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This whole media-lens article prettymuch mirrors my own view of the Syria gas-controversy. Fwiw.
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v“…Is it reasonable to describe Postol, one of the world’s ‘leading weapons experts’, according to the New York Times, as a ‘contrarian’? Is Hans Blix, who led the weapons inspections team in Iraq in 2002-2003, a ‘contrarian’? How about former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was 100% vindicated by the failure to find WMD in Iraq? Can Noam Chomsky also be dismissed as merely a ‘contrarian’ following a ‘pattern’ which is ‘always the same’? Chomsky commented recently:
‘Well, there are some interesting questions there — you can understand why Assad would have been pretty crazy [to provoke a US intervention] because they’re winning the war. The worst thing for him is to bring the United States in. So why would he turn to a chemical weapons attack? You can imagine that a dictator with just local interests might do it, maybe if he thought he had a green light. But why would the Russians allow it? It doesn’t make any sense. And in fact, there are some questions about what happened, but there are some pretty credible people — not conspiracy types — people with solid intelligence credentials that say it didn’t happen.
‘Lawrence Wilkerson said that the US intelligence picked up a plane and followed that it probably hit an Al-Qaeda warehouse which had some sort of chemical weapon stored in it and they spread. I don’t know. But it certainly calls for at least an investigation. And those are not insignificant people [challenging the official narrative].’
We are saying no more or less than this – it calls for at least an investigation.
Chomsky pointed to comments made by Wilkerson, former chief of staff to General Colin Powell, in a recent interview on the Real News Network:
‘I personally think the provocation was a Tonkin Gulf incident….. Most of my sources are telling me, including members of the team that monitors global chemical weapons –including people in Syria, including people in the US Intelligence Community–that what most likely happened …was that they hit a warehouse that they had intended to hit…and this warehouse was alleged to have to [sic] ISIS supplies in it, and… some of those supplies were precursors for chemicals….. conventional bombs hit the warehouse, and due to a strong wind, and the explosive power of the bombs, they dispersed these ingredients and killed some people.’
There is also the collective judgement of 20 former members of the US Intelligence Community, the Steering Group of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:
‘Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died…..This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened.’
Monbiot’s ‘one or a few contrarians’ include all of the above, plus journalists John Pilger, Jonathan Cook, Peter Hitchens, Gareth Porter, Philip Giraldi, and others. They also include Piers Robinson, Professor of Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, who responded to our request for a comment:…see link..
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