No travel insurance for me !

[webfact]

French intelligence says Assad forces carried out sarin attack

By John Irish

REUTERS

 

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

 

PARIS (Reuters) - French intelligence has concluded that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria and that Assad or members of his inner circle ordered the strike, a declassified report showed.

 

The chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of people, according to a war monitor, Syrian opposition groups and Western countries. It prompted the United States to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base, its first deliberate assault on the Assad government in the six-year-old conflict.

 

Assad has said in two media interviews since April 4 that the evidence of a poison gas attack was false and denied his government had ever used chemical weapons.

 

The six-page French document, seen by Reuters, and drawn up by France's military and foreign intelligence services - said it reached its conclusion based on samples they had obtained from the impact strike on the ground and a blood sample from a victim.

 

"We know, from a certain source, that the process of fabrication of the samples taken is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories," Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters after presenting the findings to the cabinet.

 

"This method is the signature of the regime and it is what enables us to establish the responsibility of the attack. We know because we kept samples from previous attacks that we were able to use for comparison."

 

Among the elements found in the samples were hexamine, a hallmark of sarin produced by the Syrian government, according to the report.

 

It said the findings matched the results of samples obtained by French intelligence, including an unexploded grenade, from an attack in Saraqib on April 29, 2013, which Western powers have accused the Assad government of carrying out.

 

"This production process is developed by Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) for the regime," the report said.

The United States on Monday blacklisted 271 employees belonging to the agency.

 

Syria agreed in September 2013 to destroy its entire chemical weapons programme under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

 

The report said that based on its assessments, there were "serious doubts on the accuracy, completeness and sincerity of the dismantlement of Syria's chemical arsenal."

 

SIX WARPLANE STRIKES

 

The report, which lists some 140 suspected chemical attacks in Syria since 2012, also said intelligence services were aware of a Syrian government Sukhoi 22 warplane that had struck six times on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 and that samples taken from the ground were consistent with an airborne projectile that had munitions loaded with sarin.

 

"The French intelligence services consider that only Bashar al-Assad and some of his most influential entourage can give the order to use chemical weapons," the report said.

 

It added that jihadist groups in the area in Idlib province did not have the capacity to develop and launch such an attack and that Islamic State was not in the region.

 

Assad's assertion that the attack was fabricated was "not credible" given the mass flows of casualties in a short space of time arriving in Syrian and Turkish hospitals as well as the sheer quantity of social media posts and video showing people with neurotoxic symptoms, said the report.

 

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on April 19 that sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, but it is not mandated to assign blame.

 

Russia, which backs Assad in the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, has said the gas was released by an air strike on a poison gas storage depot controlled by rebels.

 

"The Kremlin thinks as before that the only way to restore the truth of what happened in Idlib is impartial international investigation. We regret that OPCW restrains so far from such an investigation," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the French report.

 

A senior French diplomatic source said Paris had passed the report on to its partners and would continue to push for a probe.

 

Moscow was attempting to discredit the OPCW, the source said: "There is a propaganda effort by Russia to say that the OPCW's work is not credible."

 

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus, Pravin Char and Sonya Hepinstall)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-04-27

[pkspeaker]

fkin liars, the 'intelligence' that iraq had chemical weapons was also such a sure thing.. why does assad use chems when he could just as easily kill 87 civilians with airforce bombers and heavy artillery?. they never pose this basic question, they just assume that assad goes out of his way to invite a us attack on his forces that are winning the war everyday.

[sanukjim]

Isn't using the words "intelligence" and "France" together an Oxymoron ?

[ilostmypassword]

5 minutes ago, sanukjim said:

Isn't using the words "intelligence" and "France" together an Oxymoron ?

And here we see precisely what I was preferring to in my post above about the French. There are those who still haven't forgiven them for correctly evaluating the soundness of intelligence about Iraqi WMDs. 

[Tchooptip]

2 hours ago, pkspeaker said:

fkin liars, the 'intelligence' that iraq had chemical weapons was also such a sure thing.. why does assad use chems when he could just as easily kill 87 civilians with airforce bombers and heavy artillery?. they never pose this basic question, they just assume that assad goes out of his way to invite a us attack on his forces that are winning the war everyday.

 

 

8 minutes ago, sanukjim said:

Isn't using the words "intelligence" and "France" together an Oxymoron ?

Duno... but "intelligence" and "TV comments" for sure  this time.

[Ulic]

2 hours ago, SOUTHERNSTAR said:

The Russians have asked for a chemical weapons inspection team to visit the air force base to confirm that chemical weapons was present at the base or not. Yet the west declined it. Here is an article about a MIT professor who used science to show that this was staged event. 

 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/67102.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mit-expert-claims-latest-chemical-100819428.html

After reading these I must say I no longer can believe either side with any degree of certainty.

[Zyxel]

37 minutes ago, sanukjim said:

Isn't using the words "intelligence" and "France" together an Oxymoron ?

About the Intelligence Services of every country in the world, we usually learn about fiascos, failures and mishaps. We never learn about their successes immediately, but only after a long time. For example British Intelligence waited until 1974 to reveal that they could decipher the German Enigma machine messages sent during WWII, partially from 1941 then almost fully in 1944, after a day or two, with the use of the Colossus computer. Similar machines were used by others countries after the war and Britain was wise to keep secret the fact that its Intelligence services had the mean to decipher their messages.

[Krungbin]

2 hours ago, ilostmypassword said:

 

As you may recall, the French were extremely sceptical of American claims of WMD before the 2nd Gulf War.  Which has earned them the continuing and ludicrous emnity of American war hawks.  Anybody here recall the "Freedom Fries" idiocy?

I agree with you.  These days, the French were right.  But I do not think they are now...

[impulse]

10 hours ago, ilostmypassword said:

As you may recall, the French were extremely sceptical of American claims of WMD before the 2nd Gulf War.  Which has earned them the continuing and ludicrous emnity of American war hawks.  Anybody here recall the "Freedom Fries" idiocy?

 

No, the French were concerned that all the weapons they had been selling to Saddam in violation of the UN sanctions would be discovered if the USA went in.  Which they were.  Their skepticism about WMD was their excuse for trying to stop the invasion.  Right actions, wrong reasons.

[ilostmypassword]

28 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

No, the French were concerned that all the weapons they had been selling to Saddam in violation of the UN sanctions would be discovered if the USA went in.  Which they were.  Their skepticism about WMD was their excuse for trying to stop the invasion.  Right actions, wrong reasons.

You got some proof that was their motivation? Because lots of states that provided weapons to Saddam Hussein supported the US intervention. Didn't seem to bother them.

[impulse]

6 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

You got some proof that was their motivation? Because lots of states that provided weapons to Saddam Hussein supported the US intervention. Didn't seem to bother them.

 

It'll be another 50 years before documents are declassified and we "have some proof" what their motivation was during the opening days of WWII, much less Gulf War II.  

 

Unless a Snowden or an Assange spill the beans.

 

Edited April 27, 2017 by impulse

[craigt3365]

13 hours ago, SOUTHERNSTAR said:

The Russians have asked for a chemical weapons inspection team to visit the air force base to confirm that chemical weapons was present at the base or not. Yet the west declined it. Here is an article about a MIT professor who used science to show that this was staged event. 

 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/67102.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mit-expert-claims-latest-chemical-100819428.html

That website is fake news and conspiracy theories. Not credible at all. 

[craigt3365]

13 hours ago, pkspeaker said:

fkin liars, the 'intelligence' that iraq had chemical weapons was also such a sure thing.. why does assad use chems when he could just as easily kill 87 civilians with airforce bombers and heavy artillery?. they never pose this basic question, they just assume that assad goes out of his way to invite a us attack on his forces that are winning the war everyday.

Assad has been using chemical weapons for a long time. Mainly chlorine. But has used sarin previously.

 

You are seeking logic from a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Never going to happen.

[onthesoi]

11 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

That website is fake news and conspiracy theories. Not credible at all. 

 

Yahoo.com is a fake news conspiracy website?

 

& the MIT professor at the Pentagon is a fake video?

[craigt3365]

11 hours ago, ilostmypassword said:

And here we see precisely what I was preferring to in my post above about the French. There are those who still haven't forgiven them for correctly evaluating the soundness of intelligence about Iraqi WMDs. 

I believe it was Chirac who said there was no "undisputed truth " that iraq had WMD.

 

Get your facts straight.

 

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/13/paul-wolfowitz/wolfowitz-wrongly-says-germany-france-thought-iraq/

[craigt3365]

2 minutes ago, onthesoi said:

 

Yahoo.com is a fake news conspiracy website?

 

& the MIT professor at the Pentagon is a fake video?

That is a repost by Yahoo from another site. Easy to figure out if you research it. Plus, it's been shown to be dodgy.  At best.

[ilostmypassword]

11 hours ago, ilostmypassword said:

And here we see precisely what I was preferring to in my post above about the French. There are those who still haven't forgiven them for correctly evaluating the soundness of intelligence about Iraqi WMDs. 

4 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

I believe it was Chirac who said there was no "undisputed truth " that iraq had WMD.

 

Get your facts straight.

 

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/13/paul-wolfowitz/wolfowitz-wrongly-says-germany-france-thought-iraq/

You got your opposite meaning reading glasses on?

 

[craigt3365]

2 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

You got your opposite meaning reading glasses on?

 

My apologies.

Sitting in the Trodos mountains enjoying Cypriot wine on a terrace with stunning views.  I should be focused on other matters.

Edited April 27, 2017 by craigt3365

[Morch]

14 hours ago, pkspeaker said:

fkin liars, the 'intelligence' that iraq had chemical weapons was also such a sure thing.. why does assad use chems when he could just as easily kill 87 civilians with airforce bombers and heavy artillery?. they never pose this basic question, they just assume that assad goes out of his way to invite a us attack on his forces that are winning the war everyday.

 

Iraq indeed had chemical weapons, and made use of such. Both against Iran and the Kurds.

The basic question is why assume leaders, politicians and dictators to always act rationally or calculate their moves with precision.

[onthesoi]

 

46 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

That is a repost by Yahoo from another site. Easy to figure out if you research it. Plus, it's been shown to be dodgy.  At best.

 

Nearly all news sites report other news stories, the point is that Yahoo News deemed it worthy to put on their news website  ....funny how you didn't seem to mind this when content being reposted is claiming that Assad did something wrong.

 

The source is: IBT or International Business Times ...are you saying they are a  'fake news conspiracy website' ?

 

[janclaes47]

35 minutes ago, Morch said:

 

Iraq indeed had chemical weapons, and made use of such. Both against Iran and the Kurds.

The basic question is why assume leaders, politicians and dictators to always act rationally or calculate their moves with precision.

Iraq had chemical weapons in the 80's and may be 90's, but Saddam was killed on false accusations, because he didn't have chemical weapons, and that is what Pkspeaker had in mind with his post.

 

Good try, NEXT

 

 

[Morch]

1 minute ago, janclaes47 said:

Iraq had chemical weapons in the 80's and may be 90's, but Saddam was killed on false accusations, because he didn't have chemical weapons, and that is what Pkspeaker had in mind with his post.

 

Good try, NEXT

 

 

 

Can't recall Iraq officially disarming itself from chemical weapons. WMD is a general term, chemical weapons is more specific. I doubt anyone claims Iraq did not have the latter. The WMD "thing" was more related to nuclear weapons - which weren't there. Not a bad idea to keep things clear as possible. 

[ilostmypassword]

1 minute ago, Morch said:

 

Can't recall Iraq officially disarming itself from chemical weapons. WMD is a general term, chemical weapons is more specific. I doubt anyone claims Iraq did not have the latter. The WMD "thing" was more related to nuclear weapons - which weren't there. Not a bad idea to keep things clear as possible. 

No it wasn't. Don't you remember the claims about those mobile weapons laboratories made by Colin Powell?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_weapons_laboratory

As for chemical weapons, that program had been abandoned long before 2003 and while there were still old weapons left over, they weren't in a condition to be used.

[janclaes47]

11 minutes ago, Morch said:

 

Can't recall Iraq officially disarming itself from chemical weapons. WMD is a general term, chemical weapons is more specific. I doubt anyone claims Iraq did not have the latter. The WMD "thing" was more related to nuclear weapons - which weren't there. Not a bad idea to keep things clear as possible. 

 

Even Scott Ritter officially declared that Iraq had 90 - 95% disarmed of chemical weapons, and that the 5- 10% left was not a threat, as it was only parts of installations and leftovers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

There's no doubt Iraq hasn't fully complied with its disarmament obligations as set forth by the Security Council in its resolution. But on the other hand, since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capacity has been verifiably eliminated ... We have to remember that this missing 5-10% doesn't necessarily constitute a threat ... It constitutes bits and pieces of a weapons program which in its totality doesn't amount to much, but which is still prohibited ... We can't give Iraq a clean bill of health, therefore we can't close the book on their weapons of mass destruction. But simultaneously, we can't reasonably talk about Iraqi non-compliance as representing a de-facto retention of a prohibited capacity worthy of war.^[7

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 27, 2017 by janclaes47

[Morch]

9 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

No it wasn't. Don't you remember the claims about those mobile weapons laboratories made by Colin Powell?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_weapons_laboratory

As for chemical weapons, that program had been abandoned long before 2003 and while there were still old weapons left over, they weren't in a condition to be used.

 

As for chemical weapons, that program had been abandoned long before 2003 and while there were still old weapons left over, they weren't in a condition to be used.

 

I don't see that you provided anything supporting this statement. And manufacturing chemical weapons (not all, granted) is not that complicated once the know-how exists.

[ilostmypassword]

14 minutes ago, Morch said:

 

As for chemical weapons, that program had been abandoned long before 2003 and while there were still old weapons left over, they weren't in a condition to be used.

 

I don't see that you provided anything supporting this statement. And manufacturing chemical weapons (not all, granted) is not that complicated once the know-how exists.

A New York Times investigation published in October found that the military had recovered thousands of old chemical warheads and shells in Iraq and that Americans and Iraqis had been wounded by them, but the government kept much of this information secret, from the public and troops alike.

These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion, and they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-bought-and-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html?referer&_r=1

[Morch]

26 minutes ago, janclaes47 said:

 

Even Scott Ritter officially declared that Iraq had 95% disarmed of chemical weapons, and that the 10% left was not a threat, as it was only parts of installations and leftovers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

There's no doubt Iraq hasn't fully complied with its disarmament obligations as set forth by the Security Council in its resolution. But on the other hand, since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capacity has been verifiably eliminated ... We have to remember that this missing 5-10% doesn't necessarily constitute a threat ... It constitutes bits and pieces of a weapons program which in its totality doesn't amount to much, but which is still prohibited ... We can't give Iraq a clean bill of health, therefore we can't close the book on their weapons of mass destruction. But simultaneously, we can't reasonably talk about Iraqi non-compliance as representing a de-facto retention of a prohibited capacity worthy of war.^[7

 

 

 

Ritter was both over-confident of the inspection regime, and as things went on, increasingly involved with the anti-war movement. I think you'll find, even in the link provided, another quote by Ritter - which acknowledges Iraq's capability of reinstating it's chemical weapons program in a matter of "weeks". If I remember correctly (been a while...) the actual estimate was on the (very) lower side on this one.

 

Considering 5%-10% as a non-threat is a a choice (and again, that over-confidence). If bearing in mind that the 5%-10% figure referred to a rather large stock, it may sound a bit more serious than presented. I would agree, though, that it was not enough of a threat to merit the war.

 

 

 

 

[janclaes47]

Just now, Morch said:

 

Ritter was both over-confident of the inspection regime, and as things went on, increasingly involved with the anti-war movement. I think you'll find, even in the link provided, another quote by Ritter - which acknowledges Iraq's capability of reinstating it's chemical weapons program in a matter of "weeks". If I remember correctly (been a while...) the actual estimate was on the (very) lower side on this one.

 

Considering 5%-10% as a non-threat is a a choice (and again, that over-confidence). If bearing in mind that the 5%-10% figure referred to a rather large stock, it may sound a bit more serious than presented. I would agree, though, that it was not enough of a threat to merit the war.

 

 

 

 

 

Guess Saddam must have swallowed them all then before they hung him, because I don't recall the war mongers that invaded Iraq found any.

[Morch]

16 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

A New York Times investigation published in October found that the military had recovered thousands of old chemical warheads and shells in Iraq and that Americans and Iraqis had been wounded by them, but the government kept much of this information secret, from the public and troops alike.

These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion, and they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-bought-and-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html?referer&_r=1

 

This link actually highlights the opposite. It details that significant amounts of chemical weapons were around and that troops were exposed to chemical weapons without prior warnings. And this is but a part a partial story - no indication given of how many similar operations were conducted (and if such were carried out by other nations).

[Morch]

9 minutes ago, janclaes47 said:

 

Guess Saddam must have swallowed them all then before they hung him, because I don't recall the war mongers that invaded Iraq found any.

 

I guess you haven't read the New York Times article linked in the post above (by @ilostmypassword).