"the story is fundamentally at odds with reality as we know it"

[rich]

I read Hersh's latest piece and I think this one is much better than the
expose on the Bin Laden killing. It's hard to argue with the thread of
interventionist foreign policy (under the banner of moral not necessarily
strategic interests--the Samantha Powers clique of folks is who I'm
thinking of) running through the Obama administration and he's made some
fatal missteps with regards to Assad. As proven in Libya a mostly risk-free
intervention, we seem to make matters worse. Russia is on the ground in
Syria--we'll have to include Putin in future negotiations. The Joint Chiefs
playing up the Russian threat to Congress seems like political theater,
ensuring continuing funding from sympathetic parties/geographies.

rich


On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 7:22 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:

> From the article:
>
> "It is difficult to trust this story solely on Hersh's record for another
> reason: His record over the past decade has been highly questionable. Since
> 2006, Hersh has reported a stream of increasingly spectacular and thinly
> sourced stories: that the US considered dropping nuclear bombs on Iran,
> that US special forces are secretly run by ancient Illuminati-style orders
> such as Opus Dei, that the US secretly trained Iranian terrorists in
> Nevada, that Syria's 2013 chemical weapons attacks were a "false flag"
> launched by Turkey, and so on.
>
> None of these reports has ever been confirmed. That stands in stark and
> concerning contrast to My Lai and Abu Ghraib, which were quickly confirmed
> by numerous other reporters."
>
>
> I can't say anything about the veracity of Hersh's other claims but the
> main point of his report about the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks has been
> confirmed by the MIT. The attacks were not committed by Assad's forces.
>
>
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045/possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.pdf
>
>
> http://web.mit.edu/sts/Analysis%20of%20the%20UN%20Report%20on%20Syria%20CW.pdf
>
> Here is the summary from the first analysis:
>
> "What is the main policy issue?
>
> The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions that Were Used in the August 21,
> Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers
> The UN Independent Assessment of the Range of the Chemical Munition Is in
> Exact Agreement with Our Findings
> This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at
> East Ghouta from the “Heart”, or from the Eastern Edge, of the Syrian
> Government Controlled Area Shown in the Intelligence Map Published by the
> White House on August 30, 2013.
> This mistaken Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military
> Action Based on False Intelligence.
> A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range
> Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from
> the Gathered Data.
> Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the
> Source
> of These Errors Needs to Be Explained.
> If the Source of These Errors Is Not Identified, the Procedures that Led
> to this
> Intelligence Failure Will Go Uncorrected, and the Chances of a Future
> Policy
> Disaster Will Grow With Certainty."
>
>
> http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045/possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.pdf
>
> There is also common sense: If you were Assad and the President of the
> United States had drawn a "red line" at the use of chemical weapons against
> your opponents, would you attack your opponents with chemical weapons? Of
> course not! Because you may be a murderous dictator but you're not an idiot.
>
> It seems clear to me that this was a flase flag attack. The aim was, of
> course, to provoke a military intervention by the US.
>
>
> To return to Max Fisher's article: Fisher either does not know the MIT's
> analysis or consciously ignores it. Not a good sign either way.
>
> For a detailed discussion of Hersh's indeed thinly sourced report and
> Fisher's criticism, see:
>
>
> http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/12/how-a-critic-of-hershs-new-piece-fails-to-understand-what-really-happened.html
>
>
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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