Both the opposition and the terrorists in Syria were just thrilled that their chemical weapons provocation resulted in a missile strike on a government airbase. And now, they feel they can fight the war with someone else's hands, or with American missiles, to be exact. And, as Russian intelligence shows, they are now transporting a new delivery of poisonous chemicals to four Syrian regions. Let's look at the map. We have Khan Shaykhun, the Jirah airbase, Eastern Ghouta and outside Aleppo to the west. That's where they plan to stage a photo-shoot of chemical attacks by Assad.
So that later, pictures in hand, Trump's daughter Ivanka, weeping tearfully, can run from her White House office right to her daddy, so he can press the red button again that launches missiles over Assad's government's forces. NATO's bobbleheads will just nod back and forth again in response. The plan is tried-and-true. So what was that? Our correspondent Anton Lyadov looked at the photos that are spreading across the internet.
A report from the White House, just 3.5 pages in small fonts, is how the US is justifying the launch of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase. Phrases like "The US is sure," and "we are convinced" that Assad supposedly executed a chemical attack against his own people are later replaced by the phrase "we cannot publish intelligence data," they mean, to prove it. But it lets you understand that what you'll read below will open your eyes to the truth. It's a very clumsy, amateurish job. That's false. This is a statement of myths, not facts. We're dealing here with a propaganda recording.
Experts from the US, the UK, Germany and Sweden have been trying to figure out for almost two weeks where Washington got its proof of Assad's guilt. For example, here is a report by someone who says he is a doctor. The hospital is packed; people have been poisoned by some kind of chemical, which isn't chlorine.
After about a minute and 15 seconds, he forgets what he said, and reverts back to a version with chlorine. Patients from the chlorine attack are everywhere. Here, someone claiming on social media to be a reporter, posted a statement, dated April 3rd. Tomorrow we'll start a media campaign to report on the air raid on the rural areas of Hama, including the usage of chemical weapons. The Internet reacted immediately: How did this event get onto Twitter before it even happened? A professor at MIT, one of the world's most prestigious technical universities, Theodore Postol, did his own investigation. With previous experience at the Pentagon, He was an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the US Navy, he analyzed the shape of the crater from the bomb allegedly dropped by an airplane. He also studied the pieces leftover from the ammunition.
The pipe has a concave dent in it, from the top. In figure 4, there is the possible configuration of a device for spreading sarin that could have been used. If this really is the mechanism that was used to spread sarin, then the pipe with sarin was placed there by someone on the ground, and was not dropped from a plane. This was not done from the air. You can see it's been crushed from the outside. This isn't the kind of device that's dropped from a plane. It had to be placed on the ground. But I'm not sure this is what happened. I think what we have is a situation where serious fabrication and tampering took place.
German retired Air Defense Colonel Bernd Biedermann also had questions about the shape of the crater. It definitely doesn't look like it's from a chemical weapon. Chemical missiles don't have an explosive effect, like artillery shells or bombs, which are intended to inflict physical damage. Chemical weapons aren't used to destroy buildings. They are used to release poisonous substances into the atmosphere. There is a high probability that what is in this picture is not a chemical weapon.
Doctor of Military Science Konstantin Sivkov noticed the same thing. If it were from the chemical missile, the crater would be very shallow and wide. Not deep. Not deep. Here it's deep and small in size. Video posted online states that the attack was chemical, with the same gas mentioned in the White House report. This a substance called sarin. He said he's sure it's sarin. They repeat after one another. A local activist, a journalist from the Syrian-Turkish border. Here the person is a meter away from the crater. That's just incredible. Simply impossible. There's no way that after a sarin chemical explosion, it's possible to walk, run or even show any movement there. -You can see it. -Yes. This guy is sitting there in flip-flops or slippers. Yes, yes. This just isn't serious at all, I'm telling you.
The concentration in the ground will be so high for the next few days, that he'll either be severely handicapped, or just a corpse. The man by the crater is Hadi Al-Abdallah. Social network users recognized him right away. Here is Mr. Hadi Al-Abdallah together with ISIS, the terrorist group. There are quite a few videos available online. Here, Al-Abdallah calls the people around him heroes and interviews the leader of the Jihad group Jundul-Aqsa. Here's another so-called witness to the tragedy in Idlib, Dr. Shajul Islam.
Western media know him very well. Here's a report about him from five years ago. Shajul Islam is 26 years old, British-born. Today, he stood before a Westminster court on charges of kidnapping the photographer John Cantlie in Syria. He is currently in pre-trial detention. He held John Cantlie and a Dutch journalist Jeroen Oerlemans as unwilling hostages in an Islamist camp for a week. Meanwhile, Shajul Islam keeps reporting. Here's another video from Idlib on April 4th. In the top left corner, there's the logo of a popular organization in the West, the White Helmets. They are hosing people down with water. We're watching this footage with an academic, the former chief toxicologist of the Russian Defense Ministry, Henrich Sofronov. They would need to receive urgently administered first aid. This is some sort of demonstration. Aren't the White Helmets specialists? No. From the point of toxicological first aid, this is nonsense. Do they even need water? I think in this case it's useless.
The White Helmets organization is constantly caught falsifying things. However, they've been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The White Helmets are primarily a propaganda tool used in the service of political interests. Their main task is to convince everybody there is a civil war in Syria and that Assad is fighting his own people. The footage from the White Helmets from April 4th in Idlib also raises a lot of questions. It would be possible to dot all the i's and cross the t's had the professionals from the UN's OPCW arrived in Syria on time. As an expert, I will state my opinion quite rigidly: There just aren't enough arguments here to prove these are the consequences of a chemical attack.
But there are enough arguments to begin a serious professional investigation. Why are these experts not attracted to these facts? They'd only need a few hours to arrive on location dressed in whatever protective clothing their ranks require. And they would need only minutes to say what really happened there. It's these same experts from an international organization, who were responsible for neutralizing the Syrian army's chemicals for 3 years. From 2013 to 2016, all chemicals were removed from Syria from ten locations they had been given access to by the country's government.
Two of those locations are in a constantly active combat zone. And, one of them is a constant cause for concern. It's located on the territory, controlled by the militants of Jabhat Al-Nusra. In 2013, the civilians of Eastern Ghouta were attacked with chemical weapons. 350 liters of chemicals were discharged and just like at present, they tried to blame it on Assad. Obama threatened bombing campaigns. And in the end, the government's complicity was never proven. And Syrian soldiers are still finding the militants' artisan labs. They are usually located in well-fortified areas.
The version of what happened in Idlib on April 4th, which the West is in no rush to consider, is that the spread of chemicals could have occurred after a Syrian plane hit one of the militants' chemical weapons warehouses. Idlib is a region that's been controlled by the militants for quite awhile now. And they have in fact established a particular defensive structure there, which includes chemical munitions laboratories. Specifically in Idlib.
There are now these 'armchair' experts who say that the missiles are stored separately. So that if they're dropped, there will be no explosions. There will be no chemical leaks. Is that true? No. If you bomb a chemical munitions warehouse, the contamination will be just as severe. Several missiles will definitely leak. And that's enough for a full contamination. For commentary on all these issues, we went to the Hague to the UN's own OPCW. The answer? The experts aren't available for interviews or comments.
