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Hissyspit

(45,788 posts)
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 03:42 AM Sep 2013

McClatchy: To Some, U.S. Case for Syrian Gas Attack and Need For Strike Has Too Many Holes

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/02/201027/to-some-us-case-for-syrian-gas.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update

Posted on Monday, September 2, 2013

To some, US case for Syrian gas attack and need for strike has too many holes

By Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel | McClatchy Washington Bureau

- snip -

The case Secretary of State John Kerry laid out last Friday contained claims that were disputed by the United Nations, inconsistent in some details with British and French intelligence reports or lacking sufficient transparency for international chemical weapons experts to accept at face value.

After the false weapons claims preceding the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the threshold for evidence to support intervention is exceedingly high. And while there’s little dispute that a chemical agent was used in an Aug. 21 attack outside of Damascus – and probably on a smaller scale before that – there are calls from many quarters for independent, scientific evidence to support the U.S. narrative that the Assad regime used sarin gas in an operation that killed 1,429 people, including more than 400 children.
Some of the U.S. points in question:

- The Obama administration dismissed the value of a U.N. inspection team’s work by saying that the investigators arrived too late for the findings to be credible and wouldn’t provide any information the United State didn’t already have.

- U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq countered that it was “rare” for such an investigation to begin within such a short time and said that “the passage of such few days does not affect the opportunities to collect valuable samples,” according to the U.N.’s website. For example, Haq added, sarin can be detected in biomedical samples for months after its use.

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McClatchy: To Some, U.S. Case for Syrian Gas Attack and Need For Strike Has Too Many Holes (Original Post) Hissyspit Sep 2013 OP
What's at issue is the origin of the evidence samples. dipsydoodle Sep 2013 #1
Thanks for Posting rpannier Sep 2013 #2
K & R malaise Sep 2013 #3
Transparency: Hydra Sep 2013 #4

dipsydoodle

(42,239 posts)
1. What's at issue is the origin of the evidence samples.
Tue Sep 3, 2013, 04:59 AM
Sep 2013

The samples which the US and France had were given to them. The samples the UN has they collected personally to the extent of refusing samples which were offered to them.

The US persists in preempting the findings of the UN team.

off topic - thanks for re-posting : I'd noticed what happened earlier.

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