New Report: Rocket Used In Syrian Sarin Gas Attack Launched By American-Backed Rebels

The McClatchy News Service has a report that weapons inspectors meeting in Washington this week concluded that a rocket launched in Syria for a Sarin gas attack originated from the territory held by the American-backed rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad government. It's another report you probably won't see on the nightly news or one of the 24-hour cable TV news stations.

A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed.

A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated . . .

Nonetheless, the Obama administration is sticking by the original story it fabricated as an excuse to start yet another war in the Middle East. It seems that our interest in ensuring that a pipeline gets built through Syria connecting the American-controlled Arab states to the south with Turkey trump the truth. Assad objects to construction of the pipeline so we will do whatever it takes to discredit him and drive him from power so another puppet regime can be installed.

In Washington, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said its assertion of Syrian government responsibility remains unchanged.

“The body of information used to make the assessment regarding the August 21 attack included intelligence pertaining to the regime’s preparations for this attack and its means of delivery, multiple streams of intelligence about the attack itself and its effect, our post-attack observations, and the differences between the capabilities of the regime and the opposition. That assessment made clear that the opposition had not used chemical weapons in Syria,” it said Wednesday in an email.

But the authors of a report released Wednesday said that their study of the rocket’s design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad . . . 

The report also raised questions whether the Obama administration misused intelligence information in a way similar to the administration of President George W. Bush in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Then, U.S. officials insisted that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had an active program to develop weapons of mass destruction. Subsequent inspections turned up no such program or weapons.

“What, exactly, are we spending all this money on intelligence for?” Postol asked.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/15/214656/new-analysis-of-rocket-used-in.html#storylink=cpy

It's incredible how all the so-called liberals who yelled incessantly about Bush's incursions in the Middle East sit by silently as Obama perpetuates his sins. Surely Obama's puppet strings aren't pulled by the same people who pulled Bush's strings?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/15/214656/new-analysis-of-rocket-used-in.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/15/214656/new-analysis-of-rocket-used-in.html#storylink=cpy