Seymour M. Hersh is a credible source. He exposed the My Lai Massacre, but is now being dismissed as a crank. The media blackout attests to collusion between the Media and the Military, and is proof of a high-level Conspiracy operating in much of the Western world. - Peter M.(1) US Intel tell Hersh that Syria bomb hit chemicals hidden in basement; Media refuse to publish(2) Seymour Hersh: Syria did not use chemical weapons - Die Welt, Germany(3) Avigdor Lieberman: Israel intel a source of the claim that Assad used chemical weapons against rebels(4) WSWS Trots publish Hersh refutation of Syria chemical attack(5) Socialist Worker Trots and Socialist Alternative Trots black out Hersh report(6) Russia, China block bid by Western powers to impose UN sanctions on Syria(7) Russia, China veto at U.N. on Syria chemical weapons is ‘outrageous,’ U.S. says(1) US Intel tell Hersh that Syria bomb hit chemicals hidden in basement; Media refuse to publishhttps://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/25/intel-behind-trumps-syria-attack-questioned/Intel Behind Trump’s Syria Attack QuestionedJune 25, 2017Exclusive: The mainstream media is so hostile to challenges to its groupthinks that famed journalist Seymour Hersh had to take his take-down of President Trump’s April 6 attack on Syria to Germany, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.By Ray McGovernLegendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is challenging the Trump administration’s version of events surrounding the April 4 "chemical weapons attack" on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun – though Hersh had to find a publisher in Germany to get his information out.The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea into Syria, April 7, 2017. (Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Robert S. Price)In the Sunday edition of Die Welt, Hersh reports that his national security sources offered a distinctly different account, revealing President Trump rashly deciding to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airbase on April 6 despite the absence of intelligence supporting his conclusion that the Syrian military was guilty.Hersh draws on the kind of inside sources from whom he has earned longstanding trust to dispute that there ever was a "chemical weapons attack" and to assert that Trump was told that no evidence existed against the Syrian government but ordered "his generals" to "retaliate" anyway.Marine General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Marine General, now Defense Secretary James "Mad-Dog" Mattis ordered the attacks apparently knowing that the reason given was what one of Hersh’s sources called a "fairy tale."They then left it to Trump’s national security adviser Army General H. R. McMaster to further the deceit with the help of a compliant mainstream media, which broke from its current tradition of distrusting whatever Trump says in favor of its older tradition of favoring "regime change" in Syria and trusting pretty much whatever the "rebels" claim.According to Hersh’s sources, the normal "deconfliction" process was followed before the April 4 strike. In such procedures, U.S. and Russian officers supply one another with advance details of airstrikes, such as target coordinates, to avoid accidental confrontations among the warplanes crisscrossing Syria.Russia and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the flight path to and from Khan Sheikhoun in English, Hersh reported. The target was a two-story cinderblock building in which senior leaders – "high-value targets" – of the two jihadist groups controlling the town were about to hold a meeting. Because of the perceived importance of the mission, the Russians took the unusual step of giving the Syrian air force a GPS-guided bomb to do the job, but the explosives were conventional, not chemical, Hersh reported.The meeting place was on the floor above the basement of the building, where a source whom Hersh described as "a senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community," told Hersh: "The basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons, and ammunition … and also chlorine-based decontaminates for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial."A Bomb Damage AssessmentHersh describes what happened when the building was struck on the morning of April 4: "A Bomb Damage Assessment by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of fertilizers, disinfectants, and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground."According to intelligence estimates, the strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders and an unknown number of drivers and security aides. There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have put the figure as high as 92."Due to the fog of war, which is made denser by the fact that jihadists associated with Al Qaeda control the area, many of the details of the incident were unclear on that day and remain so still. No independent on-the-ground investigation has taken place.But there were other reasons to doubt Syrian guilt, including the implausibility of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad choosing that time – while his forces were making dramatic strides in finally defeating the jihadists and immediately after the Trump administration had indicated it had reversed President Obama’s "regime change" policy in Syria – to launch a sarin attack, which was sure to outrage the world and likely draw U.S. retaliation.However, logic was brushed aside after local "activists," including some closely tied to the jihadists, quickly uploaded all manner of images onto social media, showing dead and dying children and other victims said to be suffering from sarin nerve gas. Inconsistencies were brushed aside – such as the "eyewitness" who insisted, "We could smell it from 500 meters away" when sarin is odorless.Potent ImagesStill, whether credible or not, these social-media images had a potent propaganda effect. Hersh writes that within hours of watching the gruesome photos on TV – and before he had received any U.S. intelligence corroboration – Trump told his national security aides to plan retaliation against Syria. According to Hersh, it was an evidence-free decision, except for what Trump had seen on the TV shows.The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria.Hersh quotes one U.S. officer who, upon learning of the White House decision to "retaliate" against Syria, remarked: "We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious – claiming we have the real intel and know the truth…"A similar event had occurred on Aug. 21, 2013, outside Damascus – and although the available evidence now points to a "false-flag" provocation pulled off by the jihadists to trick the West into mounting a full-fledged assault on Assad’s military, Western media still blames that incident on Assad, too.In the Aug. 21, 2013 case, social media also proved crucial in creating and pushing the Assad-did-it narrative. On Aug. 30, 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry pinned the responsibility on Assad no fewer than 35 times, even though earlier that week National Intelligence Director James Clapper had warned President Obama privately that Assad’s culpability was "not a slam dunk."Kerry was fond of describing social media as an "extraordinarily useful tool," and it sure did come in handy in supporting Kerry’s repeated but unproven charges against Assad, especially since the U.S. government had invested heavily in training and equipping Syrian "activists" to dramatize their cause. (The mainstream media also has ignored evidence that the jihadists staged at least one chlorine gas attack. And, as you may recall, President George W. Bush also spoke glowingly about the value of "catapulting the propaganda.")Implications for U.S.-RussiaTo the extent Hersh’s account finds its way into Western corporate media, most likely it will be dismissed out of hand simply because it dovetails with Moscow’s version of what happened and thus is, ipso facto, "wrong."Russian President Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 10, 2015, at the Kremlin. (Photo from Russian government)But the Russians (and the Syrians) know what did happen – and if there really was no sarin bombing – they recognize Trump’s reckless resort to Tomahawks and the subsequent attempts to cover up for the President. All this will have repercussions.This is as tense a time in U.S-Russian relations as I can remember from my five decades of experience watching Russian defense and foreign policy. It is left to the Russians to figure out which is worse: a President controlled by "his generals" or one who is so out of control that "his generals" are the ones who must restrain him.With Russia reiterating its threat to target any unannounced aircraft flying in Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates, Russian President Putin could authorize his own generals to shoot first and ask questions later. Then, hold onto your hat.As of this writing, there is no sign in "mainstream media" of any reporting on Hersh’s groundbreaking piece. It is a commentary on the conformist nature of today’s Western media that an alternative analysis challenging the conventional wisdom – even when produced by a prominent journalist like Sy Hersh – faces such trouble finding a place to publish.The mainstream hatred of Assad and Putin has reached such extraordinary levels that pretty much anything can be said or written about them with few if any politicians or journalists daring to express doubts regardless of how shaky the evidence is.Even the London Review of Books, which published Hersh’s earlier debunking of the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin-gas incident, wouldn’t go off onto the limb this time despite having paid for his investigation.According to Hersh, the LRB did not want to be "vulnerable to criticism for seeming to take the view of the Syrian and Russia governments when it came to the April 4 bombing in Khan Sheikhoun." So much for diversity of thought in today’s West.Yet, what was interesting about the Khan Sheikhoun case is that was a test of whom the mainstream media detested more. The MSM has taken the position that pretty much whatever Trump says is untrue or at least deserving of intense fact-checking. But the MSM also believes whatever attacks on Assad that the Syrian "activists" post on social media are true and disbelieves whatever Putin says. So, this was a tug-of-war on which prejudices were stronger – and it turned out that the antipathy toward Syria and Russia is more powerful than the distrust of Trump.Ignoring CriticsThe MSM bought into Trump’s narrative to such a degree that any criticism, no matter how credentialed the critic, gets either ignored or ridiculed.Photograph of men in Khan Sheikdoun in Syria, allegedly inside a crater where a sarin-gas bomb landed.For instance, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity produced a memo on April 11 questioning Trump’s rush to judgment. Former MIT professor Ted Postol, a specialist in applying science to national security incidents, also poked major holes in the narrative of a government sarin attack. But the MSM silence was deafening.In remarks to Die Welt, Seymour Hersh, who first became famous for exposing the My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam War and disclosed the Abu Ghraib abuse story during the Iraq War, explained that he still gets upset at government lying and at the reluctance of the media to hold governments accountable:"We have a President in America today who lies repeatedly … but he must learn that he cannot lie about intelligence relied upon before authorizing an act of war. There are those in the Trump administration who understand this, which is why I learned the information I did. If this story creates even a few moments of regret in the White House, it will have served a very high purpose."But it may be that the Germans reading Welt am Sonntag may be among the few who will get the benefit of Hersh’s contrarian view of the April 4 incident in Khan Sheikhoun. Perhaps they will begin to wonder why Chancellor Angela Merkel continues with her "me-too" approach to whatever Washington wants to do regarding tensions with Russia and warfare in Syria.Will Merkel admit that she was likely deceived in parroting Washington’s line making the Syrian government responsible for a "massacre with chemical weapons" on April 4? Mercifully, most Americans will be spared having to choose between believing President Trump and Seymour Hersh.Ray McGovern works with the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  During his 27 years as a CIA analyst, he was Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch; he also prepared the President’s Daily Brief, and conducted the early morning briefings of President Reagan’s top national security advisers.(2) Seymour Hersh: Syria did not use chemical weapons - Die Welt, Germanyhttps://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.htmlSyria: Trump‘s Red LinePresident Donald Trump ignored important intelligence reports when he decided to attack Syria after he saw pictures of dying children.Seymour M. Hersh investigated the case of the alleged Sarin gas attack.Seymour M. HershJune 25, 2017On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president's determination to ignore the evidence. "None of this makes any sense," one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. "We KNOW that there was no chemical attack ... the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth ... I guess it didn't matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump."Within hours of the April 4 bombing, the world’s media was saturated with photographs and videos from Khan Sheikhoun. Pictures of dead and dying victims, allegedly suffering from the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning, were uploaded to social media by local activists, including the White Helmets, a first responder group known for its close association with the Syrian opposition.The provenance of the photos was not clear and no international observers have yet inspected the site, but the immediate popular assumption worldwide was that this was a deliberate use of the nerve agent sarin, authorized by President Bashar Assad of Syria. Trump endorsed that assumption by issuing a statement within hours of the attack, describing Assad’s "heinous actions" as being a consequence of the Obama administration’s "weakness and irresolution" in addressing what he said was Syria’s past use of chemical weapons.To the dismay of many senior members of his national security team, Trump could not be swayed over the next 48 hours of intense briefings and decision-making. In a series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect between the president and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4. In an important pre-strike process known as deconfliction, U.S. and Russian officers routinely supply one another with advance details of planned flight paths and target coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk of collision or accidental encounter (the Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian military). This information is supplied daily to the American AWACS surveillance planes that monitor the flights once airborne. Deconfliction’s success and importance can be measured by the fact that there has yet to be one collision, or even a near miss, among the high-powered supersonic American, Allied, Russian and Syrian fighter bombers.Russian and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the carefully planned flight path to and from Khan Shiekhoun on April 4 directly, in English, to the deconfliction monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which was on patrol near the Turkish border, 60 miles or more to the north.The Syrian target at Khan Sheikhoun, as shared with the Americans at Doha, was depicted as a two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town. Russian intelligence, which is shared when necessary with Syria and the U.S. as part of their joint fight against jihadist groups, had established that a high-level meeting of jihadist leaders was to take place in the building, including representatives of Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The two groups had recently joined forces, and controlled the town and surrounding area. Russian intelligence depicted the cinder-block building as a command and control center that housed a grocery and other commercial premises on its ground floor with other essential shops nearby, including a fabric shop and an electronics store."The rebels control the population by controlling the distribution of goods that people need to live – food, water, cooking oil, propane gas, fertilizers for growing their crops, and insecticides to protect the crops," a senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, told me. The basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons and ammunition, as well as products that could be distributed for free to the community, among them medicines and chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial. The meeting place – a regional headquarters – was on the floor above. "It was an established meeting place," the senior adviser said. "A long-time facility that would have had security, weapons, communications, files and a map center." The Russians were intent on confirming their intelligence and deployed a drone for days above the site to monitor communications and develop what is known in the intelligence community as a POL – a pattern of life. The goal was to take note of those going in and out of the building, and to track weapons being moved back and forth, including rockets and ammunition.One reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the jihadist leadership was forewarned not to attend the meeting. I was told that the Russians passed the warning directly to the CIA. "They were playing the game right," the senior adviser said. The Russian guidance noted that the jihadist meeting was coming at a time of acute pressure for the insurgents: Presumably Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were desperately seeking a path forward in the new political climate. In the last few days of March, Trump and two of his key national security aides – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley – had made statements acknowledging that, as the New York Times put it, the White House "has abandoned the goal" of pressuring Assad "to leave power, marking a sharp departure from the Middle East policy that guided the Obama administration for more than five years." White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a press briefing on March 31 that "there is a political reality that we have to accept," implying that Assad was there to stay.Russian and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was special because of the high-value target. "It was a red-hot change. The mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked," the senior adviser told me. "Every operations officer in the region" – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – "had to know there was something going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wingman." The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given the highest possible score inside the American community.The Execute Order governing U.S. military operations in theater, which was issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  provide instructions that demarcate the relationship between the American and Russian forces operating in Syria. "It’s like an ops order – ‘Here’s what you are authorized to do,’" the adviser said. "We do not share operational control with the Russians. We don’t do combined operations with them, or activities directly in support of one of their operations.   But coordination is permitted. We keep each other apprised of what’s happening and within this package is the mutual exchange of intelligence.  If we get a hot tip that could help the Russians do their mission, that’s coordination; and the Russians do the same for us. When we get a hot tip about a command and control facility," the adviser added, referring to the target in Khan Sheikhoun, "we do what we can to help them act on it." "This was not a chemical weapons strike," the adviser said. "That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a weapon that people can run away from?"The target was struck at 6:55 a.m. on April 4, just before midnight in Washington. A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered  a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. According to intelligence estimates, the senior adviser said, the strike itself killed up to four jihadist leaders, and an unknown number of drivers and security aides. There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN have put the figure as high as 92. A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that "eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds." MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there "smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine." In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.The internet swung into action within hours, and gruesome photographs of the victims flooded television networks and YouTube. U.S. intelligence was tasked with establishing what had happened. Among the pieces of information received was an intercept of Syrian communications collected before the attack by an allied nation. The intercept, which had a particularly strong effect on some of Trump’s aides, did not mention nerve gas or sarin, but it did quote a Syrian general discussing a "special" weapon and the need for a highly skilled pilot to man the attack plane. The reference, as those in the American intelligence community understood, and many of the inexperienced aides and family members close to Trump may not have, was to a Russian-supplied bomb with its built-in guidance system. "If you’ve already decided it was a gas attack, you will then inevitably read the talk about a special weapon as involving a sarin bomb," the adviser said. "Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria."At the UN the next day, Ambassador Haley created a media sensation when she displayed photographs of the dead and accused Russia of being complicit. "How many more children have to die before Russia cares?" she asked. NBC News, in a typical report that day, quoted American officials as confirming that nerve gas had been used and Haley tied the attack directly to Syrian President Assad. "We know that yesterday’s attack was a new low even for the barbaric Assad regime," she said. There was irony in America's rush to blame Syria and criticize Russia for its support of Syria's denial of any use of gas in Khan Sheikhoun, as Ambassador Haley and others in Washington did. "What doesn't occur to most Americans" the adviser said, "is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?"Trump, a constant watcher of television news, said, while King Abdullah of Jordan was sitting next to him in the Oval Office, that what had happened was "horrible, horrible" and a "terrible affront to humanity." Asked if his administration would change its policy toward the Assad government, he said: "You will see." He gave a hint of the response to come at the subsequent news conference with King Abdullah: "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies – babies, little babies – with a chemical gas that is so lethal  ... that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line . ... That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. Big impact ... It’s very, very possible ... that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much."Within hours of viewing the photos, the adviser said, Trump instructed the national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against Syria. "He did this before he talked to anybody about it. The planners then asked the CIA and DIA if there was any evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a nearby airport or somewhere in the area. Their military had to have it somewhere in the area in order to bomb with it." "The answer was, ‘We have no evidence that Syria had sarin or used it,’" the adviser said. "The CIA also told them that there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian SU-24 bombers had taken off on April 4] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide." Everyone involved, except perhaps the president, also understood that a highly skilled United Nations team had spent more than a year in the aftermath of an alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria, removing what was said to be all chemical weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical weapons depots.At this point, the adviser said, the president’s national security planners were more than a little rattled: "No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun." The intelligence made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead. And yet it was impossible for the experts to persuade the president of this once he had made up his mind. "The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity," the senior adviser said. "It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’"The national security advisers understood their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded. They were dealing with a man they considered to be not unkind and not stupid, but his limitations when it came to national security decisions were severe. "Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts," the adviser said. "He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: 'Do it."’On April 6, Trump convened a meeting of national security officials at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The meeting was not to decide what to do, but how best to do it – or, as some wanted, how to do the least and keep Trump happy. "The boss knew before the meeting that they didn’t have the intelligence, but that was not the issue," the adviser said. "The meeting was about, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do,' and then he gets the options."The available intelligence was not relevant. The most experienced man at the table was Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who had the president’s respect and understood, perhaps, how quickly that could evaporate. Mike Pompeo, the CIA director whose agency had consistently reported that it had no evidence of a Syrian chemical bomb, was not present. Secretary of State Tillerson was admired on the inside for his willingness to work long hours and his avid reading of diplomatic cables and reports, but he knew little about waging war and the management of a bombing raid. Those present were in a bind, the adviser said. "The president was emotionally energized by the disaster and he wanted options." He got four of them, in order of extremity. Option one was to do nothing. All involved, the adviser said, understood that was a non-starter. Option two was a slap on the wrist: to bomb an airfield in Syria, but only after alerting the Russians and, through them, the Syrians, to avoid too many casualties. A few of the planners called this the "gorilla option": America would glower and beat its chest to provoke fear and demonstrate resolve, but cause little significant damage. The third option was to adopt the strike package that had been presented to Obama in 2013, and which he ultimately chose not to pursue. The plan called for the massive bombing of the main Syrian airfields and command and control centers using B1 and B52 aircraft launched from their bases in the U.S. Option four was "decapitation": to remove Assad by bombing his palace in Damascus, as well as his command and control network and all of the underground bunkers he could possibly retreat to in a crisis."Trump ruled out option one off the bat," the senior adviser said, and the assassination of Assad was never considered. "But he said, in essence: ‘You’re the military and I want military action.’" The president was also initially opposed to the idea of giving the Russians advance warning before the strike, but reluctantly accepted it. "We gave him the Goldilocks option – not too hot, not too cold, but just right." The discussion had its bizarre moments. Tillerson wondered at the Mar-a-Lago meeting why the president could not simply call in the B52 bombers and pulverize the air base. He was told that B52s were very vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the area and using such planes would require suppression fire that could kill some Russian defenders.  "What is that?" Tillerson asked. Well, sir, he was told, that means we would have to destroy the upgraded SAM sites along the B52 flight path, and those are manned by Russians, and we possibly would be confronted with a much more difficult situation. "The lesson here was: Thank God for the military men at the meeting," the adviser said. "They did the best they could when confronted with a decision that had already been made."Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were fired from two U.S. Navy destroyers on duty in the Mediterranean, the Ross and the Porter, at Shayrat Air Base near the government-controlled city of Homs. The strike was as successful as hoped, in terms of doing minimal damage. The missiles have a light payload – roughly 220 pounds of HBX, the military’s modern version of TNT. The airfield’s gasoline storage tanks, a primary target, were pulverized, the senior adviser said, triggering a huge fire and clouds of smoke that interfered with the guidance system of following missiles. As many as 24 missiles missed their targets and only a few of the Tomahawks actually penetrated into hangars, destroying nine Syrian aircraft, many fewer than claimed by the Trump administration. I was told that none of the nine was operational: such damaged aircraft are what the Air Force calls hangar queens. "They were sacrificial lambs," the senior adviser said. Most of the important personnel and operational fighter planes had been flown to nearby bases hours before the raid began. The two runways and parking places for aircraft, which had also been targeted, were repaired and back in operation within eight hours or so. All in all, it was little more than an expensive fireworks display."It was a totally Trump show from beginning to end," the senior adviser said. "A few of the president’s senior national security advisers viewed the mission as a minimized bad presidential decision, and one that they had an obligation to carry out. But I don’t think our national security people are going to allow themselves to be hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump had gone for option three, there might have been some immediate resignations."After the meeting, with the Tomahawks on their way, Trump spoke to the nation from Mar-a-Lago, and accused Assad of using nerve gas to choke out "the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many ... No child of God should ever suffer such horror." The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war. Trump, who had campaigned as someone who advocated making peace with Assad, was bombing Syria 11 weeks after taking office, and was hailed for doing so by Republicans, Democrats and the media alike. One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word "beautiful" to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: "I think Donald Trump became president of the United States." A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.Five days later, the Trump administration gathered the national media for a background briefing on the Syrian operation that was conducted by a senior White House official who was not to be identified. The gist of the briefing was that Russia’s heated and persistent denial of any sarin use in the Khan Sheikhoun bombing was a lie because President Trump had said sarin had been used. That assertion, which was not challenged or disputed by any of the reporters present, became the basis for a series of further criticisms:      - The continued lying by the Trump administration about Syria’s use of sarin led to widespread belief in the American media and public that Russia had  chosen to be involved in a corrupt disinformation and cover-up campaign on the part of Syria.      - Russia’s military forces had been co-located with Syria’s at the Shayrat airfield (as they are throughout Syria), raising the possibility that Russia had advance notice of Syria’s determination to use sarin at Khan Sheikhoun and did nothing to stop it.       - Syria’s use of sarin and Russia’s defense of that use strongly suggested that Syria withheld stocks of the nerve agent from the UN disarmament team that spent much of 2014 inspecting and removing all declared chemical warfare agents from 12 Syrian chemical weapons depots, pursuant to the agreement worked out by the Obama administration and Russia after Syria’s alleged, but still unproven, use of sarin the year before against a rebel redoubt in a suburb of Damascus.The briefer, to his credit, was careful to use the words "think," "suggest" and "believe" at least 10 times during the 30-minute event. But he also said that his briefing was based on data that had been declassified by "our colleagues in the intelligence community." What the briefer did not say, and may not have known, was that much of the classified information in the community made the point that Syria had not used sarin in the April 4 bombing attack.The mainstream press responded the way the White House had hoped it would: Stories attacking Russia’s alleged cover-up of Syria’s sarin use dominated the news and many media outlets ignored the briefer’s myriad caveats. There was a sense of renewed Cold War. The New York Times, for example – America’s leading newspaper – put the following headline on its account: "White House Accuses Russia of Cover-Up in Syria Chemical Attack." The Times’ account did note a Russian denial, but what was described by the briefer as "declassified information" suddenly became a "declassified intelligence report." Yet there was no formal intelligence report stating that Syria had used sarin, merely a "summary based on declassified information about the attacks," as the briefer referred to it.The crisis slid into the background by the end of April, as Russia, Syria and the United States remained focused on annihilating ISIS and the militias of al-Qaida. Some of those who had worked through the crisis, however, were left with lingering concerns. "The Salafists and jihadists got everything they wanted out of their hyped-up Syrian nerve gas ploy," the senior adviser to the U.S. intelligence community told me, referring to the flare up of tensions between Syria, Russia and America. "The issue is, what if there’s another false flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake."The White House did not answer specific questions about the bombing of Khan Sheikhoun and the airport of Shayrat. These questions were send via e-mail to the White House on June 15 and never answered.{inset} Seymour M. Hersh exposed the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam 1968. He uncovered the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and many other stories about war and politics {end inset}(3) Avigdor Lieberman: Israel intel a source of the claim that Assad used chemical weapons against rebelshttp://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/american-intelligence-officials-mattis-no-doubt-stance-alleged-syrian-cw-smacks-politicized-intelligence.htmlAmerican Intelligence Officials: Mattis ‘No Doubt’ Stance on Alleged Syrian CW Smacks of Politicized IntelligencePosted on April 26, 2017 by WashingtonsBlogAN OPEN MEMORANDUM FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLEFrom: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)Subject: Mattis ‘No Doubt’ Stance on Alleged Syrian CW Smacks of Politicized IntelligenceDonald Trump’s new Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, during a recent trip to Israel, commented on the issue of Syria’s retention and use of chemical weapons in violation of its obligations to dispose of the totality of its declared chemical weapons capability in accordance with the provisions of both the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions."There can be no doubt," Secretary Mattis said during a April 21, 2017 joint news conference with his Israeli counterpart, Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman, "in the international community’s mind that Syria has retained chemical weapons in violation of its agreement and its statement that it had removed them all." To the contrary, Mattis noted, "I can say authoritatively they have retained some."Lieberman joined Mattis in his assessment, noting that Israel had "100 percent information that [the] Assad regime used chemical weapons against [Syrian] rebels."Both Mattis and Lieberman seemed to be channeling assessments offered to reporters two days prior, on April 19, 2017, by anonymous Israeli defense officials that the April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack on the Syrian village of Khan Shaykhun was ordered by Syrian military commanders, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s personal knowledge, and that Syria retained a stock of "between one and three tons" of chemical weapons.The Israeli intelligence followed on the heels of an April 13, 2017 speech given by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that, once information had come in about a chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun, the CIA had been able to "develop several hypothesis around that, and then to begin to develop fact patterns which either supported or suggested that the hypothesis wasn’t right." The CIA, Pompeo said, was "in relatively short order able to deliver to [President Trump] a high-confidence assessment that, in fact, it was the Syrian regime that had launched chemical strikes against its own people in [Khan Shaykhun.]"The speed in which this assessment was made is of some concern. Both Director Pompeo, during his CSIS remarks, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, during comments to the press on April 6, 2017, note that President Trump turned to the intelligence community early on in the crisis to understand better "the circumstances of the attack and who was responsible." McMaster indicated that the U.S. Intelligence Community, working with allied partners, was able to determine with "a very high degree of confidence" where the attack originated.Both McMaster and Pompeo spoke of the importance of open source imagery in confirming that a chemical attack had taken place, along with evidence collected from the victims themselves – presumably blood samples – that confirmed the type of agent that was used in the attack. This initial assessment drove the decision to use military force – McMaster goes on to discuss a series of National Security Council meetings where military options were discussed and decided upon; the discussion about the intelligence underpinning the decision to strike Syria was over.The danger of this rush toward an intelligence decision by Director Pompeo and National Security Advisor McMaster is that once the President and his top national security advisors have endorsed an intelligence-based conclusion, and authorized military action based upon that conclusion, it becomes virtually impossible for that conclusion to change. Intelligence assessments from that point forward will embrace facts that sustain this conclusion, and reject those that don’t; it is the definition of politicized intelligence, even if those involved disagree.A similar "no doubt" moment had occurred nearly 15 years ago when, in August 2002, Vice President Cheney delivered a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney declared. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." The message Cheney was sending to the Intelligence Community was clear: Saddam Hussein had WMD; there was no need to answer that question anymore.The CIA vehemently denies that either Vice President Cheney or anyone at the White House put pressure on its analysts to alter their assessments. This may very well be true, but if it is, then the record of certainty – and arrogance – that existed in the mindset of senior intelligence managers and analysts only further erodes public confidence in the assessments produced by the CIA, especially when, as is the case with Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction – the agency was found so lacking. Stuart Cohen, a veteran CIA intelligence analyst who served as the acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, oversaw the production of the 2002 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was used to make case for Iraq possessing WMD that was used to justify war.According to Mr. Cohen, he had four National Intelligence Officers with "over 100 years’ collective work experience on weapons of mass destruction issues" backed up by hundreds of analysts with "thousands of man-years invested in studying these issues."On the basis of this commitment of talent alone, Mr. Cohen assessed that "no reasonable person could have viewed the totality of the information that the Intelligence Community had at its disposal … and reached any conclusion or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached," namely that – judged with high confidence – "Iraq had chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometer limit imposed by the UN Security Council."Two facts emerge from this expression of intellectual hubris. First, the U.S. Intelligence Community was, in fact, wrong in its estimate on Iraq’s WMD capability, throwing into question the standards used to assign "high confidence" ratings to official assessments. Second, the "reasonable person" standard cited by Cohen must be reassessed, perhaps based upon a benchmark derived from a history of analytical accuracy rather than time spent behind a desk.The major lesson learned here, however, is that the U.S. Intelligence Community, and in particular the CIA, more often than not hides behind self-generated platitudes ("high confidence", "reasonable person") to disguise a process of intelligence analysis that has long ago been subordinated to domestic politics.It is important to point out the fact that Israel, too, was wrong about Iraq’s WMD. According to Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli Intelligence Officer, Israeli intelligence seriously overplayed the threat posed by Iraqi WMD in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War, including a 2002 briefing to NATO provided by Efraim Halevy, who at the time headed the Israeli Mossad, or intelligence service, that Israel had "clear indications" that Iraq had reconstituted its WMD programs after U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998.The Israeli intelligence assessments on Iraq, Mr. Brom concluded, were most likely colored by political considerations, such as the desire for regime change in Iraq. In this light, neither the presence of Avigdor Leiberman, nor the anonymous background briefings provided by Israel about Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities, should be used to provide any credence to Secretary Mattis’s embrace of the "no doubt" standard when it comes to Syria’s alleged possession of chemical weapons.The intelligence data that has been used to back up the allegations of Syrian chemical weapons use has been far from conclusive. Allusions to intercepted Syrian communications have been offered as "proof", but the Iraq experience – in particular former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s unfortunate experience before the U.N. Security Council – show how easily such intelligence can be misunderstood and misused.Inconsistencies in the publicly available imagery which the White House (and CIA) have so heavily relied upon have raised legitimate questions about the veracity of any conclusions drawn from these sources (and begs the question as to where the CIA’s own Open Source Intelligence Center was in this episode.) The blood samples used to back up claims of the presence of nerve agent among the victims was collected void of any verifiable chain of custody, making their sourcing impossible to verify, and as such invalidates any conclusions based upon their analysis.In the end, the conclusions CIA Director Pompeo provided to the President was driven by a fundamental rethinking of the CIA’s analysts when it came to Syria and chemical weapons that took place in 2014. Initial CIA assessments in the aftermath of the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons seemed to support the Syrian government’s stance that it had declared the totality of its holding of chemical weapons, and had turned everything over to the OPCW for disposal. However, in 2014, OPCW inspectors had detected traces of Sarin and VX nerve agent precursors at sites where the Syrians had indicated no chemical weapons activity had taken place; other samples showed the presence of weaponized Sarin nerve agent.The Syrian explanation that the samples detected were caused by cross-contamination brought on by the emergency evacuation of chemical precursors and equipment used to handle chemical weapons necessitated by the ongoing Civil War was not accepted by the inspectors, and this doubt made its way into the minds of the CIA analysts, who closely followed the work of the OPCW inspectors in Syria.One would think that the CIA would operate using the adage of "once bitten, twice shy" when assessing inspector-driven doubt; U.N. inspectors in Iraq, driven by a combination of the positive sampling combined with unverifiable Iraqi explanations, created an atmosphere of doubt about the veracity of Iraqi declarations that all chemical weapons had been destroyed. The CIA embraced the U.N. inspectors’ conclusions, and discounted the Iraqi version of events; as it turned out, Iraq was telling the truth.While the jury is still out about whether or not Syria is, like Iraq, telling the truth, or whether the suspicions of inspectors are well founded, one thing is clear: a reasonable person would do well to withhold final judgment until all the facts are in. (Note: The U.S. proclivity for endorsing the findings of U.N. inspectors appears not to include the Khan Shaykhun attack; while both Syria and Russia have asked the OPCW to conduct a thorough investigation of the April 4, 2017 incident, the OPCW has been blocked from doing so by the United States and its allies.)CIA Director Pompeo’s job is not to make policy – the intelligence his agency provides simply informs policy. It is not known if the U.S. Intelligence Community will be producing a formal National Intelligence Estimate addressing the Syrian chemical weapons issue, although the fact that the United States has undertaken military action under the premise that these weapons exist more than underscores the need for such a document, especially in light of repeated threats made by the Trump administration that follow-on strikes might be necessary.Making policy is, however, the job of Secretary of Defense Mattis. At the end of the day, Secretary of Defense Mattis will need to make his own mind up as to the veracity of any intelligence used to justify military action. Mattis’s new job requires that he does more than simply advise the President on military options; he needs to ensure that the employment of these options is justified by the facts.In the case of Syria, the "no doubt" standard Mattis has employed does not meet the "reasonable man" standard. Given the consequences that are attached to his every word, Secretary Mattis would be well advised not to commit to a "no doubt" standard until there is, literally, no doubt.For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for SanityWilliam Binney, Technical Director, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret) and former Office Division Director in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and ResearchThomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSABogdan Dzakovic, Former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS)Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (Ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)Brady Kiesling, former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, ret. (Associate VIPS)Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.)Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East, CIA and National Intelligence Council (ret.)Torin Nelson, former Intelligence Officer/Interrogator (GG-12) HQ, Department of the ArmyTodd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, IraqPeter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSALawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS)Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.); Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)(4) WSWS Trots publish Hersh refutation of Syria chemical attack  Hersh Syria wsws; SW: Mossad -> Iran nuclear, burt xHersh too; nothing at https://www.socialistalternative.org/?s=Hershhttp://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/28/pers-j28.htmlTrump’s Syrian chemical weapons claims: A house of cards28 June 2017In the latest season of the Netflix drama House of Cards, the fictional administration of President Francis Underwood and Vice President Claire Underwood, facing a domestic political crisis, uses a manufactured chemical weapons attack in Syria to declare war on the country.In a case of politics following art, the Trump administration has accused the Syrian government of "preparing" to use chemical weapons against the civilian population. No evidence has been presented to back up the concocted threat.On Monday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared that the US had "identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children." If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons," the statement continued, "he and his military will pay a heavy price."Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, added Tuesday, "The goal is at this point not just to send Assad a message, but to send Russia and Iran a message… That if this happens again, we are putting you on notice." In other words, any alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria could be used to justify war against Iran and Russia.Pressed to substantiate the White House’s allegation, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis refused to produce any evidence. He said the alleged intelligence was from "the past day or two" and regarded "specific aircraft in a specific hangar, both of which we know to be associated with chemical weapons use." This was a reference to the Shayrat airfield, which the US targeted with a cruise missile strike on April 6.Some military officials said they had "no idea" what the White House was referring to. British defense officials said they had not seen the evidence, but would support US military escalation regardless—meaning they do not care whether the allegations are true or false.The White House statement followed by just one day the publication of a detailed article in Die Welt by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, the reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, which demonstrated that the allegations used by the Trump administration to justify the April 6 missile attack on Syria were entirely unsubstantiated.Drawing on background interviews with military and intelligence personnel, Hersh wrote that the administration possessed no evidence to back up its claims that the Syrian government had launched a sarin gas attack on April 4.The false allegations of a chemical attack and subsequent bombardment of the Syrian airbase were so brazen that they provoked opposition from within sections of the military/intelligence apparatus. "None of this makes any sense," Hersh cited one officer as saying. "We KNOW that there was no chemical attack..."At the time, Trump was under immense pressure from the Democratic Party and intelligence agencies to shift to a more aggressive stance against the Syrian government. Just days before, the Senate Intelligence Committee had held a hearing at which it was alleged that Trump had effectively collaborated with Russian efforts to undermine the 2016 US election. Columnists and pundits painted the president as little more than an agent of the Kremlin.But that all changed—at least for a few days—after the attack. As Hersh put it, "The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war... One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word ‘beautiful’ to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: ‘I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.’ A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal."At the time, no major US news publication even raised the question of whether the White House’s allegations were credible. They were simply accepted as good coin, demonstrating that the media’s role as a propaganda organ for war had not abated.Indeed, Hersh was unable to find a news source to publish his most recent article in the United States. The story was also rejected by the UK’s London Review of Books, which published earlier investigative reports by Hersh, forcing him to turn to the German newspaper.As shown by the latest fabricated Syrian "atrocity"—this time, supposedly in "preparation"—nothing has changed in regard to the media’s readiness to serve as a sounding board for government propaganda.But the media’s acceptance of the administration’s concocted claims about weapons of mass destruction in Syria cannot hide the fact that they are, in fact, concocted. In what has become standard operating procedure, the administration has not attempted to present a shred of evidence, making only the most general allegations, which the American population is expected to swallow whole.Fourteen years ago, the Bush administration used lies about weapons of mass destruction to start a war in Iraq that led to the deaths of millions. Now the Trump administration, with the full support of the media and the entire political establishment, is using equally groundless claims to escalate a war that could result in a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, the world’s second biggest nuclear power.Far from opposing the escalation of war, the Democratic Party has made this its central demand since the election of Trump and the focus of its opposition to his administration. In an article published this month in Foreign A ffairs, Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, spelled out the aggressive foreign policy aims that underpinned Clinton’s candidacy and are at the center of the present hysterical campaign over Trump’s alleged "collusion" with Russian President Putin.Kaine pilloried the Obama administration’s foreign policy, declaring that Obama’s "unwillingness to forcefully intervene early in the Syrian civil war will come to haunt the United States in the future." He excoriated Obama’s "lackadaisical response to Russia’s cyberattacks and its unprecedented interference in the 2016 election," concluding, "The United States must always send a clear message to those who mean Americans harm: don’t mess with us."As a recent article in the Washington Post makes clear, the Obama administration had expected to transfer power to a Clinton White House that would immediately begin preparing a major escalation in Syria, entailing a possible clash with Russia. Trump’s surprise election victory disrupted these plans, which were well advanced. Hence the ferocity of the efforts by the Democrats and the intelligence agencies to pressure Trump to carry out a shift to a more aggressive and more anti-Russian foreign policy—efforts that appear to be succeeding.The deepening tensions between the US and Russia over Syria pose an existential danger to humanity. The only way to avert the catastrophe to which the US political establishment is rushing is for the working class to intervene independently, on the basis of its own socialist, internationalist and revolutionary program.Andre Damon(5) Socialist Worker Trots and Socialist Alternative Trots black out Hersh reportSocialist Worker and Socialist Alternative, the two main groups of Trots on campuses and in demonstrations, have blacked out the Hersh report. They are allies of George Soros and possibly funded by him. https://www.socialistalternative.org/ says nothing about Hersh. https://socialistworker.org/ has not reported the Hersh refutation; but it backed the Syrian uprising. A 2015 article titled 'Smearing the Syrian uprising' attacked Hersh:"... Seymour Hersh's widely discredited attempt to claim the Assad regime did not launch a chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs in August 2013"https://socialistworker.org/2015/06/10/smearing-the-syrian-uprisingSmearing the Syrian uprisingMichael Karadjis challenges the distortions and faulty reasoning behind the assertion that the U.S. helped enable the rise of ISIS, in an article written for his blog. June 10, 2015 [...]The other article mentioned (The Red Line and the Rat Line) is Seymour Hersh's widely discredited attempt to claim the Assad regime did not launch a chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs in August 2013 and that instead the rebels, supplied by Turkey, gassed their own children to death. Hersh's entire story relies on the alleged testimony of an unnamed source in the U.S. intelligence community. What it says on this "rat-line" issue likely has about the same amount of credibility. The significant addition to the above New York Times stories is Hersh's assertion that "the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria." Hersh is the only source that makes such a claim; but he is unable to verify it for us because the whole alleged agreement is in a secret annex to a Senate Intelligence Committee report that only a few people have ever seen. It is therefore difficult to know what to make of any of this.(6) Russia, China block bid by Western powers to impose UN sanctions on Syriahttps://www.rt.com/news/378930-russia-china-un-veto-syria/Russia, China block bid by Western powers to impose UN sanctions on SyriaPublished time: 28 Feb, 2017 16:58 Edited time: 28 Feb, 2017 19:02Russia and China have vetoed a UN Security Council proposal that would have banned the supply of helicopters to the Syrian government, and blacklisted eleven Syrian military commanders over allegations of toxic gas attacks.The proposed resolution, put forward by Britain, France and the United States, was put to the vote of the international body on Tuesday despite an earlier pledge by Russia to use its power the quash the proposal, the seventh time it has done so since the conflict first erupted in Syria since 2011.The nations behind the proposal criticized Russia and China for the veto. [...](7) Russia, China veto at U.N. on Syria chemical weapons is ‘outrageous,’ U.S. sayshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russia-china-veto-at-un-on-syria-chemical-weapons-is-outrageous-us-says/2017/02/28/c69adcf4-fdeb-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.htmlBy Karen DeYoungFebruary 28 at 5:19 PMThe Trump administration accused Russia and China of "outrageous and indefensible" action Tuesday after they vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have imposed new sanctions on Syria for using chemical weapons against its own citizens.In a sharply worded speech after the vote, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said the message the council was sending to the world was that "if you are allies with Russia and China, they will cover the backs of their friends who use chemical weapons to kill their own people." [...]The United States sponsored the resolution, along with Britain and France. It followed the October conclusion of a joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that the Syrian government had dropped munitions containing chlorine on at least three occasions in 2014 and 2015.The OPCW concluded after the alleged attacks that they had taken place, but it had no mandate to assess responsibility. That led the Security Council, with Russian and Chinese backing, to establish the joint investigation to identify the perpetrators.In a report issued in October, investigators concluded that the Syrian government had dropped chlorine-filled munitions on the three dates in question. The investigation also concluded that the Islamic State had used mustard gas on at least one occasion.The Tuesday resolution called for travel and economic sanctions against several Syrian air force and intelligence officers linked to the attacks by investigators, along with asset freezes of several Syrian companies and government-linked organizations. It also established a mechanism to monitor compliance.A single veto from one of the 15-nation council’s five permanent members — Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France — can kill a resolution. Bolivia, one of 10 nonpermanent, rotating members, also voted against Tuesday’s measure.In denouncing the resolution, Safronkov suggested that evidence was uncorroborated and came from "suspicious eyewitness accounts . . . armed opponents, sympathetic [nongovernmental organizations], media and also the so-called Friends of Syria."The latter is an international group, made up largely of U.S. allies, set up in 2012 in response to Russian and Chinese vetoes of previous U.N. resolutions on -Syria. [...]-- Peter Myerswebsite: http://mailstar.net/index.html