, Suzan Haida­mous and Asma Ajrou­di
April 11, 2018

BEIRUT — The day had begun much as any oth­er over the past two months in the rebel-held town of Douma east of the Syr­i­an cap­i­tal, Dam­as­cus. War­planes dropped bombs, fam­i­lies hid in base­ments, and ambu­lances raced through emp­ty streets to res­cue the injured.

But when gasp­ing, trem­bling peo­ple, some of them foam­ing at the mouth, began stream­ing into one of the town’s few func­tion­ing clin­ics that evening, staff instant­ly knew some­thing was dif­fer­ent. The vic­tims emit­ted a pow­er­ful smell of chlo­rine, but there were more peo­ple affect­ed than in pre­vi­ous chlo­rine attacks, said Mohammed Marhoum, a med­ical work­er. He saw around 70 and said six of them died.

They also seemed to be more severe­ly affect­ed than those he had treat­ed after pre­vi­ous chlo­rine attacks, and they dis­played symp­toms he had nev­er seen before. Some were twitch­ing, oth­ers had abnor­mal pupils, and some were foam­ing at the mouth. Sev­er­al arrived at the hos­pi­tal uncon­scious.

He and the oth­er med­ical work­ers began to sus­pect that what­ev­er killed them may have been stronger than chlo­rine. “We believe the gas used was chlo­rine and anoth­er kind of gas,” he said.

At around mid­night, the last two vic­tims were brought in, a boy and a girl, both around 2 years old, both dead. “Their bod­ies were cold and stiff. Their mouths were foam­ing. They didn’t have any wounds. It was obvi­ous that they had suf­fo­cat­ed,” Marhoum said.

Exact­ly what hap­pened Sat­ur­day night may nev­er be estab­lished with cer­tain­ty. Med­ical work­ers say a large num­ber of peo­ple suf­fer­ing unusu­al symp­toms vis­it­ed hos­pi­tals, and some of them died. Lat­er that evening a gris­ly video emerged show­ing a man­gled pile of at least 30 bod­ies on the low­er floor of an apart­ment build­ing, none of them bear­ing any sign of phys­i­cal injury but many with foam around their mouths.

The look of the bod­ies “is pret­ty much con­sis­tent with a nerve-agent-type expo­sure,” said Alas­tair W.M. Hay, a pro­fes­sor of tox­i­col­o­gy at Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty who has been study­ing the human impact of chem­i­cal weapons since Sad­dam Hussein’s gas attack on Iraqi Kurds in the town of Hal­ab­ja in 1989. “That’s sug­ges­tive of some­thing that was very tox­ic, and peo­ple have pret­ty much died where they were when they inhaled the agent. They’ve just dropped dead.”

But with Rus­sia and Syr­ia hav­ing stren­u­ous­ly denied from the out­set that any kind of chem­i­cal attack occurred, and with Russ­ian troops now deployed in Douma, it is unclear how much of an inde­pen­dent foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion into the cause of the deaths will be pos­si­ble. Russ­ian troops entered the town Mon­day under the terms of a sur­ren­der deal reached with the rebels the pre­vi­ous day.

Rus­sia says its rep­re­sen­ta­tives already have searched the area and could find no evi­dence that chem­i­cal weapons were used. Russ­ian experts and mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Red Cres­cent have vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tals where the vic­tims were treat­ed, Russ­ian offi­cials say, and a video showed Russ­ian troops arriv­ing at the house where the bod­ies were found.

There they found “no trace of any use of chem­i­cal weapons,” Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov told reporters Tues­day.

...

Mohamad Katoub of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety, which sup­port­ed med­ical facil­i­ties in Douma before the Rus­sians entered, said he doubt­ed whether any mean­ing­ful evi­dence would remain. Local staffers are afraid to give tes­ti­mo­ny, he said. “In the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion,” he said, an inves­ti­ga­tion “is too hard.”

Many of the activists, med­ical staffers and res­cue work­ers with infor­ma­tion about the attacks have since scat­tered, with many leav­ing Douma on bus­es head­ed north to rebel-held ter­ri­to­ry under the terms of the sur­ren­der deal reached Sun­day between the rebels and the Rus­sians. Among them was Marhoum, who spoke Tues­day from one of the bus­es.

Res­i­dents who are still there insist that there was a chem­i­cal attack. But many say they are increas­ing­ly afraid to talk now that Russ­ian troops are deployed in the town and with Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment forces expect­ed to return after the evac­u­a­tions are com­plete.

“The Rus­sians have entered, and there are no guar­an­tees for us not to be killed or detained,” said a med­ical stu­dent who is hop­ing to leave soon and does not want to risk being arrest­ed, and who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. “We’re wor­ried about being searched. We don’t know what the regime and the Rus­sians are prepar­ing for us.”

It remains unclear how many peo­ple died in the attack. The Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety put the toll at 49. The White Hel­mets res­cue group said 43 were killed and named 38 of them. Twelve were chil­dren, and 19 shared one of two sur­names, sug­gest­ing whole fam­i­lies died togeth­er.

There were reports of a chlo­rine bomb at around 4 p.m. that day. But it was only after a sec­ond attack, around 7:30 p.m., that there were indi­ca­tions that a more potent agent may have been used. That was when the vic­tims dis­play­ing unusu­al symp­toms began show­ing up at Marhoum’s clin­ic, and when res­cue work­ers and mon­i­tors say they sus­pect the bomb was dropped that killed the peo­ple sprawled in the apart­ment build­ing.

The strongest evi­dence sug­gest­ing that chem­i­cals were used in the attack comes from a few videos filmed in the after­math of the event.

A video filmed by an activist, Yass­er al-Doumani, shows him paus­ing out­side the build­ing beside four sprawled corpses before descend­ing con­crete stairs into what appears to be a base­ment apart­ment. There a grue­some man­gle of bod­ies is seen: babies, chil­dren, men and women lying in twist­ed dis­tor­tions of death. A child sprawled spread-eagle, half upside down, on the body of a woman. A girl in red died cov­er­ing her face with her arms.

“It’s just bod­ies piled up. That is so hor­rif­ic,” said Hay, the Leeds pro­fes­sor, express­ing shock as he watched the video online dur­ing a tele­phone inter­view Tues­day. “There’s a young child with foam at the nose and a boy with foam on its mouth. That’s much, much more con­sis­tent with a nerve-agent-type expo­sure than chlo­rine.”

Doumani says in the video that he could smell chlo­rine, but chlo­rine doesn’t usu­al­ly kill so many peo­ple so quick­ly, Hay said. “Chlo­rine vic­tims usu­al­ly man­age to get out to some­where they can get treat­ment,” he said. “Nerve agent kills pret­ty instant­ly.”

If a nerve gas was indeed used, their deaths would have been ago­niz­ing, Hay said. “It would be ter­ri­fy­ing for those afflict­ed as they strug­gled to breathe, their chests fail­ing to inflate prop­er­ly and lungs fill­ing with flu­id,” he said. “It would be an asphyx­i­a­tion over some min­utes.”

The wide­spread reports of a chlo­rine odor cou­pled with symp­toms not usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the sub­stance have giv­en rise to spec­u­la­tion that a new kind of weapon was used that com­bined chlo­rine and a nerve agent such as sarin, which killed as many as 1,400 peo­ple in an attack in the Douma area in 2013. Both gas­es are heav­ier than air and sink, mak­ing them espe­cial­ly dead­ly for peo­ple trapped in a con­fined space, such as those hid­ing from reg­u­lar bom­bard­ment.

Such a mix­ture could poten­tial­ly have been made, but it has not been seen before, and it would be “com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult to pre­pare,” Hay said. He spec­u­lat­ed that chlo­rine and sarin could have been dropped sep­a­rate­ly but at the same time, per­haps to con­fuse res­cuers into iden­ti­fy­ing the dead­ly agent as chlo­rine. The use of chlo­rine has not earned the same degree of inter­na­tion­al cen­sure as attacks car­ried out with sarin and some oth­er chem­i­cal agents.

...

———-

“Nerve gas used in Syr­ia attack, leav­ing vic­tims ‘foam­ing at the mouth,’ evi­dence sug­gests” by Liz Sly, Suzan Haida­mous and Asma Ajrou­di; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 04/11/2018

“But when gasp­ing, trem­bling peo­ple, some of them foam­ing at the mouth, began stream­ing into one of the town’s few func­tion­ing clin­ics that evening, staff instant­ly knew some­thing was dif­fer­ent. The vic­tims emit­ted a pow­er­ful smell of chlo­rine, but there were more peo­ple affect­ed than in pre­vi­ous chlo­rine attacks, said Mohammed Marhoum, a med­ical work­er. He saw around 70 and said six of them died.”

And that’s the key part of the eye-wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny that has led many to con­clude that sarin or some sort of nerve agent was used: wit­ness­es claim the vic­tims emit­ted a pow­er­ful smell of chorine, but this was far more dead­ly than pre­vi­ous chlo­rine attacks:

...
They also seemed to be more severe­ly affect­ed than those he had treat­ed after pre­vi­ous chlo­rine attacks, and they dis­played symp­toms he had nev­er seen before. Some were twitch­ing, oth­ers had abnor­mal pupils, and some were foam­ing at the mouth. Sev­er­al arrived at the hos­pi­tal uncon­scious.

He and the oth­er med­ical work­ers began to sus­pect that what­ev­er killed them may have been stronger than chlo­rine. “We believe the gas used was chlo­rine and anoth­er kind of gas,” he said.

At around mid­night, the last two vic­tims were brought in, a boy and a girl, both around 2 years old, both dead. “Their bod­ies were cold and stiff. Their mouths were foam­ing. They didn’t have any wounds. It was obvi­ous that they had suf­fo­cat­ed,” Marhoum said.

Exact­ly what hap­pened Sat­ur­day night may nev­er be estab­lished with cer­tain­ty. Med­ical work­ers say a large num­ber of peo­ple suf­fer­ing unusu­al symp­toms vis­it­ed hos­pi­tals, and some of them died. Lat­er that evening a gris­ly video emerged show­ing a man­gled pile of at least 30 bod­ies on the low­er floor of an apart­ment build­ing, none of them bear­ing any sign of phys­i­cal injury but many with foam around their mouths.

The look of the bod­ies “is pret­ty much con­sis­tent with a nerve-agent-type expo­sure,” said Alas­tair W.M. Hay, a pro­fes­sor of tox­i­col­o­gy at Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty who has been study­ing the human impact of chem­i­cal weapons since Sad­dam Hussein’s gas attack on Iraqi Kurds in the town of Hal­ab­ja in 1989. “That’s sug­ges­tive of some­thing that was very tox­ic, and peo­ple have pret­ty much died where they were when they inhaled the agent. They’ve just dropped dead.”
...

“The look of the bod­ies “is pret­ty much con­sis­tent with a nerve-agent-type expo­sure,” said Alas­tair W.M. Hay, a pro­fes­sor of tox­i­col­o­gy at Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty who has been study­ing the human impact of chem­i­cal weapons since Sad­dam Hussein’s gas attack on Iraqi Kurds in the town of Hal­ab­ja in 1989. “That’s sug­ges­tive of some­thing that was very tox­ic, and peo­ple have pret­ty much died where they were when they inhaled the agent. They’ve just dropped dead.””

They just dropped dead. But it sounds like peo­ple did­n’t start drop­ping dead until the sec­ond attack. There were reports of a chlo­rine bomb sev­er­al hours ear­li­er, but with­out the sub­se­quent reports of heavy casu­al­ties:

...
There were reports of a chlo­rine bomb at around 4 p.m. that day. But it was only after a sec­ond attack, around 7:30 p.m., that there were indi­ca­tions that a more potent agent may have been used. That was when the vic­tims dis­play­ing unusu­al symp­toms began show­ing up at Marhoum’s clin­ic, and when res­cue work­ers and mon­i­tors say they sus­pect the bomb was dropped that killed the peo­ple sprawled in the apart­ment build­ing.
...

And the groups that are pro­vid­ing these reports from on the ground appear to be the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soc­i­ty (SAMS) and the White Hel­mets. But as Mohamad Katoub of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety laments, he was doubt­ful that any mean­ing­ful evi­dence would remain and many of the wit­ness­es with infor­ma­tion had already fled to Idlib:

...
Mohamad Katoub of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety, which sup­port­ed med­ical facil­i­ties in Douma before the Rus­sians entered, said he doubt­ed whether any mean­ing­ful evi­dence would remain. Local staffers are afraid to give tes­ti­mo­ny, he said. “In the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion,” he said, an inves­ti­ga­tion “is too hard.”

Many of the activists, med­ical staffers and res­cue work­ers with infor­ma­tion about the attacks have since scat­tered, with many leav­ing Douma on bus­es head­ed north to rebel-held ter­ri­to­ry under the terms of the sur­ren­der deal reached Sun­day between the rebels and the Rus­sians. Among them was Marhoum, who spoke Tues­day from one of the bus­es.

...

It remains unclear how many peo­ple died in the attack. The Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety put the toll at 49. The White Hel­mets res­cue group said 43 were killed and named 38 of them. Twelve were chil­dren, and 19 shared one of two sur­names, sug­gest­ing whole fam­i­lies died togeth­er.
...

Under­stand­ably, many of the res­i­dents who remain in Douma fear reprisals if they talk now that the area is under Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and Russ­ian con­trol. Of course, the same log­ic applies to those who were there when the rebels still con­trolled the area:

...
Res­i­dents who are still there insist that there was a chem­i­cal attack. But many say they are increas­ing­ly afraid to talk now that Russ­ian troops are deployed in the town and with Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment forces expect­ed to return after the evac­u­a­tions are com­plete.

“The Rus­sians have entered, and there are no guar­an­tees for us not to be killed or detained,” said a med­ical stu­dent who is hop­ing to leave soon and does not want to risk being arrest­ed, and who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. “We’re wor­ried about being searched. We don’t know what the regime and the Rus­sians are prepar­ing for us.”
...

That leaves the video evi­dence as the strongest evi­dence of what hap­pened. Video evi­dence that includes local activists reports the small of chlo­rine, but also video evi­dence that shows symp­toms and a degree of lethal­i­ty nev­er before seen with chlo­rine attacks:

...
The strongest evi­dence sug­gest­ing that chem­i­cals were used in the attack comes from a few videos filmed in the after­math of the event.

A video filmed by an activist, Yass­er al-Doumani, shows him paus­ing out­side the build­ing beside four sprawled corpses before descend­ing con­crete stairs into what appears to be a base­ment apart­ment. There a grue­some man­gle of bod­ies is seen: babies, chil­dren, men and women lying in twist­ed dis­tor­tions of death. A child sprawled spread-eagle, half upside down, on the body of a woman. A girl in red died cov­er­ing her face with her arms.

“It’s just bod­ies piled up. That is so hor­rif­ic,” said Hay, the Leeds pro­fes­sor, express­ing shock as he watched the video online dur­ing a tele­phone inter­view Tues­day. “There’s a young child with foam at the nose and a boy with foam on its mouth. That’s much, much more con­sis­tent with a nerve-agent-type expo­sure than chlo­rine.”

Doumani says in the video that he could smell chlo­rine, but chlo­rine doesn’t usu­al­ly kill so many peo­ple so quick­ly, Hay said. “Chlo­rine vic­tims usu­al­ly man­age to get out to some­where they can get treat­ment,” he said. “Nerve agent kills pret­ty instant­ly.”

If a nerve gas was indeed used, their deaths would have been ago­niz­ing, Hay said. “It would be ter­ri­fy­ing for those afflict­ed as they strug­gled to breathe, their chests fail­ing to inflate prop­er­ly and lungs fill­ing with flu­id,” he said. “It would be an asphyx­i­a­tion over some min­utes.”
...

And it’s that video of symp­toms not con­sis­tent with chlo­rine that forms the basis for the sus­pi­cion of some oth­er nerve agent being used in the sec­ond 7:30 PM attack. And accord­ing to one chem­i­cal weapons expert, a com­bi­na­tion of chlo­rine plus sarin in a sin­gle bomb has nev­er been seen before and would be tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult, lead­ing to spec­u­la­tion that two sep­a­rate bombs were dropped. One with chlo­rine and one with sarin:

...
The wide­spread reports of a chlo­rine odor cou­pled with symp­toms not usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the sub­stance have giv­en rise to spec­u­la­tion that a new kind of weapon was used that com­bined chlo­rine and a nerve agent such as sarin, which killed as many as 1,400 peo­ple in an attack in the Douma area in 2013. Both gas­es are heav­ier than air and sink, mak­ing them espe­cial­ly dead­ly for peo­ple trapped in a con­fined space, such as those hid­ing from reg­u­lar bom­bard­ment.

Such a mix­ture could poten­tial­ly have been made, but it has not been seen before, and it would be “com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult to pre­pare,” Hay said. He spec­u­lat­ed that chlo­rine and sarin could have been dropped sep­a­rate­ly but at the same time, per­haps to con­fuse res­cuers into iden­ti­fy­ing the dead­ly agent as chlo­rine. The use of chlo­rine has not earned the same degree of inter­na­tion­al cen­sure as attacks car­ried out with sarin and some oth­er chem­i­cal agents.
...

And that all high­lights the extreme­ly ambigu­ous nature of this attack: there is evi­dence, but it appears to be entire­ly video and eye wit­ness evi­dence and that evi­dence is essen­tial­ly unprece­dent­ed. It’s eye wit­ness­es claim­ing to smell chlo­rine while they show bod­ies exhibit­ing the symp­toms of a nerve agent.

com­ment con­tin­ued below (due to max­i­mum com­ment length)...

...con­tin­u­ing from the pre­vi­ous com­ment...

So if we assume these videos haven’t been heav­i­ly staged some­how, is some sort of sarin + chlo­rine dual attack the only plau­si­ble expla­na­tion what what was cap­tured on video? Well, as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing on the ground report by Robert Fisk, there might be anoth­er expla­na­tion. Accord­ing to Dr Assim Rahaibani — a doc­tor in Douma who, it’s impor­tant to note, does not appear to be a fan of the local rebels who until recent­ly con­trolled Douma — the evening of the attacks also includ­ed high winds. And those winds, when com­bined with the heavy gov­ern­ment bomb­ing, cre­at­ed a dust storm that effec­tive­ly suf­fo­cat­ed a large num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in under­ground shel­ters. Recall that the large num­bers of dead found were indeed in the base­ments of build­ings seek­ing shel­ter from the bombs.

As Dr Rahaibani describes it, “I was with my fam­i­ly in the base­ment of my home three hun­dred metres from here on the night but all the doc­tors know what hap­pened. There was a lot of shelling [by gov­ern­ment forces] and air­craft were always over Douma at night — but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the base­ments and cel­lars where peo­ple lived. Peo­ple began to arrive here suf­fer­ing from hypox­ia, oxy­gen loss. Then some­one at the door, a ‘White Hel­met’, shout­ed ‘Gas!”, and a pan­ic began. Peo­ple start­ed throw­ing water over each oth­er. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is gen­uine, but what you see are peo­ple suf­fer­ing from hypox­ia – not gas poi­son­ing.”

Now, dust storms can indeed suf­fo­cate peo­ple. But in this case the peo­ple weren’t out­side in a dust storm. They were in the base­ments of build­ings and, accord­ing to Dr Rahaibani, the huge dust clouds began to come into the base­ments and cel­lars where peo­ple lived. So if a dust storm did indeed suf­fo­cate the peo­ple in the under­ground shel­ters we have to ask the ques­tion of whether or not a dust storm on the out­side of an under­ground shel­ter could effec­tive­ly suf­fo­cate the vic­tims. And then there are the reports the vic­tims who arrived at the hos­pi­tals exhibit­ing symp­toms like foam­ing mouths and dilat­ed pupils. Should we expect that from a dust storm? And where there reports a chok­ing cloud from sur­viv­ing eye wit­ness? Those are the kinds of ques­tions that would have to answered if the dust storm expla­na­tion is to be believed but that’s at least one expla­na­tion Fisk found dur­ing his report from Douma:

The Inde­pen­dent

The search for truth in the rub­ble of Douma — and one doctor’s doubts over the chem­i­cal attack

Exclu­sive: Robert Fisk vis­its the Syr­ia clin­ic at the cen­tre of a glob­al cri­sis

Robert Fisk Douma, Syr­ia
Mon­day 16 April 2018 21:29 BST

This is the sto­ry of a town called Douma, a rav­aged, stink­ing place of smashed apart­ment blocks — and of an under­ground clin­ic whose images of suf­fer­ing allowed three of the West­ern world’s most pow­er­ful nations to bomb Syr­ia last week. There’s even a friend­ly doc­tor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clin­ic, cheer­ful­ly tells me that the ‘gas’ video­tape which hor­ri­fied the world – despite all the doubters – is per­fect­ly gen­uine.

War sto­ries, how­ev­er, have a habit of grow­ing dark­er. For the same 58-year old senior Syr­i­an doc­tor then adds some­thing pro­found­ly uncom­fort­able: the patients, he says, were over­come not by gas but by oxy­gen star­va­tion in the rub­bish-filled tun­nels and base­ments in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.

As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extra­or­di­nary con­clu­sion, it is worth observ­ing that he is by his own admis­sion not an eye wit­ness him­self and, as he speaks good Eng­lish, he refers twice to the jiha­di gun­men of Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] in Douma as “ter­ror­ists” – the regime’s word for their ene­mies, and a term used by many peo­ple across Syr­ia. Am I hear­ing this right? Which ver­sion of events are we to believe?

By bad luck, too, the doc­tors who were on duty that night on 7 April were all in Dam­as­cus giv­ing evi­dence to a chem­i­cal weapons enquiry, which will be attempt­ing to pro­vide a defin­i­tive answer to that ques­tion in the com­ing weeks.

France, mean­while, has said it has “proof” chem­i­cal weapons were used, and US media have quot­ed sources say­ing urine and blood tests showed this too. The WHO has said its part­ners on the ground treat­ed 500 patients “exhibit­ing signs and symp­toms con­sis­tent with expo­sure to tox­ic chem­i­cals”.

At the same time, inspec­tors from the Organ­i­sa­tion for the Pro­hi­bi­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons (OPCW) are cur­rent­ly blocked from com­ing here to the site of the alleged gas attack them­selves, osten­si­bly because they lacked the cor­rect UN per­mits.

Before we go any fur­ther, read­ers should be aware that this is not the only sto­ry in Douma. There are the many peo­ple I talked amid the ruins of the town who said they had “nev­er believed in” gas sto­ries – which were usu­al­ly put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. These par­tic­u­lar jihadis sur­vived under a bliz­zard of shell­fire by liv­ing in other’s people’s homes and in vast, wide tun­nels with under­ground roads carved through the liv­ing rock by pris­on­ers with pick-axes on three lev­els beneath the town. I walked through three of them yes­ter­day, vast cor­ri­dors of liv­ing rock which still con­tained Russ­ian – yes, Russ­ian – rock­ets and burned-out cars.

So the sto­ry of Douma is thus not just a sto­ry of gas – or no gas, as the case may be. It’s about thou­sands of peo­ple who did not opt for evac­u­a­tion from Douma on bus­es that left last week, along­side the gun­men with whom they had to live like troglodytes for months in order to sur­vive. I walked across this town quite freely yes­ter­day with­out sol­dier, police­man or min­der to haunt my foot­steps, just two Syr­i­an friends, a cam­era and a note­book. I some­times had to clam­ber across 20-foot-high ram­parts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth. Hap­py to see for­eign­ers among them, hap­pi­er still that the siege is final­ly over, they are most­ly smil­ing; those whose faces you can see, of course, because a sur­pris­ing num­ber of Douma’s women wear full-length black hijab.

I first drove into Douma as part of an escort­ed con­voy of jour­nal­ists. But once a bor­ing gen­er­al had announced out­side a wrecked coun­cil house “I have no infor­ma­tion” – that most help­ful rub­bish-dump of Arab offi­cial­dom — I just walked away. Sev­er­al oth­er reporters, most­ly Syr­i­an, did the same. Even a group of Russ­ian jour­nal­ists – all in mil­i­tary attire – drift­ed off.

It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his sub­ter­ranean clin­ic – “Point 200,” it is called, in the weird geol­o­gy of this part­ly-under­ground city – is a cor­ri­dor lead­ing down­hill where he showed me his low­ly hos­pi­tal and the few beds where a small girl was cry­ing as nurs­es treat­ed a cut above her eye.

“I was with my fam­i­ly in the base­ment of my home three hun­dred metres from here on the night but all the doc­tors know what hap­pened. There was a lot of shelling [by gov­ern­ment forces] and air­craft were always over Douma at night — but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the base­ments and cel­lars where peo­ple lived. Peo­ple began to arrive here suf­fer­ing from hypox­ia, oxy­gen loss. Then some­one at the door, a ‘White Hel­met’, shout­ed ‘Gas!”, and a pan­ic began. Peo­ple start­ed throw­ing water over each oth­er. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is gen­uine, but what you see are peo­ple suf­fer­ing from hypox­ia – not gas poi­son­ing.”

Odd­ly, after chat­ting to more than 20 peo­ple, I couldn’t find one who showed the slight­est inter­est in Douma’s role in bring­ing about the West­ern air attacks. Two actu­al­ly told me they didn’t know about the con­nec­tion.

But it was a strange world I walked into. Two men, Hus­sam and Nazir Abu Aishe, said they were unaware how many peo­ple had been killed in Douma, although the lat­ter admit­ted he had a cousin “exe­cut­ed by Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] for alleged­ly being “close to the regime”. They shrugged when I asked about the 43 peo­ple said to have died in the infa­mous Douma attack.

The White Hel­mets – the med­ical first respon­ders already leg­endary in the West but with some inter­est­ing cor­ners to their own sto­ry – played a famil­iar role dur­ing the bat­tles. They are part­ly fund­ed by the For­eign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibani’s clin­ic. A gas mask had been left out­side a food con­tain­er with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty mil­i­tary cam­ou­flage uni­forms lay inside one room. Plant­ed, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with cap­sules, bro­ken med­ical equip­ment and files, bed­ding and mat­tress­es.

Of course we must hear their side of the sto­ry, but it will not hap­pen here: a woman told us that every mem­ber of the White Hel­mets in Douma aban­doned their main head­quar­ters and chose to take the gov­ern­ment-organ­ised and Russ­ian-pro­tect­ed bus­es to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed.

There were food stalls open and a patrol of Russ­ian mil­i­tary police­men – a now option­al extra for every Syr­i­an cease­fire – and no-one had even both­ered to storm into the for­bid­ding Islamist prison near Martyr’s Square where vic­tims were sup­pos­ed­ly behead­ed in the base­ments. The town’s com­ple­ment of Syr­i­an inte­ri­or min­istry civil­ian police – who eeri­ly wear mil­i­tary clothes – are watched over by the Rus­sians who may or may not be watched by the civil­ians. Again, my earnest ques­tions about gas were met with what seemed gen­uine per­plex­i­ty.

...

———-

The search for truth in the rub­ble of Douma — and one doctor’s doubts over the chem­i­cal attack by Robert Fisk; The Inde­pen­dent; 04/16/2018

“War sto­ries, how­ev­er, have a habit of grow­ing dark­er. For the same 58-year old senior Syr­i­an doc­tor then adds some­thing pro­found­ly uncom­fort­able: the patients, he says, were over­come not by gas but by oxy­gen star­va­tion in the rub­bish-filled tun­nels and base­ments in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.”

That’s the expla­na­tion giv­en by Dr Assim Rahaibani: It was death by oxy­gen star­va­tion cause by high winds and heavy shelling. And that dust start­ed seep­ing into the base­ments and cel­lars were peo­ple were liv­ing, effec­tive­ly starv­ing them of oxy­gen. A mem­ber of the White Hel­mets shout­ed “gas”, cre­at­ing a pan­ic, but it was­n’t poi­son gas but a lack of oxy­gen that killed the peo­ple. That’s the account Dr. Rahaibani relayed:

...
It was a short walk to Dr Rahaibani. From the door of his sub­ter­ranean clin­ic – “Point 200,” it is called, in the weird geol­o­gy of this part­ly-under­ground city – is a cor­ri­dor lead­ing down­hill where he showed me his low­ly hos­pi­tal and the few beds where a small girl was cry­ing as nurs­es treat­ed a cut above her eye.

“I was with my fam­i­ly in the base­ment of my home three hun­dred metres from here on the night but all the doc­tors know what hap­pened. There was a lot of shelling [by gov­ern­ment forces] and air­craft were always over Douma at night — but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the base­ments and cel­lars where peo­ple lived. Peo­ple began to arrive here suf­fer­ing from hypox­ia, oxy­gen loss. Then some­one at the door, a ‘White Hel­met’, shout­ed ‘Gas!”, and a pan­ic began. Peo­ple start­ed throw­ing water over each oth­er. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is gen­uine, but what you see are peo­ple suf­fer­ing from hypox­ia – not gas poi­son­ing.”
...

But as Fisk notes, Dr Rahaibani was­n’t an eye wit­ness to this and also does­n’t appear to be a fan of Jaish el-Islam which is impor­tant to keep in mind:

...
As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extra­or­di­nary con­clu­sion, it is worth observ­ing that he is by his own admis­sion not an eye wit­ness him­self and, as he speaks good Eng­lish, he refers twice to the jiha­di gun­men of Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] in Douma as “ter­ror­ists” – the regime’s word for their ene­mies, and a term used by many peo­ple across Syr­ia. Am I hear­ing this right? Which ver­sion of events are we to believe?
...

“Which ver­sion of events are we to believe?” It’s the meta-ques­tion of the Syr­i­an con­flict for the out­side world, which is why an under­stand­ing of the nature of dif­fer­ent sides in this con­flict is so impor­tant and why sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignor­ing the jihadist extrem­ist nature of the dom­i­nant fac­tions of the rebels is so out­ra­geous.

And as Fisk also notes, it’s not just Dr Rahaibani who he ran into that ques­tioned the gas attack. Many of the peo­ple he spoke to said they “nev­er believed” it and assumed it was staged by Jaish el-Islam:

...
Before we go any fur­ther, read­ers should be aware that this is not the only sto­ry in Douma. There are the many peo­ple I talked amid the ruins of the town who said they had “nev­er believed in” gas sto­ries – which were usu­al­ly put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups. These par­tic­u­lar jihadis sur­vived under a bliz­zard of shell­fire by liv­ing in other’s people’s homes and in vast, wide tun­nels with under­ground roads carved through the liv­ing rock by pris­on­ers with pick-axes on three lev­els beneath the town. I walked through three of them yes­ter­day, vast cor­ri­dors of liv­ing rock which still con­tained Russ­ian – yes, Russ­ian – rock­ets and burned-out cars.

So the sto­ry of Douma is thus not just a sto­ry of gas – or no gas, as the case may be. It’s about thou­sands of peo­ple who did not opt for evac­u­a­tion from Douma on bus­es that left last week, along­side the gun­men with whom they had to live like troglodytes for months in order to sur­vive. I walked across this town quite freely yes­ter­day with­out sol­dier, police­man or min­der to haunt my foot­steps, just two Syr­i­an friends, a cam­era and a note­book. I some­times had to clam­ber across 20-foot-high ram­parts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth. Hap­py to see for­eign­ers among them, hap­pi­er still that the siege is final­ly over, they are most­ly smil­ing; those whose faces you can see, of course, because a sur­pris­ing num­ber of Douma’s women wear full-length black hijab.
...

Now keep in mind that these are the peo­ple who chose not to leave for Idlib and pre­sum­ably weren’t fans of the rebels. But that also high­lights the fact that the jiha­di forces oper­at­ing in Syr­ia real­ly have been absolute­ly hor­ri­ble and oppres­sive to the local civil­ians and a reminder of the char­ac­ter of these groups. It’s why staged attacks by the jihadists should­n’t be ruled out.

As Fisk also observed, it appears that the White Hel­mets vir­tu­al­ly all left Douma for the al Nus­ra strong­hold of Idlib, high­light­ing the fact that the alle­ga­tions of close ties between the White Hel­mets with jihadist mil­i­tants and forces push­ing for mil­i­tary regime change can’t be eas­i­ly dis­missed as Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da:

...
The White Hel­mets – the med­ical first respon­ders already leg­endary in the West but with some inter­est­ing cor­ners to their own sto­ry – played a famil­iar role dur­ing the bat­tles. They are part­ly fund­ed by the For­eign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibani’s clin­ic. A gas mask had been left out­side a food con­tain­er with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty mil­i­tary cam­ou­flage uni­forms lay inside one room. Plant­ed, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with cap­sules, bro­ken med­ical equip­ment and files, bed­ding and mat­tress­es.

Of course we must hear their side of the sto­ry, but it will not hap­pen here: a woman told us that every mem­ber of the White Hel­mets in Douma aban­doned their main head­quar­ters and chose to take the gov­ern­ment-organ­ised and Russ­ian-pro­tect­ed bus­es to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed.
...

So that gives us a sense of one side of the sto­ry of what hap­pened in Douma. It’s the sto­ry from the per­spec­tive of those who chose to stay in Douma instead of accept­ing to offer of safe trans­port to al Nus­ra-con­trolled Idlib, so it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing that Fisk had such a hard time com­ing across peo­ple in Douma who were going to back up the ‘Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment chem­i­cal weapons attack’ ver­sion of events. But it’s not like we can just dis­miss this ver­sion of events either sim­ply because the peo­ple remain­ing in Douma tend not to sup­port Jaish el-Islam, yet that’s large­ly what has hap­pened thus far with the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

It’s also worth not­ing that the ver­sion of events put for­ward by Dr. Rahaibani, that it was all due to dust storm and the claims of a chem­i­cal attack are oppor­tunism, is actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from the alter­nate claim made by oth­ers in Douma and else­where that there was a chem­i­cal attack but it was a false flag car­ried out by Jaish el-Islam. The ‘fog of war’ is a dis­turbing­ly apt term for this sit­u­a­tion.

It’s also impor­tant to recall what the White House told us the intel­li­gence assess­ment was par­tial­ly based on in the first arti­cle: :
“This entire intel­li­gence assess­ment formed the back­bone of Fri­day’s White House state­ment, which said in part, “this con­clu­sion is based on descrip­tions of the attack in mul­ti­ple media sources, the report­ed symp­toms expe­ri­enced by vic­tims, videos and images show­ing two assessed bar­rel bombs from the attack, and reli­able infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing coor­di­na­tion between Syr­i­an mil­i­tary offi­cials before the attack. A sig­nif­i­cant body of infor­ma­tion points to the regime using chlo­rine in its bom­bard­ment of Duma, while some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion points to the regime also using the nerve agent sarin.””

“Videos and images show­ing two assessed bar­rel bombs from the attack”. That was part of what the US intel­li­gence assess­ment was based on. And that pre­sum­ably includes the videos of two unex­plod­ed chem­i­cal weapon bar­rel bombs that were videoed in the fol­low­ing April 10th tweet by the White Hel­mets of a 38 sec­ond video from April 9 show­ing what appeared to be a chlo­rine can­is­ter:

Impor­tant: video from 9 April, 7:02pm show­ing pres­ence of chem­i­cal gas can­is­ter in Douma. Same loca­tion as video of casu­al­ties. Also same loca­tion that Rus­sia vis­it­ed report­ing ‘no sign of chem­i­cal weapons’. pic.twitter.com/Sbz64cPi4w— The White Hel­mets (@SyriaCivilDef) April 10, 2018

So if Dr Rahaiban­i’s sce­nario of a suf­fo­cat­ing dust storm, or any oth­er sce­nario that did­n’t involve the use of chem­i­cal weapons, is true, than we are clear­ly look­ing at manip­u­lat­ed video evi­dence.

Sim­i­lar­ly, if chem­i­cal weapons were indeed used, we have to ask the ques­tion of who used them. Did the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly use chem­i­cal weapons in the last phase for its siege on Douma (quite pos­si­bly the worst move it could have done) or did Jaish el-Islam or some oth­er jihadist group oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly employ their own chem­i­cals weapons for the pur­pose of pro­vok­ing a response from the US and oth­ers?

Well, along those lines, the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes one of the oth­er twists in this alleged chem­i­cal weapons attack: the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment claimed back in March that, “Rus­sia has hard facts about prepa­ra­tions for stag­ing the use of chem­i­cal weapons against civil­ians by the gov­ern­ment forces. After the provo­ca­tion, the US plans to accuse Syria’s gov­ern­ment forces of using chem­i­cal weapons … fur­nish the so-called ‘evi­dence’ … and Wash­ing­ton plans to deliv­er a mis­sile and bomb strike against Dam­as­cus’ gov­ern­ment dis­tricts.”

Now, it’s obvi­ous that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment would have an incen­tive to make such a claim with or with­out any “hard facts” giv­en the his­to­ry alleged chem­i­cal weapons use in this con­flict and the poten­tial for mil­i­tary respons­es.

But it’s also pret­ty obvi­ous that the jihadist rebels have both the means (i.e. the pos­ses­sion of chem­i­cal weapons) and the motive to car­ry out staged attacks as we’ve seen before.

And while the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment appeared to sug­gest the US gov­ern­ment was part of orches­trat­ing a hoax attack for the pur­pose of jus­ti­fy­ing air strikes against Dam­as­cus, it’s worth not­ing one of the impor­tant points in the fol­low­ing arti­cle: this alleged chem­i­cal attack on Douma and the alleged chem­i­cal attack in Idlib last year share some­thing in com­mon. They both took place short­ly after the Trump admin­is­tra­tion expressed a desire to reduce the US’s involve­ment in the Syr­i­an con­flict.

On March 30, 2017, U.S. Ambas­sador to the UN Nik­ki Haley said U.S. pol­i­cy was no longer focused on get­ting Assad out. Five days lat­er the chem­i­cal inci­dent at Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib hap­pened. Then, on March 29 of this year, Trump declares that U.S. forces will with­draw from Syr­ia “very soon.” And a lit­tle more than a week lat­er we have this alleged chem­i­cal attack in Douma. In oth­er words, both of those alleged chem­i­cal attack were hap­pen­ing in a con­text where the jihadist rebel fac­tions alone had an incen­tive to actu­al­ly car­ry out the attacks, which would pre­dictably work to the ben­e­fit of those in the West advo­cat­ing for a deep­er mil­i­tary involve­ment.

And that’s why it’s not ade­quate to sim­ply ask the ques­tion, “would the jihadist rebel fac­tions actu­al­ly attack their own local pop­u­la­tions?” Because we should real­ly be ask­ing, “would the jihadist rebel fac­tions actu­al­ly attack their own local pop­u­la­tions when faced with the prospect of the US pulling out of Syr­ia?” And giv­en the nature of these jihadist and the entire sor­did his­to­ry of these chem­i­cal attacks it seems like the obvi­ous answer is, “yes, of course they would do that. We are talk­ing about al Qae­da and oth­er al Qae­da-like groups, after all.”

But the arti­cle makes anoth­er point that adds an addi­tion­al con­text to this whole sit­u­a­tion: Jaish el-Islam isn’t actu­al­ly on good terms with al Nusra/al Qae­da at this point, and that was a big part of what was slow­ing down the evac­u­a­tion of jihadist fight­ers from Douma after the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment made the offer of giv­ing them safe pas­sage to Idlib. In oth­er words, the offer of safe pas­sage to Idlib was­n’t an offer to a safe des­ti­na­tion for Jaish el-Islam.

And this con­flict between Jaish el-Islam and al Nus­ra is a reminder of anoth­er key point that needs to be kept in mind: When we’re talk­ing about gov­ern­ments that had an incen­tive to see a staged chem­i­cal attack, the Saud­is are clear­ly at or near the top of the list. Jaish el-Islam was formed from merg­er of ~60 Islamist rebel groups with Sau­di back­ing and was seen as a kind of ‘non-al Qae­da or ISIS’ rebrand­ing of the Sun­ni extrem­ist rebels fac­tions. It’s sup­posed to be a mil­i­tant jihadist force the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will get behind. This is one of those jihadist groups oper­at­ing in Syr­ia: basi­cal­ly as crazy and vicious as al Qae­da, but mar­ket­ed by its Gulf state back­ers as not al Qae­da and at war with al Qae­da and there­fore sup­pos­ed­ly accept­able. So the threat of send­ing Jaish el-Islam to al Nus­ra’s enclave in Idlib is poten­tial­ly a much more sig­nif­i­cant event from a mil­i­tary stand­point than meets the eye.

In addi­tion to con­flicts with al Nus­ra, it’s also impor­tant to keep in mind that Jaish el-Isam’s found­ing leader was a Douma based cler­ic. Evac­u­at­ing Douma is, for Jaish el-Islam, evac­u­at­ing its home base, with the prospect of mov­ing to its arch ene­my’s cur­rent head­quar­ters.

So while the Chief of Russia’s Gen­er­al Staff, Valery Gerasi­mov, sug­gest­ed back in March that it had hard facts that there were prepa­ra­tions to stage an attack and the US was plan­ning on using that as an excuse to bomb Dam­as­cus, don’t for­get that the gov­ern­ment with the biggest vest­ed inter­est in the fate of Jaish el-Islam is the Sau­di gov­ern­ment:

Con­sor­tium News

Tak­ing the World to the Brink

As Amer­i­can drums beat again for war, Rick Ster­ling steps back to con­tem­plate the pos­si­ble con­se­quences this time.

By Rick Ster­ling Spe­cial to Con­sor­tium News
April 10, 2018

West­ern neo­con­ser­v­a­tives and hawks are dri­ving the inter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion to increas­ing ten­sion and dan­ger. Not con­tent with the destruc­tion of Iraq and Libya based on false claims, they are now press­ing for a direct US attack on Syr­ia.

As a dan­ger­ous pre­lude, Israeli jets fly­ing over Lebanese air­space fired mis­siles against the T4/Tiyas Air­base west of Palmyra fol­low­ing reports on Sun­day of a chem­i­cal weapons attack in Douma, a sub­urb of Dam­as­cus under rebel con­trol.

As report­ed at Tass, the Chief of Russia’s Gen­er­al Staff, Valery Gerasi­mov, pre­dict­ed the alleged use of chem­i­cals almost a month ago. The report from March 13 says, “Rus­sia has hard facts about prepa­ra­tions for stag­ing the use of chem­i­cal weapons against civil­ians by the gov­ern­ment forces. After the provo­ca­tion, the US plans to accuse Syria’s gov­ern­ment forces of using chem­i­cal weapons … fur­nish the so-called ‘evi­dence’ … and Wash­ing­ton plans to deliv­er a mis­sile and bomb strike against Dam­as­cus’ gov­ern­ment dis­tricts.”

Gerasi­mov not­ed that Russ­ian mil­i­tary advi­sors are stay­ing in the Syr­i­an Defense Ministry’s facil­i­ties in Dam­as­cus and “in the event of a threat to our mil­i­tary servicemen’s lives, Russia’s Armed Forces will take retal­ia­to­ry mea­sures to tar­get both the mis­siles and their deliv­ery vehi­cles.”

The sit­u­a­tion is clear­ly fraught with the risk of slid­ing into inter­na­tion­al con­flict between the two biggest nuclear weapons pow­ers with all that that implies. Civ­i­liza­tion itself is being put in per­il so that the West can con­tin­ue sup­port­ing sec­tar­i­an armed groups seek­ing to over­throw the Assad gov­ern­ment, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law and the UN Char­ter.

The most pow­er­ful coun­try in the world is now led by a real estate, hotel and enter­tain­ment mogul with­out polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence. Behind the scenes, there is an entrenched for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment deter­mined to main­tain and reclaim U.S. uni­lat­er­al “lead­er­ship” of the world. Amer­i­can lead­ers fear that the U.S. is los­ing influ­ence, pres­tige and pow­er around the world. Israel and Sau­di Ara­bia are see­ing their designs on region­al dom­i­nance fail­ing.

East Ghou­ta, Dam­as­cus

East Ghou­ta is a dis­trict of farms and towns on the north-east out­skirts of Dam­as­cus. For the past six years, var­i­ous armed fac­tions con­trolled the area. On a near­ly dai­ly basis, they launched mor­tar and hell can­non mis­sile attacks into Dam­as­cus, and have killed thou­sands of civil­ians. This author per­son­al­ly wit­nessed two such mor­tar attacks in April 2014.

By the end of March most of East Ghou­ta had been retak­en by the gov­ern­ment. With the peace­ful evac­u­a­tion of armed mil­i­tants, civil­ians flood­ed into the human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors and then gov­ern­ment camps for the dis­placed. The cam­paign was pro­ceed­ing quick­ly with min­i­mal loss of life as the Russ­ian Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion offi­cers nego­ti­at­ed agree­ments which allowed the mil­i­tants to keep small weapons and be trans­port­ed to Idlib in the north.

Jour­nal­ist Vanes­sa Bee­ley doc­u­ment­ed the sit­u­a­tion includ­ing the hap­pi­ness and relief of many civil­ians as they final­ly made it to safe­ty. One described the feel­ing as “like being reborn”. Robert Fisk of Britain’s Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per was on site and report­ed what he saw first hand in sto­ries titled Watch­ing on as Islamist fight­ers are evac­u­at­ed from war-torn East­ern Ghou­ta and West­ern howls of out­rage over the Ghou­ta siege ring hol­low.

As report­ed at the Russ­ian Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Cen­tre, by the end of March, 105,857 civil­ians had moved into gov­ern­ment con­trolled areas while 13,793 mil­i­tants, plus 23,433 fam­i­ly mem­bers had been trans­port­ed north. Those who want­ed to stay, includ­ing for­mer fight­ers, were wel­comed. They could rejoin Syr­i­an soci­ety with the same rights and oblig­a­tions as oth­er Syr­i­ans.

The last remain­ing oppo­si­tion strong­hold was the town of Douma, con­trolled by the Sau­di-fund­ed Jaish al Islam. Nego­ti­a­tions were pro­longed because Jaish al Islam did not want to go to Idlib, which is dom­i­nat­ed by anoth­er mil­i­tant oppo­si­tion group, Jab­hat al Nus­ra also known as Hay­at Tahrir al Sham. It is the al Qae­da affil­i­ate in Syr­ia.

The Chem­i­cal Inci­dent

On Sat­ur­day, April 7, video and sto­ries claim­ing a chem­i­cal weapons attack in Douma were broad­cast. The video showed dozens of dead chil­dren. On Sun­day the sto­ry grabbed west­ern main­stream media head­lines. U.S. Pres­i­dent Trump quick­ly came to a con­clu­sion: “Pres­i­dent Putin, Rus­sia and Iran are respon­si­ble for back­ing Ani­mal Assad. Big price to pay”.

There has been no objec­tive inves­ti­ga­tion. The media claims are based on state­ments and videos from mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS) and the White Hel­mets. Both orga­ni­za­tions receive sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from the US gov­ern­ment and are not neu­tral as aid orga­ni­za­tions should be. They both call for West­ern inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia.

Chem­i­cal weapons have emerged as the quick and easy jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for aggres­sion. One year ago, in April 2017, it was the inci­dent at Khan Sheikhoun. That result­ed in a US attack on a Syr­i­an air base just days lat­er. As report­ed here by Con­sor­tium News‘ late founder, Robert Par­ry, the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion dis­cov­ered that dozens of vic­tims had shown up in hos­pi­tals in diverse loca­tions and up to 100 kms away from the scene of the crime before the event hap­pened. Indica­tive of appar­ent bias by the inves­ti­ga­tors, this red flag point­ing to fraud was not probed fur­ther. If it was just a few vic­tims or just one loca­tion, it might be a mis­take in time record-keep­ing. How­ev­er in this case there were dozens of dis­crep­an­cies in mul­ti­ple loca­tions, clear­ly rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fraud.

Now we have the inci­dent in Douma. The armed oppo­si­tion is in retreat. They are los­ing the war and are des­per­ate. They have tried since 2012 to pres­sure the U.S. and NATO to inter­vene direct­ly on their side. The rebels have access to chem­i­cal weapons in East Ghou­ta and they have a motive. They also have thou­sands of pris­on­ers. This group put hun­dreds of pris­on­ers, pri­mar­i­ly women and chil­dren, in cages on the streets of Douma.

Who Ben­e­fits?

The tim­ing of the chem­i­cal weapons inci­dents is also note­wor­thy. As doc­u­ment­ed here, one year ago on March 30, 2017, U.S. Ambas­sador to the UN Nik­ki Haley said U.S. pol­i­cy was no longer focused on get­ting Assad out. Five days lat­er the chem­i­cal inci­dent at Khan Sheikhoun hap­pened, fol­lowed quick­ly by blam­ing the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment with­out evi­dence, then the U.S. attack on a Syr­i­an air base and a then restora­tion of the demand that “Assad must go.”

On March 29 this year, Trump said that U.S. forces will with­draw from Syr­ia “very soon.” This was fol­lowed by out­cries from the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. Once again, fol­low­ing Saturday’s inci­dent, the U.S. is again threat­en­ing to inter­vene. The chem­i­cal weapons inci­dents have con­sis­tent­ly result­ed in the rever­sal of a pro­posed change in hos­til­i­ty toward Syr­ia.

Neo­con­ser­v­a­tives and the sup­port­ers of ‘regime change’ for­eign pol­i­cy have var­i­ous the­o­ries why the Assad gov­ern­ment would per­pe­trate a chem­i­cal weapons attack. Sen­a­tor John McCain says the Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent was “embold­ened” by Trump’s call to with­draw. Juan Cole, an aca­d­e­m­ic who pro­mot­ed the assaults on Libya in 2011, has a dif­fer­ent the­o­ry. He says “Chem­i­cal weapons are used by des­per­ate regimes that are either out­num­bered by the ene­my or are reluc­tant to take casu­al­ties in their mil­i­taries. Bar­rel-bomb­ing Douma with chem seems to have appealed to the regime as a tac­tic for this rea­son. It had poten­tial of fright­en­ing the Douma pop­u­la­tion into desert­ing the Army of Islam.”

In con­trast with his the­o­ry, chem­i­cal weapons were used exten­sive­ly by the U.S. in Viet­nam and Iraq when they were far from des­per­ate. As evi­denced in the flow of civil­ians into gov­ern­ment held areas, most of the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion are hap­py to get away from the sec­tar­i­an and vio­lent Army of Islam (“Jaish al Islam”). Cole seems to be bas­ing his the­o­ries on inac­cu­rate west­ern media cov­er­age just as he did regard­ing Libya where sen­sa­tion­al claims about a loom­ing mas­sacre in Beng­hazi were lat­er shown to be fraud­u­lent.

It’s clear who ben­e­fits from sen­sa­tion­al media cov­er­age about a chem­i­cal weapons inci­dent: those who seek to want the U.S. to inter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly. Every time there is an inci­dent, and well before an inves­ti­ga­tion has even begun, it is seized on by gov­ern­ments and orga­ni­za­tions who’ve sought regime change in Syr­ia since the start of the war, and per­haps even ear­li­er.

...

———-

“Tak­ing the World to the Brink” by Rick Ster­ling; Con­sor­tium News; 04/10/2018

“As report­ed at Tass, the Chief of Russia’s Gen­er­al Staff, Valery Gerasi­mov, pre­dict­ed the alleged use of chem­i­cals almost a month ago. The report from March 13 says, “Rus­sia has hard facts about prepa­ra­tions for stag­ing the use of chem­i­cal weapons against civil­ians by the gov­ern­ment forces. After the provo­ca­tion, the US plans to accuse Syria’s gov­ern­ment forces of using chem­i­cal weapons … fur­nish the so-called ‘evi­dence’ … and Wash­ing­ton plans to deliv­er a mis­sile and bomb strike against Dam­as­cus’ gov­ern­ment dis­tricts.””

It’s quite a pub­lic state­ment from the Chief of Russia’s Gen­er­al Staff. At the same time, giv­en the state of the cur­rent war of words and gen­er­al rela­tions between DC and Moscow, it’s not like this state­ment was all that sur­pris­ing. Giv­en all the evi­dence the Idlib chem­i­cal attacks last year were actu­al­ly car­ried out by al Nus­ra, the “hard facts” Gerasi­mov referred to could sim­ply be that recent his­to­ry.

And as the arti­cle crit­i­cal­ly points out, the nego­ti­a­tions over the evac­u­a­tion of Douma were drawn out because the Sau­di-backed Jaish el-Islam did­n’t want to go to Idlib because it’s dom­i­nat­ed by al Nus­ra:

...
The last remain­ing oppo­si­tion strong­hold was the town of Douma, con­trolled by the Sau­di-fund­ed Jaish al Islam. Nego­ti­a­tions were pro­longed because Jaish al Islam did not want to go to Idlib, which is dom­i­nat­ed by anoth­er mil­i­tant oppo­si­tion group, Jab­hat al Nus­ra also known as Hay­at Tahrir al Sham. It is the al Qae­da affil­i­ate in Syr­ia.
...

And as the arti­cle also points out, the tim­ing of both this chem­i­cal attack and last year’s attack in Idlib hap­pened to take place just days after announce­ments from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion that rep­re­sent­ed an exis­ten­tial threat to the rebel­lion: last year UN Ambas­sador Nik­ki Haley said U.S. pol­i­cy was no longer focused on over­throw­ing Assad out. The chem­i­cal inci­dent at Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, hap­pened 5 days lat­er. And this year have have Pres­i­dent Trump sud­den­ly announc­ing that US forces will with­draw from Syr­ia “very soon”, fol­lowed by the attack in Douma a lit­tle over a week lat­er. So Jaish el-Islam was­n’t just faces the threat of expul­sion to an area con­trolled by its rival, al Nus­ra. It was also fac­ing the threat of los­ing the US involve­ment in this con­flict:

...
Who Ben­e­fits?

The tim­ing of the chem­i­cal weapons inci­dents is also note­wor­thy. As doc­u­ment­ed here, one year ago on March 30, 2017, U.S. Ambas­sador to the UN Nik­ki Haley said U.S. pol­i­cy was no longer focused on get­ting Assad out. Five days lat­er the chem­i­cal inci­dent at Khan Sheikhoun hap­pened, fol­lowed quick­ly by blam­ing the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment with­out evi­dence, then the U.S. attack on a Syr­i­an air base and a then restora­tion of the demand that “Assad must go.”

On March 29 this year, Trump said that U.S. forces will with­draw from Syr­ia “very soon.” This was fol­lowed by out­cries from the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. Once again, fol­low­ing Saturday’s inci­dent, the U.S. is again threat­en­ing to inter­vene. The chem­i­cal weapons inci­dents have con­sis­tent­ly result­ed in the rever­sal of a pro­posed change in hos­til­i­ty toward Syr­ia.
...

Final­ly, as the arti­cle also points out, the ini­tial evi­dence was based on videos and state­ments from mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS) and the White Hel­mets:

...
The Chem­i­cal Inci­dent

On Sat­ur­day, April 7, video and sto­ries claim­ing a chem­i­cal weapons attack in Douma were broad­cast. The video showed dozens of dead chil­dren. On Sun­day the sto­ry grabbed west­ern main­stream media head­lines. U.S. Pres­i­dent Trump quick­ly came to a con­clu­sion: “Pres­i­dent Putin, Rus­sia and Iran are respon­si­ble for back­ing Ani­mal Assad. Big price to pay”.

There has been no objec­tive inves­ti­ga­tion. The media claims are based on state­ments and videos from mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS) and the White Hel­mets. Both orga­ni­za­tions receive sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from the US gov­ern­ment and are not neu­tral as aid orga­ni­za­tions should be. They both call for West­ern inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia.
...

So now let’s take a look at the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS). As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, SAMS claims to be a “non-polit­i­cal, non-prof­it med­ical orga­ni­za­tion,” and is cit­ed as a cred­i­ble author­i­ty by media report­ing on the inci­dent in Douma. But its ori­gins is that of an exile arm of the Islamist-ori­ent­ed Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion with a close rela­tion­ship to both neo­con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ments in Wash­ing­ton and al Nus­ra.
And SAMS played a key role in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the sarin attack in Al Qae­da-con­trolled Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib last year. And that includ­ed SAMS pro­vid­ing bio­med­ical sam­ples to the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Pre­ven­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons (OPCW) which one again vio­lat­ed its stat­ed pro­to­col by accept­ing evi­dence with­out a ver­i­fi­able chain of cus­tody. That’s the back­ground for one of the main groups pro­vid­ing video and eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny to the chem­i­cal attack:

Gray Zone Project

“Al Qaeda’s MASH Unit”: How the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety Is Sell­ing Regime Change and Dri­ving the US to War

By Max Blu­men­thal

Reports on unproven alle­ga­tions of a chem­i­cal attack in Douma, the Syr­ia city for­mer­ly occu­pied by the Army of Islam insur­gent group, invari­ably rely on a key source: The Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS). Togeth­er with the White Hel­mets, SAMS has been cit­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Post, New York Times, CNN and vir­tu­al­ly every West­ern media orga­ni­za­tion report­ing on the inci­dent. In Douma, SAMS staff have claimed that they treat­ed more than 500 peo­ple for symp­toms “indica­tive of expo­sure to a chem­i­cal agent.”

The group also played a cen­tral role in shap­ing the nar­ra­tive of a sarin attack in Al Qae­da-con­trolled Khan Sheikhoun in April, 2017, pro­vid­ing bio­med­ical sam­ples to the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Pre­ven­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons (OPCW), which vio­lat­ed its stat­ed pro­to­col by accept­ing evi­dence with­out a ver­i­fi­able chain of cus­tody. That inci­dent prompt­ed the launch­ing of 57 cruise mis­siles at a Syr­i­an air base by the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary. Almost exact­ly a year lat­er, a strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar event is said to have tripped the “red line” again, and is like­ly to trig­ger a more robust assault by the US and its allies.

SAMS claims to be a “non-polit­i­cal, non-prof­it med­ical orga­ni­za­tion,” and is cit­ed as a cred­i­ble author­i­ty by media report­ing on the inci­dent in Douma. Scant pub­lished mate­r­i­al is avail­able on the organization’s ori­gins as an exile arm of the Islamist-ori­ent­ed Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion, its involve­ment in sophis­ti­cat­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions from the Turk­ish-Syr­i­an bor­der, or its close rela­tion­ship to neo­con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ments in Wash­ing­ton and Al Qaeda’s affil­i­ate in Syr­ia.

SAMS is not mere­ly a group of Syr­i­an doc­tors tend­ing to the wound­ed in war torn areas, nor can it be con­sid­ered a objec­tive source on chem­i­cal attacks and oth­er atroc­i­ties. The orga­ni­za­tion is a USAID-fund­ed lob­by­ing pow­er­house that func­tions with a sin­gle-mind­ed deter­mi­na­tion to stim­u­late a US-led war of regime change that will place Syr­i­an Islamists in pow­er in Dam­as­cus.

SAMS was found­ed in 1998 by mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can exile com­mu­ni­ty, which is con­cen­trat­ed in the sub­urbs of Chica­go, Illi­nois. Pri­or to the 2011 armed rebel­lion against Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad, the group led sev­er­al med­ical del­e­ga­tions to Syr­ia, pre­sum­ably coop­er­at­ing with the gov­ern­ment to gain access. A for­mer mem­ber of SAMS approached me to com­plain that the armed revolt prompt­ed a takeover of the organization’s board of direc­tors by sym­pa­thiz­ers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. She said she and oth­er sec­u­lar and Chris­t­ian mem­bers resigned from the group as it trans­formed into what she described as “Al Qaeda’s MASH unit.”

USAID fund­ing, anti-Iran MEK links

Accord­ing to SAMS 2015 finan­cial state­ment [PDF], the organization’s bud­get jumped from $672,987 in 2013 to near­ly $6 mil­lion in 2015 — almost a ten­fold increase. Over $5.8 mil­lion of that fund­ing came from USAID, an arm of the US State Depart­ment that boasts its own Office of Tran­si­tion Ini­tia­tives to encour­age regime change in states tar­get­ed by the West. SAMS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor David Lil­lie also hap­pens to be a for­mer USAID staffer, as is SAMS Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions Tony Kro­n­fli.

Through­out much of the Syr­i­an con­flict, SAMS oper­a­tions have been over­seen by Zaher Sahloul, an ardent­ly anti-Iran oper­a­tive ded­i­cat­ed to drum­ming up a war of regime change against the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. After unsuc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing Barack Oba­ma for a NATO-imposed No Fly Zones over Syr­ia, a pol­i­cy that Hillary Clin­ton acknowl­edged would “kill a lot of Syr­i­ans,” Sahloul accused the pres­i­dent of hav­ing “allowed a geno­cide in Syr­ia.” Sahloul was a par­tic­i­pant in a Sep­tem­ber 20, 2016 ral­ly in New York ded­i­cat­ed to ramp­ing up con­flict with Iran, as well. The ral­ly was orga­nized by the exiled Iran­ian People’s MEK, a shad­owy inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to regime change in Iran that has been described as a “ter­ror­ist cult.”. Neo­con­ser­v­a­tive for­mer Sen. Joseph Lieber­man, a recip­i­ent of MEK pay­ments, was among the speak­ers. Days lat­er, the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Eli Lake hailed Sahloul and his col­leagues as “Syr­i­an-Amer­i­cans Who Stood Up to Iran.”

The SAMS-affil­i­at­ed Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Syr­i­an Relief has endorsed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s call for “safe zones” in Syr­ia, a euphemism for No Fly Zones that would require US air pow­er to enforce. Mean­while, Sahloul has joined up with the Jew­ish Unit­ed Fed­er­a­tion of Chica­go, a lead­ing oppo­nent of Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty orga­niz­ing, to pro­mote his efforts.

Sahloul’s son, Adham, for­mer­ly worked as a SAMS advo­ca­cy offi­cers out of Gazien­tep, Turkey, the base of West­ern and local intel­li­gence ser­vices coor­di­nat­ing insur­gent and infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions across the Syr­i­an bor­der. A con­trib­u­tor to var­i­ous Qatari-backed media out­lets like Al Ara­by and Mid­dle East Eye, Adham Sahloul pre­vi­ous­ly worked for Port­land Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a pub­lic rela­tions firm found­ed by a for­mer Tony Blair spin doc­tor. (In 2016, British union leader Len McCluskey accused Port­land Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of spear­head­ing the Blairite coup against left-wing Labour Par­ty leader Jere­my Cor­byn).

...

Info ops, from Al Qaeda’s heart­land to the Belt­way

SAMS assis­tance coor­di­na­tion units send aid and set up hos­pi­tal in refugees camps and with­in Syr­i­an ter­ri­to­ries exclu­sive­ly held by Syria’s insur­gents. In Idlib, the Al-Qae­da-con­trolled area where SAMS oper­ates along­side the insur­gent-run admin­is­tra­tion, “schools have been seg­re­gat­ed, women forced to wear veils, and posters of Osama bin Laden hung on the walls,” accord­ing to Joshua Lan­dis, the direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oklahoma’s Mid­dle East Stud­ies Cen­ter. While SAMS claims to oper­ate 100 hos­pi­tals in Syr­ia, inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble, as West­ern reporters seek­ing access to these areas are rou­tine­ly kid­napped or killed. In 2015, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, Chase Bank closed SAMS’s bank account with­out expla­na­tion.

Sahloul has oper­at­ed a What­sApp group that appears to have deliv­ered the first images from insur­gent activists in east­ern Alep­po to inter­na­tion­al media of Omran Daqneesh, the so-called “dusty boy” whose shell­shocked image was imme­di­ate­ly plas­tered across news­pa­per front pages and upheld as an exhib­it of Assad’s unique cru­el­ty. The orig­i­nal images were tak­en by Mah­moud Raslan, an activist affil­i­at­ed with Nourideen al-Zin­ki, an insur­gent group for­mer­ly backed by the CIA that behead­ed a 19-year-old Pales­tin­ian cap­tive.

A year lat­er, Omran’s father, Moham­mad Kheir Daqneesh, revealed that he and his fam­i­ly had been exploit­ed by insur­gent activists. A White Hel­met snatched Omran from his arms and posed him in an ambu­lance, Moham­mad Daqneesh declared. He also dis­closed that his fam­i­ly was offered a lucra­tive bribe by a Sau­di TV dem­a­gogue to come out as spokes­peo­ple for the armed oppo­si­tion, but as sup­port­ers of the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, they refused. Fol­low­ing this strik­ing rev­e­la­tion, Omran was swift­ly dis­ap­peared from West­ern view and sup­plant­ed by pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­aged child mas­cots of the Syr­i­an Islamist oppo­si­tion like Bana Alabed, Noor and Ala, and Mohamed Najem. (Like Bana, Noor and Ala were recent­ly treat­ed to a cud­dle-filled pho­to-op with Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan and grant­ed hon­orary Turk­ish cit­i­zen­ship.)

Back in Wash­ing­ton, SAMS boasts that it has “become a leader in advo­ca­cy and pol­i­cy­mak­er engage­ment,” lob­by­ing Con­gress, the State Depart­ment and the Unit­ed Nations for regime change in Syr­ia. “When SAMS speaks, peo­ple lis­ten,” reads a quote by an unnamed State Depart­ment offi­cial pub­lished in a SAMS pro­mo­tion­al brochure. So much for the “non-polit­i­cal” orga­ni­za­tion of hum­ble field doc­tors.

On April 16, 2015, Sahloul and SAMS’s Idlib coor­di­na­tor Mohamed Ten­nari tes­ti­fied before the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and alleged mul­ti­ple chlo­rine attacks against the Al Qae­da-held can­ton of Idlib by the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. The meet­ing was orches­trat­ed by then-US Ambas­sador to the UN Saman­tha Pow­er, an out­spo­ken advo­cate of mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Libya and Syr­ia. (Ten­nari was sub­se­quent­ly iden­ti­fied as a “Syr­i­an field doc­tor” in an inter­view with CNN; his work in Al Qae­da-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry was omit­ted).

At its annu­al gala on March 6, 2017, SAMS wel­comed for­mer US Ambas­sador Fred­er­ic Hof, the out­go­ing direc­tor of the Gulf-fund­ed Rafik Hariri Cen­ter at DC’s Atlantic Cen­ter. Before his audi­ence, Hof called for stepped-up arms ship­ments to Syr­i­an rebels, a US-led No Fly Zone for Idlib, the Syr­i­an province con­trolled by Al Qaeda’s local affil­i­ate, and for pre­vent­ing recon­struc­tion of Syria’s shat­tered infra­struc­ture until regime change is achieved.

Just over a year lat­er, act­ing large­ly on claims by SAMS field oper­a­tives, the US, UK and France appear to be ready to make the Syr­i­an opposition’s dreams come true. And as a poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic war looms, Amer­i­cans remain entire­ly in the dark about one of the key orga­ni­za­tions dri­ving the push for war.

———-

““Al Qaeda’s MASH Unit”: How the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety Is Sell­ing Regime Change and Dri­ving the US to War” by Max Blu­men­thal; Gray Zone Project; 04/12/2018

“Reports on unproven alle­ga­tions of a chem­i­cal attack in Douma, the Syr­ia city for­mer­ly occu­pied by the Army of Islam insur­gent group, invari­ably rely on a key source: The Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety (SAMS). Togeth­er with the White Hel­mets, SAMS has been cit­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Post, New York Times, CNN and vir­tu­al­ly every West­ern media orga­ni­za­tion report­ing on the inci­dent. In Douma, SAMS staff have claimed that they treat­ed more than 500 peo­ple for symp­toms “indica­tive of expo­sure to a chem­i­cal agent.””

Yep, the rapid assess­ment that a chlo­rine attack took place in Douma was heav­i­ly based on evi­dence pro­vid­ed by SAMS. Sim­i­lar to the key role SAMS played in pro­vid­ing the evi­dence of a sarin attack in Idlib last year (with evi­dence that broke the OPCW’s chain of cus­tody):

...
The group also played a cen­tral role in shap­ing the nar­ra­tive of a sarin attack in Al Qae­da-con­trolled Khan Sheikhoun in April, 2017, pro­vid­ing bio­med­ical sam­ples to the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Pre­ven­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons (OPCW), which vio­lat­ed its stat­ed pro­to­col by accept­ing evi­dence with­out a ver­i­fi­able chain of cus­tody. That inci­dent prompt­ed the launch­ing of 57 cruise mis­siles at a Syr­i­an air base by the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary. Almost exact­ly a year lat­er, a strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar event is said to have tripped the “red line” again, and is like­ly to trig­ger a more robust assault by the US and its allies.
...

And this group that played a crit­i­cal role in pro­vid­ing evi­dence for both the Douma and Idlib attacks hap­pens to have its roots in the Islamist-ori­ent­ed fac­tion of the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion. Along with ties to neo­con­ser­v­a­tives. And al Nus­ra:

...
SAMS claims to be a “non-polit­i­cal, non-prof­it med­ical orga­ni­za­tion,” and is cit­ed as a cred­i­ble author­i­ty by media report­ing on the inci­dent in Douma. Scant pub­lished mate­r­i­al is avail­able on the organization’s ori­gins as an exile arm of the Islamist-ori­ent­ed Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion, its involve­ment in sophis­ti­cat­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions from the Turk­ish-Syr­i­an bor­der, or its close rela­tion­ship to neo­con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ments in Wash­ing­ton and Al Qaeda’s affil­i­ate in Syr­ia.
...

Al Nus­ra and neo­cons. It’s quite a com­bo and sym­bol­ic of the trag­ic nature of the Syr­i­an con­flict: and end­less drum beat for over­throw­ing the Assad gov­ern­ment with nary a men­tion of the real­i­ty that it will be al Qae­da and sim­i­lar groups tak­ing over.

The ties to Wash­ing­ton are no sur­prise giv­en that SAMS was found­ed in 1998 by mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can exile com­mu­ni­ty. But it sounds like SAMS also expe­ri­enced a rad­i­cal­iza­tion of its own after the Syr­i­an protests turned into an armed revolt, prompt­ing a takeover of the group by sym­pa­thiz­ers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood:

...
SAMS was found­ed in 1998 by mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can exile com­mu­ni­ty, which is con­cen­trat­ed in the sub­urbs of Chica­go, Illi­nois. Pri­or to the 2011 armed rebel­lion against Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad, the group led sev­er­al med­ical del­e­ga­tions to Syr­ia, pre­sum­ably coop­er­at­ing with the gov­ern­ment to gain access. A for­mer mem­ber of SAMS approached me to com­plain that the armed revolt prompt­ed a takeover of the organization’s board of direc­tors by sym­pa­thiz­ers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. She said she and oth­er sec­u­lar and Chris­t­ian mem­bers resigned from the group as it trans­formed into what she described as “Al Qaeda’s MASH unit.”
...

There’s also SAM­S’s exten­stive ties to USAID: fund­ing for the group appears to almost entire­ly come from USAID, and the exec­u­tive direc­tor and direc­tor of oper­a­tions are both for­mer USAID staffers:

...
SAMS is not mere­ly a group of Syr­i­an doc­tors tend­ing to the wound­ed in war torn areas, nor can it be con­sid­ered a objec­tive source on chem­i­cal attacks and oth­er atroc­i­ties. The orga­ni­za­tion is a USAID-fund­ed lob­by­ing pow­er­house that func­tions with a sin­gle-mind­ed deter­mi­na­tion to stim­u­late a US-led war of regime change that will place Syr­i­an Islamists in pow­er in Dam­as­cus.

...

USAID fund­ing, anti-Iran MEK links

Accord­ing to SAMS 2015 finan­cial state­ment [PDF], the organization’s bud­get jumped from $672,987 in 2013 to near­ly $6 mil­lion in 2015 — almost a ten­fold increase. Over $5.8 mil­lion of that fund­ing came from USAID, an arm of the US State Depart­ment that boasts its own Office of Tran­si­tion Ini­tia­tives to encour­age regime change in states tar­get­ed by the West. SAMS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor David Lil­lie also hap­pens to be a for­mer USAID staffer, as is SAMS Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions Tony Kro­n­fli.
...

Then there’s the MEK ties: SAMS oper­a­tions have been over­seen by Zaher Sahloul, an ardent­ly anti-Iran oper­a­tive focused on lob­by­ing for a full scale war for regime change in Syr­i­an. And in 2016, Sahloul par­tic­i­pat­ing in a ral­ly orga­nized by MEK:

...
Through­out much of the Syr­i­an con­flict, SAMS oper­a­tions have been over­seen by Zaher Sahloul, an ardent­ly anti-Iran oper­a­tive ded­i­cat­ed to drum­ming up a war of regime change against the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment. After unsuc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing Barack Oba­ma for a NATO-imposed No Fly Zones over Syr­ia, a pol­i­cy that Hillary Clin­ton acknowl­edged would “kill a lot of Syr­i­ans,” Sahloul accused the pres­i­dent of hav­ing “allowed a geno­cide in Syr­ia.” Sahloul was a par­tic­i­pant in a Sep­tem­ber 20, 2016 ral­ly in New York ded­i­cat­ed to ramp­ing up con­flict with Iran, as well. The ral­ly was orga­nized by the exiled Iran­ian People’s MEK, a shad­owy inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to regime change in Iran that has been described as a “ter­ror­ist cult.”. Neo­con­ser­v­a­tive for­mer Sen. Joseph Lieber­man, a recip­i­ent of MEK pay­ments, was among the speak­ers. Days lat­er, the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Eli Lake hailed Sahloul and his col­leagues as “Syr­i­an-Amer­i­cans Who Stood Up to Iran.”
...

And that’s the back­ground for SAMS, one of the key sources of the evi­dence of the chem­i­cal attack in Douma and last year’s attack in Idlib.

So we’ll see what the OPCW con­cludes now that it has access to Douma and can col­lect evi­dence with a chain a cus­tody.

But let’s not for­get what a mem­ber of SAMS told reporters in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt above from April 10th: He doubt­ed whether any mean­ing­ful evi­dence would remain:

...
Mohamad Katoub of the Syr­i­an Amer­i­can Med­ical Soci­ety, which sup­port­ed med­ical facil­i­ties in Douma before the Rus­sians entered, said he doubt­ed whether any mean­ing­ful evi­dence would remain. Local staffers are afraid to give tes­ti­mo­ny, he said. “In the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion,” he said, an inves­ti­ga­tion “is too hard.”

Many of the activists, med­ical staffers and res­cue work­ers with infor­ma­tion about the attacks have since scat­tered, with many leav­ing Douma on bus­es head­ed north to rebel-held ter­ri­to­ry under the terms of the sur­ren­der deal reached Sun­day between the rebels and the Rus­sians. Among them was Marhoum, who spoke Tues­day from one of the bus­es.
...

That arti­cle was from over two weeks ago. So we prob­a­bly should­n’t be too sur­prised if the OPCW’s final con­clu­sion is ulti­mate­ly incon­clu­sive. And as we’ve seen, nor should we be sur­prised if an incon­clu­sive con­clu­sion is used to jus­ti­fy deep­er US mil­i­tary involve­ment in Syr­i­a’s civ­il war.