Defense Secretary “Madog” Mattis and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley are stroking their dear leader today for nipping in the bud an imaginary Syrian Chemical Attack today, thereby saving untold millions of Syrians from an attack that wasn’t going to happen.
"I can tell you that due to the president's actions, we did not see an incident. What we did see before was all the same activity we had seen prior for the April 4 attack, and so, I think by the president calling out Assad, by the U.S. continuing to remind Iran and Russia while they choose to back Assad, this is something we're not going to put up with, I like to think the president saved many men women and children," Haley said before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Defense Secretary James Mattis said that Syria's government had taken the warning seriously. His statement that the Syrians appear to have taken the White House warning against another chemical attack seriously is based on the fact that there hasn't been a chemical attack since the warning was issued, since the situation at Shayrat airfield has not changed. Mattis wouldn't say what specifically triggered U.S. concerns that an attack might be imminent.
In her opening statement to lawmakers, Haley said America's friends and rivals know that the U.S. has "found its voice at the United Nations."
Many disputed my diary yesterday, calling into question the credibilty of it’s author, Seymour Hersh. But if you followed the second link above, Hersh’s conclusions have been voiced also by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell:
“In fact most of my sources are telling me — including members of the team that monitor global chemical weapons, including people in Syria, including people in the US Intelligence community — that what most likely happened (and this intelligence was shared with the US by Russia in accordance with the de-conflicting agreement) is that they hit a warehouse that they intended to hit and had told both sides, Russia and the US, that they were going to hit. This is a serious air force, of course. And this warehouse was alleged to have ISIS supply in it and indeed it probably did. And some of these supplies were precursors for chemicals (or possibly an alternative they were phosphates for fertilizing)… Conventional bombs hit the warehouse and the wind dispersed these ingredients and killed some people.”
Former CIA officer and founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Philip Giradi is quoted in the same article:
“I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.”
“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”
Former head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Hans Blix has also called into question Assad’s culpability in the attack….
"I don't know whether in Washington they presented any evidence, but I did not see that in the Security Council," Blix said. "Merely pictures of victims that were held up, that the whole world can see with horror, such pictures are not necessarily evidence of who did it."
...as has Scott Ritter, who was on the same commission, though his integrity has been somewhat diminished due to his alleged unsavory internet surfing.
What we have here is not a case of the tail wagging the dog, but a flea on the tail wagging the dog.
Trump is seeking to reap the benefits of an attack without expending the ordinance, which is somewhat better I suppose... in that the idiot hasn’t killed anyone in this episode.
But, from what I read in the comments in my diary yesterday, some here would do well not to swallow whole the B.S. they read from the same folks that lied us into Iraq.