Casual Observation

5 Comments

1. 

   euzoius on September 5, 2013 at 2:13 pm

   Up our game?  Kerry can’t even give an official version of Assad Junior’s motive….

   We’ll be lucky if we don’t have our serve broken at love, Jeebus.

2. 

   TarheelDem on September 5, 2013 at 2:14 pm

   I see as much there there as the US has released.  Assertions. No evidence.  Will make for interesting dinner conversation in St. Petersburg.

   • 

     BooMan on September 5, 2013 at 3:10 pm

     I can’t speak to the quality of their investigation, but the evidence was related to the explosives used and the quality of the sarin.

     Richard Guthrie, formerly project leader of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who said he had not seen the original report, said the Russian statement on the makeup of the sarin found outside Aleppo, which the Russians said indicated it was not military grade, might reflect only that “there are a lot of different ways to make sarin.”

     He added: “The messy mix described by the Russians might also be the result of an old sarin stock being used. Sarin degrades (the molecules break up) over time and this would explain a dirty mix.”

     But he also said that there could be doubts about the Russian conclusion that the rockets that delivered the sarin in the March 19 incident were not likely to have come from Syrian military stocks because of the use of RDX, an explosive that is also known as hexogen and T4.

     “Militaries don’t tend to use it because it’s too expensive,” Guthrie said. He added in a later email, however, that it’s not inconceivable that the Syrian military would use RDX “iff the government side was developing a semi-improvised short-range rocket” and “if there happened to be a stock available.”

     “While I would agree that it would be unlikely for a traditional, well-planned short-range rocket development programme to use RDX in that role, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that, as the Syrian government did not seem to have an earlier short-range rocket programme, it may have been developing rockets with some haste and so using materials that are at hand,” he said.

     Read more here:

     In cases like this, smart people take efforts to cover the evidence or implicate the opponent.  So, this kind of evidence can’t really be too conclusive.  But it was a rudimentary rocket using non-standard explosives and less than optimal sarin.  At least, that’s the Russians story.  They can’t be taken at face value.  

     • 

       Oui on September 5, 2013 at 4:34 pm

       .
       Syrian rebels ‘used sarin gas’, says UN’s del Ponte – May 6, 2013

       See my comment – Report on Gas Attack in Khan al-Assal.
       My earlier diary – CW Experts Skeptical About US Claim Use of Sarin Gas by Syria   Jun 15th, 2013

       At today’s G20 Conference in St. Petersburg:
       ○ Europe sides with Russia’s Putin, urges against US ‘military solution’ in Syria.
       ○ Syrian and Middle Eastern Christians Condemn US Strike Plans
       ○ Rebel Brutality Poses Dilemma as West Weighs Strike on Assad

3. 

   rikyrah on September 5, 2013 at 2:57 pm

   Progressive Caucus Smacks Down Questioning Veracity of Syria Intel

   Thursday, September 05, 2013 |   Posted by Spandan C    at 9:29 AM  

   From the beginning, I have urged the debate over Syria to be conducted on the basis of a bare-bones, basic, bottom line: that we accept the intelligence assessment publicly released as fact. I have said that while I am squarely in the liberal interventionist camp while it come to Syria, it is possible to oppose intervention in Syria without questioning the veracity of the intelligence assessment (or, in effect, calling the president a liar). I have asked for that to happen because a president who affords the American people the respect to end the imperial presidency deserves to himself be afforded the respect that the intelligence assessment he released isn’t a set of lies.

    Sec. Kerry’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday provided a compelling case for just that, as Kerry testified that no intelligence agency within the US had come to a different conclusion.

    But for those who still insisted on questioning – as part of their opposition to military strikes in Syria – whether or not the chemical weapons that were launched were in fact launched by the Syrian government, none other than the Congressional Progressive Caucus shut the door on that pretty good yesterday.

   They assured us they’re taking everything into account,” [Congresswoman Barbara] Lee said. “I do have to say the president and this administration have been very careful and very methodical in how they’ve been approaching this.” […]

   Lee, however, says she remains unpersuaded. “They’ve been very persuasive about the intelligence and the fact that we must do something,” Lee says. “They were not persuasive for me that the only option right now is a military option.”

   http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/09/progressive-caucus-smacks-down.html