Thread: Obama Administration Copies Bush’s Sidelining of Weapons Inspectors In Iraq

Obama Administration Copies Bush’s Sidelining of Weapons Inspectors In Iraq

Submitted by George Washington on 08/28/2013 15:29 -0400

One of John Kerry’s main arguments for bombing Syria is that the Assad government stalled and delayed UN weapons inspectors:

Our sense of basic humanity is offended not only by this cowardly crime, but also by the cynical attempt to cover it up. At every turn, the Syrian regime has failed to cooperate with the U.N. investigation, using it only to stall and to stymie the important effort to bring to light what happened in Damascus in the dead of night.

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I spoke on Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem, and I made it very clear to him that if the regime, as he argued, had nothing to hide, then their response should be immediate, immediate transparency, immediate access, not shelling. Their response needed to be unrestricted and immediate access. Failure to permit that, I told him, would tell its own story.

Instead, for five days, the Syrian regime refused to allow the U.N. investigators access to the site of the attack that would allegedly exonerate them. Instead, it attacked the area further, shelling it and systemically destroying evidence. That is not the behavior of a government that has nothing to hide. That is not the action of a regime eager to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons.

In fact, the regime’s belated decision to allow access is too late, and it’s too late to be credible.

In reality, chemical weapons evidence lasts for years. As the New York Times notes:

Scientists have discovered that sarin, a deadly nerve agent, can be detected long after its use on the battlefield. In one case, forensic experts went to a Kurdish village in northern Iraq four years after Iraqi warplanes had dropped clusters of bombs there. The experts found a unique chemical signature of the lethal toxin in contaminated soil from bomb craters.

Such findings suggest that the Syrian government would have a hard time hiding evidence if it did indeed use chemical weapons against civilians in a large-scale attack last week.

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“They can pinpoint chemicals long after the fact,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on biological and chemical weapons at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “In past investigations, the inspectors have collected incredibly useful and at times incriminating evidence.”

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“They’re very good,” said David H. Moore, a toxicologist at Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research group in Columbus, Ohio, and a former official at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense, at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. “If adequate samples are collected, there’s a high probability that they will find conclusive evidence of exposure to chemical warfare agents.”

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With Syria, he added, the best evidence for chemical forensics would be blood and tissue samples from victims and survivors that display acute symptoms. Careful analysis of such samples, he said, can reveal “telltale markers.”

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Dr. [Ron G. Manley, a former British military specialist and director of verification for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] said in an interview, British scientists had managed to find unambiguous signs “in blood and urine samples for up to two weeks” after a chemical attack.

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In 1992, a forensic team assembled by Physicians for Human Rights, based in Boston, and Middle East Watch, a human rights group based in New York, conducted an unusual experiment to see if clear evidence could be uncovered long after a chemical attack. Its scientists went to the Kurdish village in northern Iraq that had been bombed by Iraqi warplanesfour years earlier, and they sent field samples to the Chemical and Biological Defense Establishment of the British Ministry of Defense. It found trace evidence of sarin as well as mustard gas, another chemical agent.

Graham Pearson, the establishment’s director general at the time, said the detection showed that “samples collected from appropriate locations can provide evidence of the presence of chemical warfare agents over four years after the attack.”

Similarly, Agence France-Presse notes:

Traces of nerve agent would remain in victims for weeks, easily detectable if UN inspectors can examine people poisoned in last week’s suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, experts say.

Toxicology and weapons specialists said a gas like sarin or VX would still be traceable in hair and tissue from human corpses and animal carcasses, the blood of survivors, and the site where the shells carrying the supposed nerve agent exploded.

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“We are still within the time zone where if there was a sarin attack, for example, we should be able to acquire blood samples that then can be analysed in a laboratory outside of Syria, and where we would know for a fact afterwards whether sarin was involved,” said disarmament consultant Ralf Trapp, formerly a scientist at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

“It depends on how much freedom they (the UN inspectors) have to do what they want to do and how good their access is,” he said.

***

Alastair Hay, a toxicology professor at Leeds University in England and a former chemical weapons inspector, said the symptoms “point to a potent chemical warfare nerve agent like sarin”, whose victims could carry traces in their blood forup to six weeks.

***

French toxicology and forensic expert Pascal Kintz said there should be no technical hurdle to obtaining proof of nerve gas poisoning.

“If the UN inspectors get the correct samples, from blood, urine and fatty tissue where these things settle, and also from the victims’ clothes, there would be no problem doing this type of analysis – even with a long delay,” he said.

Inter Press Service reports:

[The United Nations spokesman] sharply disagreed with the argument made by Kerry and the State Department that it was too late to obtain evidence of the nature of the Aug. 21 incident.“Sarin can be detected for up to months after its use,” he said.

Moreover, Kerry’s statement that the Syrian government unreasonably delayed inspection is false.

The UN only delivered the inspection request Saturday. Reporter Matthew Lee obtained the following verification from UN spokesman Farhan Haq:

Matthew Lee: Can you say when, formally, legally, the request to go to al-Ghouta was made?

Farhan Haq: Well, I just read you that request, which is—

Matthew Lee: Right, which is the request.

Farhan Haq: —which is a clear request that was issued on Thursday. Angela Kane was immediately dispatched, and then she arrived in Damascus on Saturday.

Matthew Lee: Right.

Farhan Haq: So she was also stepping forward with that request. But, as you see, we made that request on the 22nd of August.

Matthew Lee: But is that the request? Press statement is the request?

Farhan Haq: It’s not just a press statement, when we make these things. As the statement makes very clear, “a formal request is being sent by the United Nations to the Government of Syria in this regard.”

Matthew Lee: And it arrived on Saturday in the form of Angela Kane? I just wanted you to respond to that.

Farhan Haq: It’s a—that’s basically a question of semantics. You heard exactly what the formal request is. It went out far and wide on Thursday. Angela Kane was conveying this, and she did arrive on Saturday.

It is well known that diplomatic requests are made when delivered … not when hinted at in a press conference.

The Syrian regime conveyed its acceptance of that request the very next day: Sunday.

After Syria agreed to a UN inspection, the U.S. has done everything it can to derail the inspection process:

After the deal was announced on Sunday, however, Kerry pushed [UN head]Ban in a phone call to call off the investigation completely.

The Wall Street Journal reported the pressure on Ban without mentioning Kerry by name. It said unnamed “U.S. officials” had told the secretary-general that it was “no longer safe for the inspectors to remain in Syria and that their mission was pointless.”

***

The Journal said “U.S. officials” also told the secretary-general that the United States “didn’t think the inspectors would be able to collect viable evidence due to the passage of time and damage from subsequent shelling.”
The State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf, confirmed to reporters that Kerry had spoken with Ban over the weekend. She also confirmed the gist of the U.S. position on the investigation. “We believe that it’s been too long and there’s been too much destruction of the area for the investigation to be credible,” she said.

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Harf did not explain, however, how the Syrian agreement to a ceasefire and unimpeded access to the area of the alleged chemical weapons attack could represent a continuation in “shelling and destroying evidence”.

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Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said in a press conference Tuesday that Syria had not been asked by the United Nations for access to the East Ghouta area until Kane presented it on Saturday. Syria agreed to provide access and to a ceasefire the following day.

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The real reason for the Obama administration’s hostility toward the U.N. investigation appears to be the fear that the Syrian government’s decision to allow the team access to the area indicates that it knows that U.N. investigators will not find evidence of a nerve gas attack.

The administration’s effort to discredit the investigation recalls the George W. Bush administration’s rejection of the position of U.N. inspectors in 2002 and 2003 after they found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the administration’s refusal to give inspectors more time to fully rule out the existence of an active Iraqi WMD programme.

In both cases, the administration had made up its mind to go to war and wanted no information that could contradict that policy to arise.

BONUS:

• The Market Has Spoken: A Syrian War Would Suck
• War Against Syria Would Be The Least Popular War In American History
• World Opinion Opposed to War Against Syria
• Bombing Syria Will Only STRENGTHEN the Hardliners
• Actual Video Footage of Syrian REBELS Launching Chemical Weapons?

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed...nspectors-iraq

Syria: Over by Christmas or Voices from the Past?

Submitted by Pivotfarm on 08/28/2013 20:14 -0400

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French President François Hollande jumped straight in declaring in more Sarkozy-style fashion than ex-President Sarkozy himself that he would attack Syria. That was even before the UN investigators had been shot at by some unidentified people. Then, President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron, probably for FOMO, got in on the act too. Their fear of missing out just really got the better of them, didn’t it? But, any intervention in Syria will just end up being an omnishambles entirely. It will be mismanaged, littered with a string of miscalculations and blunders just like in every other war that those countries have entered into in the past 60 years. It’s as if we might be sitting by the transistor still in front of the fire on a September day in the early hours of the outbreak of World War I and hearing ‘it’ll all be over by Christmas’ accompanied by traditional crackling and interference. They thought that Iraq was going to be a short, sharp shock. They thought that Afghanistan was going to be over with a bim, bam, boom. They still think they will be home in time for Christmas and that they will be able to get on with tapering.

Russia tentatively tried to warn that there would be “catastrophic consequences” if there were an intervention. Both Obama and Cameron have stated that they would bypass the United Nations Security Council in order to intervene in Syria. But, the investigators there are intended to discover whether or not there had been an attack involving chemicals weapons.
According to experts that have seen the scenes that are unfolding on our TV screens, there seems little doubt that there has been a chemical weapons attack. Al-Assad has even admitted that it was carried out (by the rebels). But, the role of the UN investigators was not in the slightest to determine who used those weapons and in what aim. Surely, we should be told as citizens of those countries taking action today to intervene in the Syrian internal conflict and find out exactly who did what. Bachar al-Assad has stated: “First they level the accusations, and only then they start collecting evidence...How can the government use chemical weapons, or any other weapons of mass destruction, in an area where its troops are situated? This is not logical. That's why these accusations are politically motivated, and a recent string of victories of the government forces is the reason for it.”

France has already announced that it is stepping up the arming of the Syrian rebels with immediate effect. 70% of US citizens were against the arming of those rebels before the US administration took the decision to do so also. Those weapons will most certainly end up in the wrong hands as they have always done in past conflicts. The rebels are more divided than united in any case in Syria. The rebels are no longer what they were in the beginning, a group of defectors from the Syrian army, but they have been transformed into varying groups of civilians.

• They are uncoordinated and any contact with the rebels means that their individual trust must be gained, taking time and effort to get that together.
• The Free Syrian Army has no control over the Islamist radical rebels and they are separate entities fighting the same conflict almost on an individual basis.
• Arming rebels only maintains the conflict in place.
• Libya proved that and so did Afghanistan.
• Arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s was of the making of the Western world entirely and that ended in the rise of the Taliban.
• The rest is history (at least for some of us, but rarely for those living in that country).
• The French, the British and the US have nothing more than a short-sighted vision of what will take place in Syria, and are keeping in mind their necessity to improve their popularity ratings.
• But, they should take heed of the fact that no war is short and sharp and no war will leave the country in a healthy financial state.

The consequences will indeed be catastrophic. Syria will defend itself against the perhaps groundless excuses that have been created. It’s like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair all over again. It’s just the faces and the names and the political leanings that have changed a little, but the speeches are still the same and the effect is identical. Deputy Prime Minister of Russian Dmitry Rogozin didn’t beat about the bush when he stated on Twitter: “the West behaves towards the Islamic world like a monkey with a grenade.”

Looks like they will be throwing a lot more than coconuts from the tree they’re swinging in right now.

Arming the rebels will most certainly be a specter from the past that will one day return to haunt us all. Entering into a conflict will most certainly lead to an escalation of conflict both in Syria and in the Middle East in general. Syria has vowed to defend itself and promises that its defense will ‘surprise the world’. The Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said: “We have two options: either to surrender, or to defend ourselves with the means at our disposal. The second choice is the best: we will defend ourselves.”

Russia will most certainly continue to defend Syria and has started to evacuate its citizens from the country already in preparation of an attack by the West.

• According to some reports Russia has been supplying al-Assad with 10% of its total arms sales.
• Present contracts are estimated to be worth in the region of $1.5 billion.
• This is nothing to do with wanting to or having to defend Syria.
• Syria is a pawn in the West-East conflict that has never really disappeared despite the fact that the Berlin Wall fell long ago and the cold was ushered out and the apparent warmth in.
• David Cameron and Vladimir Putin allegedly clashed in a telephone conversation over the allegations that there was “no doubt” that al-Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people.

The question is whether or not the surprise that is promised to the world is a good one or a bad one. Surprises are rarely good when they involve governments, are they? Bluff or just a threat that won’t be carried out? Or, truth and dare all at the same time? Syria certainly has the chemical weapons to protect itself adequately. The difference is that they may be prepared to use them if the West decides to go gun ho on them. Let’s face it, the US wasn’t even able to defend itself from an attack on the Australian internet company that manages the servers of Twitter, the New York Times and the Huffington Post. Huff, huff! Where was the National Security Agency in all of this? Weren’t those agents working flat out to eavesdrop on the Syrians? Oh, sorry, no they were listening into John Doe’s conversation with Jane about what they were having for dinner tonight, probably.

With Obama’s red line that will change the game, now there is no alternative but to act. Without acting, North Korea will see non-intervention as a red flag to a bull and will charge. Acting will deter, but cost the countries involved in every sense of the term. Al Qaeda promises today a ‘volcano of revenge’ against the Syrian government.

Does that mean the enemies of my enemies are my friends now?

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