World Events and the BibleWEB Notes: Update: In this article we posted the information was provided by a “Western Official.” In this article from The Sidney Morning Heard, it is being reported by the U.N. team probing the case, “On the evidence currently available, it was not possible to reach a finding about the chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrators. The majority of casualties result from unlawful attacks using conventional weapons” There is no evidence according to this team of chemical weapons use. No one has the same story, lies, lies, lies. In the end it will not matter, the powers that be will attack Syria. Reason will be given and the show will go on.
(FP) – U.N. inspectors have collected a “wealth” of evidence on the use of nerve agents that points to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against his own people, according to a senior Western official.
The inspection team, which is expected on Monday to present U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with a highly anticipated report on a suspected Aug. 21 nerve agent attack in the suburbs of Damascus, will not directly accuse the Syrian regime of gassing its own people, according to three U.N.-based diplomats familiar with the investigation. But it will provide a strong circumstantial case — based on an examination of spent rocket casings, ammunition, and laboratory tests of soil, blood, and urine samples — that points strongly in the direction of Syrian government culpability.
“I know they have gotten very rich samples — biomedical and environmental — and they have interviewed victims, doctors and nurses,” said the Western official. “It seems they are very happy with the wealth of evidence they got.” The official, who declined to speak on the record because of the secrecy surrounding the U.N. investigation, could not identify the specific agents detected by the inspector team, but said, “You can conclude from the type of evidence the [identity of the] author.”
The U.N. team, which is led by the Swedish scientist Ake Sellström, traveled to Damascus last month to begin an investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons. During that trip, according to the United States and other Western powers, Syrian forces launched a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1,400 people in the al Ghouta suburb of Damascus.
A montage of video clips posted by Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on her Twitter page depicted horrific scenes of purported victims writhing in agony, and gasping for breath. Rows of dead children, their faces blue from apparent suffocation, were lined up in morbid rows, white sheets covering their tiny bodies.
Syria and Russia have denied that the government in Damascus carried out the attack, saying it was the work of Syrian rebels seeking to persuade the West to intervene militarily on their behalf. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Assad denied his government used chemical weapons — and compared the U.S. case against Syria to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s flawed presentation against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In Syria, Assad said, “the Russians have completely opposite evidence: that missiles [were] thrown from areas that the rebels controlled.”
Syria and Russia, meanwhile, have highlighted several other alleged chemical weapons attacks that wound up hitting Syrian forces. The Syrian government initially invited U.N. inspectors to Syria to investigate an alleged March 19 sarin attack in the town of Khan al Assal, near Aleppo. While the inspectors were in Damascus, Syria’s U.N. ambassador Bashar al Jaafari, requested that investigators look at three other cases of alleged chemical weapons use in late August against Syrian forces. On their final day in Damascus, the U.N. inspection team visited a military hospital in Damascus to examine alleged chemical weapons victims.
Diplomats say that Sellström’s inspection team is only planning to report next week on the al Ghouta attacks. The team plans to return to Damascus at a later date to complete its investigations into the other incidents, including the March incident at Khan al Assal.
Under the terms of its mandate, however, the U.N. inspectors are only authorized to conclude whether chemical weapons have been used in Syria, not assign responsibility for their use.
While Western diplomats say they are confident that U.N. report would strengthen the case against the Syrian government, they said they expected the case would not fundamentally alter the course of diplomatic efforts to contain the chemical weapons threat in Syria. “It’s not a game changer,” said one diplomat.
On Tuesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, admitted his country operated a clandestine chemical weapons program, and vowed to open them up to international scrutiny as part of a Russian-brokered deal to place Syria’s chemical agents under international control. “We are ready to reveal the locations of the chemical weapon sites and to stop producing chemical weapons and make these sites available for inspection by representatives of Russia, other countries and the United Nations,” Moallem said in a statement.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, headed to Geneva to see if they could reach agreement on a plan to control and ultimately destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. Secretary-General Ban, for his part, appeared to be moving beyond the Sellström investigation. “I have not yet received the report from Dr. Sellström, nor do I know what it will contain,” Ban told reporters Monday. But “I’m considering urging the Security Council to demand the immediate transfer of Syria’s chemical weapons and chemical precursor stocks to places inside Syria where they can be safely stored and destroyed.” – FP: Based On Circumstantial Evidence U.N. Report Will Point to Syria’s Assad in Chemical Attack
http://brandontward.blogspot.com/2013/09/based-on-circumstantial-evidence-un.html#.UjGxOsbbOSo
I am ill at ease that the decision to point the finger at Assad is because a bunch of people said it was him but lacking any other evidence to back this up.
There is a video on Youtube of rebels, not Syrian soldiers but rebels using a captured Syrian army launcher firing a chemical rocket, the same design that is being cited as Assad’s but we cannot at all discount that rebels have captured arsenals which would have the chemical artillery rounds empty.
Another aspect of this that isn’t being examined is the quality of the weapons used, when you look at the Sarin gas attacks used by Iraq, there are scores of dead people as if mown down like so much wheat, there are no survivors, the area is highly contaminant and this is because Saddam used his own military grade weapons. Assad’s stockpile is to be expected to be as advanced or even further refined so you would expect a total area death count from the strike not the bit here, bit there, many survivors and patchy deliverance that we saw, this smacks of home made, home brewed Sarin when Assad has dedicated chemical factories to produce the highest grade weaponised Sarin.
Look back to the dead Kurds and the dead Iranians once again, they remained highly contaminant YET the bodies as well as the survivors bore almost no trace of external contaminant, medics and response teams were able to handle bodies and survivors without any diverse effects to themselves which is again hinting at poor weapons grade material, Assad’s weapons would not bear these hallmarks, one of those dispersant shells would have wiped life from pretty much its dispersal area and would have needed time for the gas to dissipate too.
Remember during the days right after the gas attack the US was addiment that UN inspectors “only” find out if sarin gas was used, “not who’s responsible” for it. Why? Because they would have found those canisters belonged to Saudi or Qatar or the US. But the CIA went in and cleaned all that up so now the UN can say who used them. What a crock.
Move along… nothing to look at here!