{"id":64496,"date":"2013-08-31T12:50:04","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T11:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/experts-u-s-case-that-syrian-government-responsible-for-chemical-weapons-is-weak\/64496\/"},"modified":"2013-08-31T12:50:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T11:50:04","slug":"experts-u-s-case-that-syrian-government-responsible-for-chemical-weapons-is-weak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/experts-u-s-case-that-syrian-government-responsible-for-chemical-weapons-is-weak\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts: U.S. Case that Syrian Government Responsible for Chemical Weapons Is Weak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Intelligence Experts Around the Globe Are Sounding the Alarm that the Justification for Intervention Is\u00a0Far from Established<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Intelligence experts around the globe are sounding the alarm that the justification for intervention is far from established.<\/p>\n

\n

***<\/p>\n

One of the world\u2019s leading experts on chemical weapons<\/strong>, Jean Pascal Zanders, on Friday\u00a0told The Huffington Post UK<\/a>\u00a0that he has\u00a0significant doubts about the identity of the chemical agent<\/strong>\u00a0widely blamed for the deaths in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what the agent is,\u201d said Zanders, who until recently served as senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, an EU agency that scrutinizes defense and security issues. \u201cEveryone is saying sarin. There is something clearly to do with a neurotoxicant [such as sarin], but not everything is pointing in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agent used is a crucial piece of information, Zanders said, because the family of neurotoxicants that includes military weapons such as nerve agents also encompasses industrial products like those used to control rodents.\u00a0Until the actual agent can be identified<\/strong>, any link to the Assad regime is tenuous, Zanders said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf say, for example, a neurotoxicant was taken from a factory and used at [Ghouta], thenthe number of actors who might be responsible for that then increases<\/strong>,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

Zanders\u2019 caution was merely the latest bit of skepticism to emerge from the ranks of experienced experts now challenging the adequacy of the case for a strike in Syria.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Lawrence Wilkerson, who reviewed the intelligence presented by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell as justification for the war in Iraq a decade ago,\u00a0told HuffPost<\/a>\u00a0that the preparations for a Syria strike seem devoid of authority.<\/p>\n

Wilkerson [who\u00a0largely drafted\u00a0<\/a>Powell’s speech] likened the current debate to a repeat of the days he spent preparing for Powell\u2019s since-debunked testimony, \u201cwith people telling me [former Iraq President] Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction with absolutely certainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added:\u00a0\u201cIt seems like the same thing again.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That pronouncement followed a striking caution from Hans Blix, who was\u00a0chief United Nations arms inspector for Iraq<\/strong>\u00a0in the run-up to the war. In an\u00a0interview with Nathan Gardels<\/a>, Blix said that while \u201cindications are certainly in the direction of the use of chemical weapons\u201d in Syria, those now contemplating military action should wait for U.N. inspectors now on the ground to complete their work.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we\u2019ve seen before, the political dynamics are running ahead of due process,\u201d Blix said, adding that the dynamic was\u00a0reminiscent of the way the Bush administration launched the war in Iraq<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not go along with the statement by the U.S. that \u2018it is too late\u2019 for Syria now to cooperate. That is a poor excuse for taking military action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most pointedly, Blix warned that missiles aimed at eradicating Assad\u2019s chemical weapons capacities could exacerbate harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cAttacking stockpiles with cruise missiles, as I understand it, has the disadvantage that is might spread chemical weapons in the vicinity of any attack,\u201d Blix said.<\/p>\n

Zanders, the former EU chemical weapons expert, went even further, arguing thatoutsiders cannot conclude with confidence the extent or geographic location of the chemical weapons attack widely being blamed on the Assad regime<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

He singled out the images of victims convulsing in agony that have circulated widely on the Web, including on YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do not know where they were taken,\u201d he said. \u201cYou do not know when they were taken or even by whom they were taken. Or, whether they [are from] the same incident or from different incidents.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zanders added: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t tell me who would be responsible for it. It doesn\u2019t tell me where the films were taken. It just tells me that something has happened, somewhere, at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Indeed, many experts on chemical weapons have\u00a0expressed doubt<\/a>\u00a0that government-made chemicals were used. And \u2014 in a replay of the run up to the Iraq war \u2014 the U.S. has done\u00a0everything it can toprevent<\/em><\/a>\u00a0U.N. weapons inspectors from doing their job.<\/p>\n

And U.S. and British intelligence now that admit\u00a0they\u00a0don\u2019t know<\/em><\/a>\u00a0whether it was the rebels or the Syrian government who carried out the attack.<\/p>\n

…read more<\/a> <\/p>\n

Republished from: Infowars<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Intelligence Experts Around the Globe Are Sounding the Alarm that the Justification for Intervention Is\u00a0Far from Established Intelligence experts around the globe are sounding the alarm that the justification for intervention is far from established. *** One of the world\u2019s leading experts on chemical weapons, Jean Pascal Zanders, on Friday\u00a0told The Huffington Post UK\u00a0that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-64496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}