In April, the Trump administration, using evidence from our “Intelligence Agencies”, felt there was enough evidence to justify retaliatory strikes against three suspected Syrian chemical research, development and storage sites. The attack was backed by the Pentagon’s classified intelligence assessment.
A new report from the Hague says that the no sarin or nerve gas was used by Assad. More great work from our intelligence agencies.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands —6 July 2018—The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), issued an interim report on the FFM’s investigation to date regarding the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma, Syria on 7 April 2018.
The FFM’s activities in Douma included on-site visits to collect environmental samples, interviews with witnesses, data collection. In a neighbouring country, the FFM team gathered or received biological and environmental samples, and conducted witness interviews.
OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.
The Fact-Finding Mission also issued a report on 2 July 2018 addressing allegations of chemical weapons use in Al-Hamadaniya, Syria on 30 October 2016, and Karm al-Tarrab, Syria on 13 November 2016. On the basis of the information received and analysed, the prevailing narrative of the interviews, and the results of the laboratory analyses, the FFM cannot confidently determine whether or not a specific chemical was used as a weapon in the incidents that took place in the neighbourhood of Al-Hamadaniyah and in the area of Karm al-Tarrab. The FFM noted that the persons affected in the reported incidents may, in some instances, have been exposed to some type of non-persistent, irritating substance.
The FFM’s reports on the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma, Al-Hamadaniya, and Karm Al-Tarrab have been shared with States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The reports were also transmitted to the UN Security Council through the UN Secretary-General.
Flashback
Currently serving as the head of an “independent” investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, Mueller wasn’t always hailed by liberals as a brave crusader for democracy and truth. Actually, the liberal love affair with Mueller is a rather recent phenomenon.
A month before the ill-fated invasion began, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller endorsed the Bush administration’s bogus case for war with Iraq. On February 11, 2003, Mueller testified before Congress that, “as Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical, or radiological material.”
Mueller’s other accomplishments is overseeing an FBI gone wild, in which “thousands” of people in the United States – particularly those of Arabic origin – were “rounded up” as part of the bureau’s post-9/11 “anti-terrorism” efforts. “Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seem to be essentially PR purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for statements on our progress in fighting terrorism,” one FBI special agent recalled.
Mueller’s FBI also blamed the wrong guy for the 2001 anthrax mailings. (The wrongfully-accused anthrax-shipper was cleared of wrongdoing – six years after being declared a “person of interest” in the case.)
In a more recent episode, Mueller testified in 2013 that the National Security Agency’s vast, secretive domestic surveillance program aimed at ordinary Americans could have “derailed” the 9/11 attacks. Yet another ringing endorsement for truth and freedom.
Well done, Wayne!
Thanks for shining a needed spotlight on these serious issues!
This American at least very much appreciates your citizenship and especially your courage, going against the flow as you are clearly doing here.
The problem with our so-called “intelligence agencies,” and there are a plethora of them (according to the Associated Press article “Top intel official says he meant no disrespect to Trump” by Zeke Miller on 22 July 2018, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats oversees the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies) is that they are political, and not very intelligent.
And that is nothing new, as anyone who has studied American history well knows.
There were huge intelligence failures during the Korean War, especially about what the Chinese might do if the U.S. crossed the 38th parallel.
There were huge intelligence failures and outright lying by the so-called “intelligence agencies,” including the CIA, during the Viet Nam war, to the point of where JFK did not trust his intelligence agencies, nor should he have after the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco, which to his credit, Kennedy took responsibility for.
The intelligence agencies completely missed Tet of 1968.
They lied about the so-called Tonkin Gulf incident.
At pp.204-205 of “The Devil’s Chessboard”, author David Talbot tells us as follows:
Under Allen Dulles, the CIA would become a vast kingdom, the most powerful and least supervised agency in government.
Dulles built his towering citadel with the strong support of President Eisenhower, who, despite occasional misgivings about the spymaster’s unrestrained ways, consistently protected him from his Washington enemies.
The rise of Dulles’s spy complex in the 1950s would further undermine a U.S. democracy that, as (sociologist C. Wright) Mills observed, was already seriously compromised by growing corporate power.
The mechanisms of surveillance and control that Dulles put in motion were more in keeping with an expanding empire than they were with a vibrant democracy.
As journalist David Halberstam later observed, “The national security complex became, in the Eisenhower years, a fast-growing apparatus to allow us to do in secret what we could not do in the open.”
“This was not just an isolated phenomenon but part of something larger going on in Washington – the transition from an isolationist America to imperial colossus.”
“A true democracy had no need for a vast, secret security apparatus, but an imperial country did. . . .”
“What was evolving was a closed state within an open state.”
end quotes
That would lead to the CIA spying on Americans during the Viet Nam war and the Church hearings.
At pp.164-166 of “In The Company of Soldiers – A Chronicle of Combat” by Rick Atkinson, this is what we have about more CIA intelligence failures during George W. Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein:
MARCH 26, 2003 – SOMEWHERE INSIDE IRAQ
I arrived in the ACP at 7:30 A.M. to find Petraeus (Commanding General, 101st Airborne Division) on the phone with Wallace (Lt. General William S. Wallace, Commander, V Corps).
His face was drawn, as if he had slept poorly.
An intelligence officer, Lieutentant Jeanne Hull, told me that orders had come down overnight banning the term “Fedayeen,” which means “men who sacrifice themselves for a cause,” because it ostensibly invested those fighters with too much dignity.
They were to be referred to as paramilitaries.
(Later the approved phrase would be “terroristlike death squads.”)
Hull estimated that there were nine to twelve Fedayeen battalions in Iraq, each with roughly six hundred fighters, including a battalion in Najaf.
In a small blow against Orwellian excess, most officers continued to call them Fedayeen.
Petraeus hung up and ordered Fivecoat to get the Humvee ready for a trip to the V Corps command post at Rams.
He pushed back from the table, snapped the chin strap on his helmet, and shrugged on his flak vest.
“Want to step outside and chat for a minute?” he asked.
We stood fifteen feet beyond the tent flap.
I blinked at the dust and felt grit between my molars.
When Petraeus turned to face me, I was alarmed to see how troubled his blue eyes were.
“This thing is turning to s**t,” he said.
“The 3 ID is in danger of running out of food and water.”
“They lost two Abrams and a Bradley last night, although they got the crews out.”
“The corps commander sounds tired.”
******
U.S. forces had yet to encounter the Republican Guard, but Iraqi irregulars seemed much more aggressive than anticipated and the Shiite south hardly had welcomed the invaders as liberators.
The battlefield was nonlinear, with only a vague distinction between the front and the rear.
“No one really saw this coming, did they?” I said.
“No,” he replied.
No prewar estimates had anticipated a defense of Najaf by Iraqi regular army or Republican Guard troops, nor did those estimates predict stiff resistance from paramilitary forces.
“We did worst-case scenarios, where the enemy really put up a fight, but no one took it very seriously.”
“We need to get lucky.”
“The CIA really needs to pull this one out.”
end quotes
What I would like to hear about, if anyone is aware of it, is times when the so-called “intelligence” agencies, which are not very intelligent, got it right about something and did not lie to us.