I'm with Seymour Hersh. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice,
shame on me."
I no longer am able to trust my government. That could be an
indication that I sense that I don't matter in the eyes of the
Oligarchy. As long as I don't get in their way, or cause them great
embarrassment, they will ignore me. But from where I sit, I am not
worth the time of day to them. And the proof is that they have broken
the trust that should exist between a government and its people.
Trust. Trust is so very important to me that I probably left a
capital "T" in the middle of my children's brains. "Once broken,
trust is near impossible to regain", I would tell them over and over
and over. All three of my children grew into caring, loving adults.
And, even though I know that they had a major role in the direction
their lives went, I know that my constant hammering about Trust, made
an impression that became the basis of how they live their lives.
Coming from a home with a mother who, despite all her golden
qualities, who had a hair trigger temper, and swung before asking
questions, I vowed that I would find positive methods of raising my
children. Even so, and sad to say, I actually swatted my eldest
daughter and my son, one time each. But I believed that being
involved with my children, listening to them, discussing how we
problem solved, how we understood what is meant by "Friendship",
helped them to become the successful and happy adults that they are.
Trust can only exist if it is a two way street. If you don't trust
me, then I'm a fool if I trust you. It has to be all or nothing at
all. I do not trust Donald Trump. And I'm certain that Donald Trump
is not losing any sleep over that. I don't trust any politician who
claims that the piles of money coming into their campaigns will not
impact how they vote. They broke the trust by lying to me. I don't
trust anyone who can't tell the difference between interrogation and
torture. The quickest way to break trust is to lie. "Water Boarding
isn't torture. Sure, it's uncomfortable, but..." "making someone
stand up for long periods of time isn't torture. Heck, I have to
stand up most of the day". Someone thinks they are playing hide and
go seek with 4 year olds, instead of carrying on an adult discussion.
Trust Busters. All of them are Trust Busters, and I tune them out.
But of course they hold all the cards.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/27/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alternet
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Seymour Hersh Casts Doubt on Reported Syrian Gas Attack
Seymour Hersh Casts Doubt on Reported Syrian Gas Attack
By Jefferson Morley [1] / AlterNet [2]
June 26, 2017, 10:08 AM GMT
The U.S. cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base, in retaliation for
what
the White House said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the
Syrian government, proved to be a rare moment of glory in Donald Trump’s
embattled presidency. The president basked in praise from usually critical
Democrats and news organizations.
Yet behind the scenes, U.S. military and intelligence officials doubted
that
the Syrians had used chemical weapons, according to investigative reporter
Seymour Hersh.
Trump was “warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no
evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon,” Hersh writes on the
German news site Die Welt [3].
"Some American military and intelligence officials were especially
distressed by the president's determination to ignore the evidence. 'None
of
this makes any sense,' one officer told colleagues upon learning of the
decision to bomb. 'We KNOW that there was no chemical attack ... the
Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth
...
I guess it didn't matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.'"
Anonymous Source
The source for much of Hersh’s story is anonymous. He is described as “a
senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in
senior positions in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence
Agency.”
The source’s description of divisions within Trump’s national security
advisers conflicts with previous news accounts [4] that depicted the
president and his military and intelligence advisers as united in the
belief
that Syrian forces had used sarin gas, which is banned under international
law.
"U.S. intelligence agencies quickly identified the source of the attack and
the chemical agent used," reported USA Today. "'That confidence level has
just continued to grow in the hours and days since the attack,' national
security adviser H.R. McMaster said."
If accurate, Hersh’s article renews doubts about the attack [5] first
raised
by MIT professor Theodore Postol. In a series of blog posts about video
from
the scene of the attack, Postol argued that the Syrian town of Khan
Sheikhoun had suffered conventional, not chemical, attack.
In Hersh’s account, Trump was persuaded by social media images of victims
who seemed to show the signs of a chemical attack. Members of his national
security team were not convinced the images were proof of a chemical
attack,
according to Hersh.
Hersh cites transcripts of a U.S.-Russian “deconfliction” communications
channel that he says shows the alleged chemical attack was actually a
conventional attack on a warehouse used by al-Qaeda militants. Following
standard procedures, the Russians notified the U.S. in advance of the
planned Syrian attack and the U.S. commanders had no objection, Hersh
reports.
The victims seen on social media were actually suffering from the effects
of
breathing in chemicals dispersed into the air by the bombing of the
al-Qaeda
warehouse, according to Hersh:
"A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that
the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of
secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that
began
to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers,
disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified
by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground."
A team from the doctor’s group Médecins Sans Frontières treated victims
from
Khan Sheikhoun and reported that “eight patients showed symptoms—including
constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation—which are
consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar
compounds.”
Hersh's claim that chemical weapons were not used in the attack conflicts
with the findings of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) and the French government [6].
An OPCW report [7] dated May 19 analyzed samples from the site. Signs of
sarin or sarin-like substances were detected in many samples, as well as
sarin degradation products, and at least two samples that state sarin
itself
was detected, according to the OPCW.
The OPCW's fact-finding mission is seeking to visit Khan Sheikhoun as part
of its investigation.
'Fireworks Display'
Hersh portrays Trump as determined to act in the absence of corroborating
evidence that Assad had used sarin on his own people. Among the four policy
options he was presented, Trump chose to bomb an airfield in Syria, but
only
after alerting the Russians (and through them, the Syrians) to avoid too
many casualties.
On April 6, U.S. commanders fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian base, a
show of force Hersh depicts as meaningless:
“Most of the important personnel and operational fighter planes had been
flown to nearby bases hours before the raid began. The two runways and
parking places for aircraft, which had also been targeted, were repaired
and
back in operation within eight hours or so. All in all, it was little more
than an expensive fireworks display.”
But the attack yielded political benefits for Trump. Speaking on CNN,
Fareed
Zakaria said, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.”
A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them
published
editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York
Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
Hersh’s anonymous source [3] expects more such incidents:
“'The Salafists and jihadists got everything they wanted out of their
hyped-up Syrian nerve gas ploy,' the senior adviser to the U.S.
intelligence
community told me, referring to the flareup of tensions between Syria,
Russia and America. 'The issue is, what if there’s another false flag sarin
attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted
himself
into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys are
not
planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb
again,
and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.'”
But whether Hersh's anonymous source is right is still open to question.
Jefferson Morley is AlterNet's Washington correspondent. He is the author
of
the forthcoming biography The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James
Jesus Angleton [8] (St. Martin's Press, October 2017) and the 2016 Kindle
ebook CIA and JFK: The Secret Assassination Files [9].
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/seymour-hersh-casts-doubt-syrian-gas-attack
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jefferson-morley-2
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html
[4]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/07/how-trump-made-the-d
ecision-to-bomb-syria-tick-tock/100149920/
[5]
http://www.alternet.org/world/trumps-missile-attack-syria-justified-fabricat
ed-intelligence
[6]
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/syria/events/article/chemical
-attack-in-syria-national-evaluation-presented-by-jean-marc-ayrault
[7] http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/N1714412.pdf
[8]
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Secret-Spymaster-James-Angleton/dp/1250080614/?
tag=alternorg08-20
[9]
https://www.amazon.com/CIA-JFK-Secret-Assassination-Files-ebook/dp/B01FIGY89
Y/?tag=alternorg08-20
[10] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on Seymour Hersh Casts
Doubt on Reported Syrian Gas Attack
&body=URL:http://www.alternet.org/seymour-hersh-casts-doubt-syrian-gas-attac
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[11] http://www.alternet.org/
[12] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
