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By Hussein Al-alak

13 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Few countries in the Middle East have experienced the same level of chemical attacks as the Iraqi people. Starting in the 1920’s, which saw the first ever gassing of the Kurds by the British, for nearly one hundred years, every generation has grown up under the shadow of chemical weapons.

Vivid descriptions have been given by Iraqi and Iranian Veterans, of their exposure to chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war, and the various neurological impacts, while bearing witness to the changing colour of the sky and skin, which came with years of bombardments.

Medical experts in the Kurdish village of Halabja, are still dealing with the breathing difficulties and disabilities, which have arisen among survivors of that fateful day in the late 1980’s, when planes flew over the village and gassed an estimated 5.000 people.

It was in the First Gulf War of the 1990’s, where the Iraqi people once again witnessed the first hand impact of chemical’s, where the combination of burning oil fields, Depleted Uranium, along with a host of other toxins being spewed into the environment, led to it being classified as the “most toxic war in modern history”.

People involved with Iraq, during the 1990’s, witnessed a dramatic increase in birth defects in the area’s most heavily bombed by the UN sanctioned “Desert Storm”, with rates of cancer’s souring beyond pre-war levels, and Gulf War Illness/Syndrome still being the unexplained medical condition, amongst Western service personnel.

According to Iraqi government statistics, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.

John Pilger recalled a 1999 visit to Iraq in which he spoke with paediatrician Dr. Ginan Ghalib Hassen, who described the many children she was treating with neuroblastoma.

“Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumor in two years, Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same.”

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent US/UK occupation, Chemical Weapons were once again inflicted up on the Iraqi people, which included the use of white phosphorous against civilian populations in area’s like Fallujah.

According to acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamil, the U.S. and British military used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion –on top of the disputed figure of up to 900 tons in the 1991 Gulf War.

In context, the UK Atomic Energy Authority warned the British Government, “that if 50 tons of the residual dust (from Depleted Uranium) was left in the region, an estimated half a million excess cancer deaths, would result by the year 2000”.

The Iraqi section of Al-Qaeda, which has since re branded itself The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, for its involvement in the Syria uprising, were also the first branch of Al-Qaeda to start using chemical weapons.

Between October 2006 and June 2007, Iraq experienced fifteen chlorine bomb attacks, which according to the US Defence Department, the first documented case being in Ramadi, where terrorists detonated a car packed with 12 120 mm mortar shells and two 100-pound chlorine tanks.

Chlorine attacks also occurred in Fallujah, Balad and again in Ramadi, with a later attack against Forward Operating Base Warhorse, in Diyala, where a car bomber detonated two tanks of chlorine and 1,000 pounds of explosives, with the chlorine alone causing an adverse reaction to over 65 US service members alone.

In June 2013, the Iraqi Army shut down three Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant bomb factories, and seized chemicals which were designated for chemical attacks, less than one month before its use in neighbouring Syria. Situated close to the borders with Iraq’s turbulent neighbour, among the ingredients found in the bomb factories, were those for Sarin.

Hussein Al-Alak is a British based journalist and is chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK. Hussein is also a member of the Royal British Legion and a mental health advocate for Combat Stress. You can follow him on Twitter @TotallyHussein. He blogs at http://totallyhussein.blogspot.co.uk

By Nile Bowie

13 December, 2013

The humiliating public sacking and subsequent execution of Jang Song-thaek, the man once widely believed to be the second-in-command in North Korea’s political hierarchy, has stunned observers and onlookers.

Dispatches from Pyongyang’s state-media allege that Jang mismanaged economic affairs and had ambitions to stage a coup d’etat against the leadership in Pyongyang.

State-media highlighted how the once elite powerbroker attempted to convert departments under his control into a “little kingdom,” and suggestively alluded to Jang using outside perceptions of himself as a reformer to further his political ambitions.

These developments may be interpreted by some as evidence of instability in the upper echelons of power in Pyongyang, It would be more plausible to infer that the leadership is fully capable of containing threats to its rule, even from a highly established individual married into the Kim family.

Jang Song-thaek, the husband of former leader Kim Jong-il’s sister, has been politically intertwined with North Korea’s ruling family for over four decades and received a top military post in 2011 following the death of Kim Jong-il.

He was known to have been a key figure in maintaining stability in the early months of Kim Jong-un’s tenure and was widely believed to be steering the state’s economic affairs, particularly in joint projects with China.

Jang was held to be one of the most reform-orientated elite officials and an alleged proponent of Chinese-style market reforms; he oversaw the development and administration of the Rason Special Economic Zone and the Hwanggumpyong-Wihwa Island Economic Zone, regions where Pyongyang is guardedly experimenting with foreign investment and joint-ventures.

Indications suggest that Jang’s demise was rooted in disagreements with the leadership on how to boost the economy, with his faction supporting a Chinese-style opening while Kim Jong-un and hardliners support a partial opening through contained and controllable economic zones and joint-projects.

The downfall of Jang naturally presents openings for other figures to emerge as key powerbrokers. Figures such as People’s Army politburo chief Choi Ryong-hae have rapidly risen up the ranks of the military since Kim Jong-un came to power and has been frequented photographed with the young leader in public outings.

As a figure associated with reform, the demise of Jang suggests that conservative policies seen as favorable by the military establishment will remain the mainstay of Kim Jong-un’s handling of economic affairs, foreign policy, and the nuclear issue.

Additionally, the ousting of Jang symbolically marks the moment when Kim Jong-un’s leadership passed from a group-led ‘guardian system’ to one of single-person rule. It would be very unlikely for the leadership in Pyongyang to face any opposition to these internal developments.

It is expected that Kim Jong-un will eventually embark on a foreign visit to China. The Chinese leadership can pursue strategic engagement with the leadership in Pyongyang at the highest levels so as to ascertain the priorities of the young leader, and reshape the approach toward Pyongyang accordingly.

Maintaining long-term regional stability and friendly bilateral ties are the objectives of China’s policy toward Pyongyang, and a diplomatic exchange at the highest levels is sorely needed to establish greater policy synergy to the benefit of both parties.

The current scenario leaves much to be clarified, and regional stability can be managed only through measured dialogue that examines both governments’ grievances and positions on various issues.

Integration through economic exchange should remain the central approach in deepening Sino-Korean relations and ensuring stability, and high-level talks with Kim Jong-un should be explored to further these policies.

As the Chinese proverb goes, “A small hole not mended in time will become a big hole much more difficult to mend.”

The author is an independent journalist and a columnist with Russia Today (RT) covering international affairs.

On the third anniversary of the self- immolation of the young Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia on the 17th December 2010, which sparked off the Arab Uprisings, the International Movement for a Just World is pleased to announce the publication of a book to honour his sacrifice. The E-Book is entitled WHITHER WANA? Reflections on the Arab Uprisings by Chandra Muzaffar.

JUST is most appreciative of your continuous support.

By Dr Gideon Polya

08 December,2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The world is farewelling world hero Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) who is universally admired (except in Apartheid Israel) for his courageous persistence for decades until the evil racism of Apartheid was dismantled and equal rights were finally delivered to Africans, Chinese, Indians and Coloureds as well as Whites in South Africa. He has accordingly been greatly admired by the Palestinians for his courage and persistence and his support for Palestinian human rights. Thus Nelson Mandela in an address at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 4 December, 1997: “The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” [1].

In the memory of Nelson Mandela and of 2 million Palestinians who have died from violence (0.1 million) or imposed deprivation (1.9 million) [2, 3] decent people must apply Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and its racist supporters until the 12 million Palestinians secure one-man-one-vote, self-determination, freedom and justice.

Jailed-for-life Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti (dubbed the “Palestinian Mandela”) in an open letter to Mandela sent from Cell 28 of Hadarim prison in Israel, which was published by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a day after the South African liberation leader’s death: “You said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” And from within my prison cell, I tell you our freedom seems possible because you reached yours” [4].

From Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa” ( Pantheon, 2010): “Countless authors have chronicled, with varying degrees of fairness, how the Jewish state betrayed its founding ideals, abandoned socialist Zionist principles, and saw its democratic soul corrupted by occupation after 1967. But Israel’s domestic policies are only part of the story; its foreign policy, especially its ties with some of the world’s most reviled regimes, also contributed to its moral decay and the rise of anti-Israel sentiment abroad. Israel’s intimate alliance with apartheid South Africa was the most extensive, the most lucrative, and the most toxic of these pacts. Just as expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza eroded Israel’s democratic values at home, arms sales to South Africa in the early 1970s marked the beginning of an era in which expediency trumped morality in Israeli foreign policy and sympathy for the conquered gave way to cooperation with the conqueror” [5].

Apartheid Israel’s immoral military collaboration with Apartheid South Africa involved obscene nuclear weapons collaboration with the explicitly Nazi Apartheid South African Apartheid regime. The post-Apartheid South African Government surrendered its nuclear weapons but US-, UK-, EU- and Apartheid Australia-backed, nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel reportedly has several hundred nuclear bombs as well as biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction [6, 7].

Nelson Mandela visited Australia in 1990 and stated: ““We identify with them [the Palestinians] because we do not believe it is right for the Israeli government to suppress basic human rights in the conquered territories… We agree with the United Nations that international disputes should be settled by peaceful means. The belligerent attitude which is adopted by the Israeli government is to us unacceptable… If one has to refer to any of the parties as a terrorist state, one might refer to the Israeli government, because they are the people who are slaughtering defenseless and innocent Arabs in the occupied territories, and we don’t regard that as acceptable” [8].

Other non-Jewish and Jewish heroes in the fight against Apartheid have similarly spoken out against Israeli war crimes, genocide and apartheid [9-11].

Thus Winnie Mandela (former wife of Nelson Mandela) on defeating Apartheid Israel: “Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated”[12].

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu in support of BDS against Apartheid Israel (2012): “ Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable. And we are in desperate need of more rabbis joining the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace in speaking forthrightly about the corrupting decadeslong Israeli domination over Palestinians. These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians. Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa. It can make an enormous difference in creating a future of justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land” [13].

Ronald (Ronnie) Kasrils ( South African Jewish hero in the fight against Apartheid, a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) (1987- 2007), member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP) (1986-2007) and Minister for Intelligence (2004-2008): “Travelling into Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger… The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison. It is shocking to discover that certain roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa” [14].

Sidumo Dlamini ( President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) on South African Labor support for Palestinians against Apartheid Israel) (2010): “Almost a year ago, Gaza was run down by the occupying forces of Israel in a barbaric show of might and in pursuit of their colonial expansionist ambitions. Schools, clinics, UN buildings, social services, water and electrical installations, cultural institutions and businesses literally crumbled under the weight of heavy bombs and artillery. Dangerous and banned warfare chemicals, like white phosphorus were used in an attempt to annihilate the entire population, in which case women and children were the worst victims. That was Israel at its best, doing what it knows best and what it has always done over the years to instill fear and terror amongst the occupied people. Funded and supported by the US, Israel has no regard, whatsoever, for international law and continues to expand its colonial project to-date. Illegal settlements are all over Palestine and the inhumane treatment of the people of Gaza bears testimony to the savage occupation that some refuse to see, even when evidence is so naked…COSATU has, on several occasions, been asked by opportunists why is it interested in a matter so far away from our land. The answer is simple, solidarity knows no boundaries or even geography, its about living people and their plight. Our destiny is tied to theirs, our liberation is tied to theirs, our humanity is tied to theirs. Therefore, no worthy human being would tolerate the suffering and pain of others, wherever they are, worst still, those of us who have fought heroic struggles against apartheid, colonialism and occupation immediately feel it however far. We received solidarity from people we have never seen and were far away from Africa, let alone our country. They heard and responded to our cries. They did not ask how far are we from them. They asked what can we do to assist and they assisted, hence we are free. Finally, dear comrades, we salute the courageous efforts of the Palestine Solidarity movement for organising these bold initiatives and they have our full support. We shall not be intimidated by attempts to silence us or some of our comrades. We shall be inspired to speak out even more louder and anger for the threat to deny us our right to shout loud against savagery. We are here to affirm the correctness of our legend, Nelson Mandela’s words,“… our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”. On our part, we do not promise to do everything, but our most humble, yet effective contribution which we have no doubt shall make a decisive difference. Each one of us must do our part and together we shall conquer. Amandla intifada!!” [15].

Currently leaders from the US, UK and Australia are disingenuously offering praise for Nelson Mandela. However the historical record exposes their shameful hypocrisy. Thus the US and the UK disgracefully supported Apartheid South Africa diplomatically as did racist White Australia (I remember the huge Australian police presence when we demonstrated against the visiting Apartheid South Africa Springboks at Manuka Oval in Canberra in 1971). For the disgraceful UK and US voting record at the UN General Assembly over Apartheid see Chapter 20, “The US versus the world as the United Nations” in William Blum’s book “Rogue State” [16]. The US and UK only permitted the removal of Apartheid in South Africa on condition of Business As Usual otherwise – ordinary African South Africans still have appalling housing and unemployment and rampant HIV/AIDS meant an enormous increase in the death rate in South Africa after the fall of Apartheid in 1993 (jumping in deaths per 1,000 from 7.9 1990-1995 to 9.6 in 1995-2000 and at 13,7 (2000-2005), 14.8 (2005-2010), 12.9 (2010-2015) [17, 18].

And of course the US, UK and their warmongering lackey, racist White Australia, still support the Apartheid rogue state in the Middle East where of 12 million Palestinians only 7% (the adults of Palestinian Israelis) can vote for the government ruling all of the former Mandated Palestine and 6 million are forbidden to even step foot in their own country by democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel (one notes that in similar vein Aung San Suu Kyi’s party has only 7% of the seats in the Myanmar parliament despite overwhelming popular support [19].

Thinking Americans and Brits will be disgusted at the hypocrisy of statements war criminal warmongers and Apartheid Israel supporters like Barack Obama and former PM Tony Blair. Decent Australians will be disgusted by the utter hypocrisy involved in the attendance at Nelson Mandela’s funeral of pro-Zionist Coalition PM Tony Abbott and pro-Zionist Labor Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and will accordingly vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last (one notes that an overwhelming 60 to 40 per cent majority of ordinary Australian Labor Party members voting in the recent leadership ballot rejected pro-Zionist right-winger Shorten). Decent people around the world will honour the memory of Nelson Mandela by heeding his words “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” [1] and applying Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and its racist supporters until the 12 million Palestinians secure one-man-one-vote, self-determination, freedom, human rights and justice.

References.

[1]. Nelson Mandela quoted in “Nelson Mandela quotes: A collection of memorable words from former South African president”, CBS News, 5 December 2013: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nelson-mandela-quotes-a-collection-of-memorable-words-from-former-south-african-president/ .

[2]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Plight of the Palestinians. A long history of destruction”, Countercurrents, 17 June 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm .

[4]. Marwan Barghouti quoted in “Barghouti: Mandela gave Palestinians hope for freedom”, Ma’an News Agency, 6 December 2013: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=654797 .

[5]. “The unspoken alliance: Israel’s secret relationship with apartheid South Africa”. Mondoweiss, 6 December 2013”: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/12/alliance-relationship-apartheid.html .

[6]. “South Africa and weapons of mass destruction”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction .

[7]. “Nuclear weapons and Israel”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel .

[8]. Nelson Mandela, quoted in Kim Bullimore, “Nelson Mandela, Palestine and the fight against apartheid”, Live from Occupied Palestine, 6 December 2103: http://livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/nelson-mandela-palestine-and-fight.html .

[9]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[10]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[11]. “Boycott Apartheid Israel “: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/ .

[12]. Winnie Mandela quoted in Edward. C. Corrigan, “Israel and apartheid: a fair comparison?”, rabble.ca, 2 March 2010: http://www.rabble.ca/news/2010/03/israel-and-apartheid-fair-comparison .

[13]. Desmond Tutu, “Justice requires action to stop subjugation of Palestinians”, Tehran Times, 5 May 2012: http://www.tehrantimes.com/component/content/article/84-perspectives/97555-justice-requires-action-to-stop-subjugation-of-palestinians- .

[14]. Ronnie Kasrils, “Israel 2007: worse than Apartheid”, Mail & Guardian On-line, 21 May 2007: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2007-05-21-israel-2007-worse-than-apartheid .

[15]. “COSATU President Sidumo Dlamini addresses Gaza reportback: Isolate Apartheid Israel!”, Labor for Palestine (US), 31 January 2010: http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/01/31/cosatu-president-sidumo-dlamini-addresses-gaza-reportback-isolate-apartheid-israel/ .

[16]. William Blum, “Rogue State”.

[17]. UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/wpp/unpp/p2k0data.asp .

[18]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, a book that provides an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Sanctions needed against anti-democracy Myanmar and anti-democracy Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 4 April 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya040412.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003).

By Seymour M. Hersh

8 December 2013

@ Londo Review of Books

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.

He cited a list of what appeared to be hard-won evidence of Assad’s culpability: ‘In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighbourhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces.’ Obama’s certainty was echoed at the time by Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, who told the New York Times: ‘No one with whom I’ve spoken doubts the intelligence’ directly linking Assad and his regime to the sarin attacks.

But in recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration’s assurances of Assad’s responsibility a ‘ruse’. The attack ‘was not the result of the current regime’, he wrote. A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’

The complaints focus on what Washington did not have: any advance warning from the assumed source of the attack. The military intelligence community has for years produced a highly classified early morning intelligence summary, known as the Morning Report, for the secretary of defence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; a copy also goes to the national security adviser and the director of national intelligence. The Morning Report includes no political or economic information, but provides a summary of important military events around the world, with all available intelligence about them. A senior intelligence consultant told me that some time after the attack he reviewed the reports for 20 August through 23 August. For two days – 20 and 21 August – there was no mention of Syria. On 22 August the lead item in the Morning Report dealt with Egypt; a subsequent item discussed an internal change in the command structure of one of the rebel groups in Syria. Nothing was noted about the use of nerve gas in Damascus that day. It was not until 23 August that the use of sarin became a dominant issue, although hundreds of photographs and videos of the massacre had gone viral within hours on YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites. At this point, the administration knew no more than the public.

Obama left Washington early on 21 August for a hectic two-day speaking tour in New York and Pennsylvania; according to the White House press office, he was briefed later that day on the attack, and the growing public and media furore. The lack of any immediate inside intelligence was made clear on 22 August, when Jen Psaki, a spokesperson for the State Department, told reporters: ‘We are unable to conclusively determine [chemical weapons] use. But we are focused every minute of every day since these events happened … on doing everything possible within our power to nail down the facts.’ The administration’s tone had hardened by 27 August, when Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, told reporters – without providing any specific information – that any suggestions that the Syrian government was not responsible ‘are as preposterous as suggestions that the attack itself didn’t occur’.

The absence of immediate alarm inside the American intelligence community demonstrates that there was no intelligence about Syrian intentions in the days before the attack. And there are at least two ways the US could have known about it in advance: both were touched on in one of the top secret American intelligence documents that have been made public in recent months by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.

On 29 August, the Washington Post published excerpts from the annual budget for all national intelligence programmes, agency by agency, provided by Snowden. In consultation with the Obama administration, the newspaper chose to publish only a slim portion of the 178-page document, which has a classification higher than top secret, but it summarised and published a section dealing with problem areas. One problem area was the gap in coverage targeting Assad’s office. The document said that the NSA’s worldwide electronic eavesdropping facilities had been ‘able to monitor unencrypted communications among senior military officials at the outset of the civil war there’. But it was ‘a vulnerability that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces apparently later recognised’. In other words, the NSA no longer had access to the conversations of the top military leadership in Syria, which would have included crucial communications from Assad, such as orders for a nerve gas attack. (In its public statements since 21 August, the Obama administration has never claimed to have specific information connecting Assad himself to the attack.)

The Post report also provided the first indication of a secret sensor system inside Syria, designed to provide early warning of any change in status of the regime’s chemical weapons arsenal. The sensors are monitored by the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that controls all US intelligence satellites in orbit. According to the Post summary, the NRO is also assigned ‘to extract data from sensors placed on the ground’ inside Syria. The former senior intelligence official, who had direct knowledge of the programme, told me that NRO sensors have been implanted near all known chemical warfare sites in Syria. They are designed to provide constant monitoring of the movement of chemical warheads stored by the military. But far more important, in terms of early warning, is the sensors’ ability to alert US and Israeli intelligence when warheads are being loaded with sarin. (As a neighbouring country, Israel has always been on the alert for changes in the Syrian chemical arsenal, and works closely with American intelligence on early warnings.) A chemical warhead, once loaded with sarin, has a shelf life of a few days or less – the nerve agent begins eroding the rocket almost immediately: it’s a use-it-or-lose-it mass killer. ‘The Syrian army doesn’t have three days to prepare for a chemical attack,’ the former senior intelligence official told me. ‘We created the sensor system for immediate reaction, like an air raid warning or a fire alarm. You can’t have a warning over three days because everyone involved would be dead. It is either right now or you’re history. You do not spend three days getting ready to fire nerve gas.’ The sensors detected no movement in the months and days before 21 August, the former official said. It is of course possible that sarin had been supplied to the Syrian army by other means, but the lack of warning meant that Washington was unable to monitor the events in Eastern Ghouta as they unfolded.

The sensors had worked in the past, as the Syrian leadership knew all too well. Last December the sensor system picked up signs of what seemed to be sarin production at a chemical weapons depot. It was not immediately clear whether the Syrian army was simulating sarin production as part of an exercise (all militaries constantly carry out such exercises) or actually preparing an attack. At the time, Obama publicly warned Syria that using sarin was ‘totally unacceptable’; a similar message was also passed by diplomatic means. The event was later determined to be part of a series of exercises, according to the former senior intelligence official: ‘If what the sensors saw last December was so important that the president had to call and say, “Knock it off,” why didn’t the president issue the same warning three days before the gas attack in August?’

The NSA would of course monitor Assad’s office around the clock if it could, the former official said. Other communications – from various army units in combat throughout Syria – would be far less important, and not analysed in real time. ‘There are literally thousands of tactical radio frequencies used by field units in Syria for mundane routine communications,’ he said, ‘and it would take a huge number of NSA cryptological technicians to listen in – and the useful return would be zilch.’ But the ‘chatter’ is routinely stored on computers. Once the scale of events on 21 August was understood, the NSA mounted a comprehensive effort to search for any links to the attack, sorting through the full archive of stored communications. A keyword or two would be selected and a filter would be employed to find relevant conversations. ‘What happened here is that the NSA intelligence weenies started with an event – the use of sarin – and reached to find chatter that might relate,’ the former official said. ‘This does not lead to a high confidence assessment, unless you start with high confidence that Bashar Assad ordered it, and began looking for anything that supports that belief.’ The cherry-picking was similar to the process used to justify the Iraq war.

The White House needed nine days to assemble its case against the Syrian government. On 30 August it invited a select group of Washington journalists (at least one often critical reporter, Jonathan Landay, the national security correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, was not invited), and handed them a document carefully labelled as a ‘government assessment’, rather than as an assessment by the intelligence community. The document laid out what was essentially a political argument to bolster the administration’s case against the Assad government. It was, however, more specific than Obama would be later, in his speech on 10 September: American intelligence, it stated, knew that Syria had begun ‘preparing chemical munitions’ three days before the attack. In an aggressive speech later that day, John Kerry provided more details. He said that Syria’s ‘chemical weapons personnel were on the ground, in the area, making preparations’ by 18 August. ‘We know that the Syrian regime elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks and taking precautions associated with chemical weapons.’ The government assessment and Kerry’s comments made it seem as if the administration had been tracking the sarin attack as it happened. It is this version of events, untrue but unchallenged, that was widely reported at the time.

An unforseen reaction came in the form of complaints from the Free Syrian Army’s leadership and others about the lack of warning. ‘It’s unbelievable they did nothing to warn people or try to stop the regime before the crime,’ Razan Zaitouneh, an opposition member who lived in one of the towns struck by sarin, told Foreign Policy. The Daily Mail was more blunt: ‘Intelligence report says US officials knew about nerve-gas attack in Syria three days before it killed over 1400 people – including more than 400 children.’ (The number of deaths attributable to the attack varied widely, from at least 1429, as initially claimed by the Obama administration, to many fewer. A Syrian human rights group reported 502 deaths; Médicins sans Frontières put it at 355; and a French report listed 281 known fatalities. The strikingly precise US total was later reported by the Wall Street Journal to have been based not on an actual body count, but on an extrapolation by CIA analysts, who scanned more than a hundred YouTube videos from Eastern Ghouta into a computer system and looked for images of the dead. In other words, it was little more than a guess.)

Five days later, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded to the complaints. A statement to the Associated Press said that the intelligence behind the earlier administration assertions was not known at the time of the attack, but recovered only subsequently: ‘Let’s be clear, the United States did not watch, in real time, as this horrible attack took place. The intelligence community was able to gather and analyse information after the fact and determine that elements of the Assad regime had in fact taken steps to prepare prior to using chemical weapons.’ But since the American press corps had their story, the retraction received scant attention. On 31 August the Washington Post, relying on the government assessment, had vividly reported on its front page that American intelligence was able to record ‘each step’ of the Syrian army attack in real time, ‘from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials’. It did not publish the AP corrective, and the White House maintained control of the narrative.

So when Obama said on 10 September that his administration knew Assad’s chemical weapons personnel had prepared the attack in advance, he was basing the statement not on an intercept caught as it happened, but on communications analysed days after 21 August. The former senior intelligence official explained that the hunt for relevant chatter went back to the exercise detected the previous December, in which, as Obama later said to the public, the Syrian army mobilised chemical weapons personnel and distributed gas masks to its troops. The White House’s government assessment and Obama’s speech were not descriptions of the specific events leading up to the 21 August attack, but an account of the sequence the Syrian military would have followed for any chemical attack. ‘They put together a back story,’ the former official said, ‘and there are lots of different pieces and parts. The template they used was the template that goes back to December.’ It is possible, of course, that Obama was unaware that this account was obtained from an analysis of Syrian army protocol for conducting a gas attack, rather than from direct evidence. Either way he had come to a hasty judgment.

The press would follow suit. The UN report on 16 September confirming the use of sarin was careful to note that its investigators’ access to the attack sites, which came five days after the gassing, had been controlled by rebel forces. ‘As with other sites,’ the report warned, ‘the locations have been well travelled by other individuals prior to the arrival of the mission … During the time spent at these locations, individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated.’ Still, the New York Times seized on the report, as did American and British officials, and claimed that it provided crucial evidence backing up the administration’s assertions. An annex to the UN report reproduced YouTube photographs of some recovered munitions, including a rocket that ‘indicatively matches’ the specifics of a 330mm calibre artillery rocket. The New York Times wrote that the existence of the rockets essentially proved that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack ‘because the weapons in question had not been previously documented or reported to be in possession of the insurgency’.

Theodore Postol, a professor of technology and national security at MIT, reviewed the UN photos with a group of his colleagues and concluded that the large calibre rocket was an improvised munition that was very likely manufactured locally. He told me that it was ‘something you could produce in a modestly capable machine shop’. The rocket in the photos, he added, fails to match the specifications of a similar but smaller rocket known to be in the Syrian arsenal. The New York Times, again relying on data in the UN report, also analysed the flight path of two of the spent rockets that were believed to have carried sarin, and concluded that the angle of descent ‘pointed directly’ to their being fired from a Syrian army base more than nine kilometres from the landing zone. Postol, who has served as the scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations in the Pentagon, said that the assertions in the Times and elsewhere ‘were not based on actual observations’. He concluded that the flight path analyses in particular were, as he put it in an email, ‘totally nuts’ because a thorough study demonstrated that the range of the improvised rockets was ‘unlikely’ to be more than two kilometres. Postol and a colleague, Richard M. Lloyd, published an analysis two weeks after 21 August in which they correctly assessed that the rockets involved carried a far greater payload of sarin than previously estimated. The Times reported on that analysis at length, describing Postol and Lloyd as ‘leading weapons experts’. The pair’s later study about the rockets’ flight paths and range, which contradicted previous Times reporting, was emailed to the newspaper last week; it has so far gone unreported.

The White House’s misrepresentation of what it knew about the attack, and when, was matched by its readiness to ignore intelligence that could undermine the narrative. That information concerned al-Nusra, the Islamist rebel group designated by the US and the UN as a terrorist organisation. Al-Nusra is known to have carried out scores of suicide bombings against Christians and other non-Sunni Muslim sects inside Syria, and to have attacked its nominal ally in the civil war, the secular Free Syrian Army (FSA). Its stated goal is to overthrow the Assad regime and establish sharia law. (On 25 September al-Nusra joined several other Islamist rebel groups in repudiating the FSA and another secular faction, the Syrian National Coalition.)

The flurry of American interest in al-Nusra and sarin stemmed from a series of small-scale chemical weapons attacks in March and April; at the time, the Syrian government and the rebels each insisted the other was responsible. The UN eventually concluded that four chemical attacks had been carried out, but did not assign responsibility. A White House official told the press in late April that the intelligence community had assessed ‘with varying degrees of confidence’ that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks. Assad had crossed Obama’s ‘red line’. The April assessment made headlines, but some significant caveats were lost in translation. The unnamed official conducting the briefing acknowledged that intelligence community assessments ‘are not alone sufficient’. ‘We want,’ he said, ‘to investigate above and beyond those intelligence assessments to gather facts so that we can establish a credible and corroborated set of information that can then inform our decision-making.’ In other words, the White House had no direct evidence of Syrian army or government involvement, a fact that was only occasionally noted in the press coverage. Obama’s tough talk played well with the public and Congress, who view Assad as a ruthless murderer.

Two months later, a White House statement announced a change in the assessment of Syrian culpability and declared that the intelligence community now had ‘high confidence’ that the Assad government was responsible for as many as 150 deaths from attacks with sarin. More headlines were generated and the press was told that Obama, in response to the new intelligence, had ordered an increase in non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. But once again there were significant caveats. The new intelligence included a report that Syrian officials had planned and executed the attacks. No specifics were provided, nor were those who provided the reports identified. The White House statement said that laboratory analysis had confirmed the use of sarin, but also that a positive finding of the nerve agent ‘does not tell us how or where the individuals were exposed or who was responsible for the dissemination’. The White House further declared: ‘We have no reliable corroborated reporting to indicate that the opposition in Syria has acquired or used chemical weapons.’ The statement contradicted evidence that at the time was streaming into US intelligence agencies.

Already by late May, the senior intelligence consultant told me, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin, and had sent alarming reports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also understood the science of producing sarin. At the time, al-Nusra was operating in areas close to Damascus, including Eastern Ghouta. An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. The consultant told me that Tariq had been identified ‘as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin’. He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military.

On 20 June a four-page top secret cable summarising what had been learned about al-Nusra’s nerve gas capabilities was forwarded to David R. Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. ‘What Shedd was briefed on was extensive and comprehensive,’ the consultant said. ‘It was not a bunch of “we believes”.’ He told me that the cable made no assessment as to whether the rebels or the Syrian army had initiated the attacks in March and April, but it did confirm previous reports that al-Nusra had the ability to acquire and use sarin. A sample of the sarin that had been used was also recovered – with the help of an Israeli agent – but, according to the consultant, no further reporting about the sample showed up in cable traffic.

Independently of these assessments, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assuming that US troops might be ordered into Syria to seize the government’s stockpile of chemical agents, called for an all-source analysis of the potential threat. ‘The Op Order provides the basis of execution of a military mission, if so ordered,’ the former senior intelligence official explained. ‘This includes the possible need to send American soldiers to a Syrian chemical site to defend it against rebel seizure. If the jihadist rebels were going to overrun the site, the assumption is that Assad would not fight us because we were protecting the chemical from the rebels. All Op Orders contain an intelligence threat component. We had technical analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, weapons people, and I & W [indications and warnings] people working on the problem … They concluded that the rebel forces were capable of attacking an American force with sarin because they were able to produce the lethal gas. The examination relied on signals and human intelligence, as well as the expressed intention and technical capability of the rebels.’

There is evidence that during the summer some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were troubled by the prospect of a ground invasion of Syria as well as by Obama’s professed desire to give rebel factions non-lethal support. In July, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, provided a gloomy assessment, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee in public testimony that ‘thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces’ would be needed to seize Syria’s widely dispersed chemical warfare arsenal, along with ‘hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers’. Pentagon estimates put the number of troops at seventy thousand, in part because US forces would also have to guard the Syrian rocket fleet: accessing large volumes of the chemicals that create sarin without the means to deliver it would be of little value to a rebel force. In a letter to Senator Carl Levin, Dempsey cautioned that a decision to grab the Syrian arsenal could have unintended consequences: ‘We have learned from the past ten years, however, that it is not enough to simply alter the balance of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in order to preserve a functioning state … Should the regime’s institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control.’

The CIA declined to comment for this article. Spokesmen for the DIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence said they were not aware of the report to Shedd and, when provided with specific cable markings for the document, said they were unable to find it. Shawn Turner, head of public affairs for the ODNI, said that no American intelligence agency, including the DIA, ‘assesses that the al-Nusra Front has succeeded in developing a capacity to manufacture sarin’.

The administration’s public affairs officials are not as concerned about al-Nusra’s military potential as Shedd has been in his public statements. In late July, he gave an alarming account of al-Nusra’s strength at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. ‘I count no less than 1200 disparate groups in the opposition,’ Shedd said, according to a recording of his presentation. ‘And within the opposition, the al-Nusra Front is … most effective and is gaining in strength.’ This, he said, ‘is of serious concern to us. If left unchecked, I am very concerned that the most radical elements’ – he also cited al-Qaida in Iraq – ‘will take over.’ The civil war, he went on, ‘will only grow worse over time … Unfathomable violence is yet to come.’ Shedd made no mention of chemical weapons in his talk, but he was not allowed to: the reports his office received were highly classified.

A series of secret dispatches from Syria over the summer reported that members of the FSA were complaining to American intelligence operatives about repeated attacks on their forces by al-Nusra and al-Qaida fighters. The reports, according to the senior intelligence consultant who read them, provided evidence that the FSA is ‘more worried about the crazies than it is about Assad’. The FSA is largely composed of defectors from the Syrian army. The Obama administration, committed to the end of the Assad regime and continued support for the rebels, has sought in its public statements since the attack to downplay the influence of Salafist and Wahhabist factions. In early September, John Kerry dumbfounded a Congressional hearing with a sudden claim that al-Nusra and other Islamist groups were minority players in the Syrian opposition. He later withdrew the claim.

In both its public and private briefings after 21 August, the administration disregarded the available intelligence about al-Nusra’s potential access to sarin and continued to claim that the Assad government was in sole possession of chemical weapons. This was the message conveyed in the various secret briefings that members of Congress received in the days after the attack, when Obama was seeking support for his planned missile offensive against Syrian military installations. One legislator with more than two decades of experience in military affairs told me that he came away from one such briefing persuaded that ‘only the Assad government had sarin and the rebels did not.’ Similarly, following the release of the UN report on 16 September confirming that sarin was used on 21 August, Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, told a press conference: ‘It’s very important to note that only the [Assad] regime possesses sarin, and we have no evidence that the opposition possesses sarin.’

It is not known whether the highly classified reporting on al-Nusra was made available to Power’s office, but her comment was a reflection of the attitude that swept through the administration. ‘The immediate assumption was that Assad had done it,’ the former senior intelligence official told me. ‘The new director of the CIA, [John] Brennan, jumped to that conclusion … drives to the White House and says: “Look at what I’ve got!” It was all verbal; they just waved the bloody shirt. There was a lot of political pressure to bring Obama to the table to help the rebels, and there was wishful thinking that this [tying Assad to the sarin attack] would force Obama’s hand: “This is the Zimmermann telegram of the Syrian rebellion and now Obama can react.” Wishful thinking by the Samantha Power wing within the administration. Unfortunately, some members of the Joint Chiefs who were alerted that he was going to attack weren’t so sure it was a good thing.’

The proposed American missile attack on Syria never won public support and Obama turned quickly to the UN and the Russian proposal for dismantling the Syrian chemical warfare complex. Any possibility of military action was definitively averted on 26 September when the administration joined Russia in approving a draft UN resolution calling on the Assad government to get rid of its chemical arsenal. Obama’s retreat brought relief to many senior military officers. (One high-level special operations adviser told me that the ill-conceived American missile attack on Syrian military airfields and missile emplacements, as initially envisaged by the White House, would have been ‘like providing close air support for al-Nusra’.)

The administration’s distortion of the facts surrounding the sarin attack raises an unavoidable question: do we have the whole story of Obama’s willingness to walk away from his ‘red line’ threat to bomb Syria? He had claimed to have an iron-clad case but suddenly agreed to take the issue to Congress, and later to accept Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical weapons. It appears possible that at some point he was directly confronted with contradictory information: evidence strong enough to persuade him to cancel his attack plan, and take the criticism sure to come from Republicans.

The UN resolution, which was adopted on 27 September by the Security Council, dealt indirectly with the notion that rebel forces such as al-Nusra would also be obliged to disarm: ‘no party in Syria should use, develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer [chemical] weapons.’ The resolution also calls for the immediate notification of the Security Council in the event that any ‘non-state actors’ acquire chemical weapons. No group was cited by name. While the Syrian regime continues the process of eliminating its chemical arsenal, the irony is that, after Assad’s stockpile of precursor agents is destroyed, al-Nusra and its Islamist allies could end up as the only faction inside Syria with access to the ingredients that can create sarin, a strategic weapon that would be unlike any other in the war zone. There may be more to negotiate.