Syria, Sarin, and Subterfuge: They Made It All Up
[Antiwar.com] - The suspicion that the sarin gas attack supposedly launched by Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad’s forces against rebel positions in the town of Ghouta on August 21 was a false flag was always in the air. Now we have strong evidence pointing in that direction.
For months prior to the events in Ghouta the Syrian rebel propaganda machine had been revving up its motors, churning out murky YouTube videos supposedly documenting poison gas attacks by Syrian government forces. None of which were very convincing. It wasn’t until late summer that the rebel narrative took hold in the mainstream media with an account of a Syrian government attack on Ghouta that reportedly killed anywhere from 1400 to approximately 250 people.
The Obama administration latched on to these allegations and then some, assuring us that there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the Assad forces were responsible. Administration officials made it seem as if we had tracked in real time the various steps Syrian government troops took in preparing the atrocity, and the War Party shouted hosannas to the NSA. There was just one problem: it was all a lie.
[Firstly] as Seymour Hersh reports in the London Review of Books, there was no way the administration could have monitored communications between Assad and his commanders, since the Syrians had discovered – and plugged up – holes in their security months prior to the incident. (We know this thanks to Edward Snowden.) So they were lying about that. Secondly, the sensors the Americans (or someone) had planted near Syrian chemical arms caches detected nothing in the days prior to the attack: if Assad had launched the sarin-packed missiles, alarm bells would’ve gone off in Washington. They didn’t. Yes, but there was an attack utilizing poison gas that took place in Ghouta on August 21 – so who did it?
Seymour M. Hersh: Whose sarin?
Int'l Business Times: Chemical Attack in Ghouta "an Accident [sic] Caused by Free Syrian Army"
Huffington Post: New Yorker, Washington Post Passed On Seymour Hersh Syria Report