{"id":14287,"date":"2013-08-30T20:45:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T00:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=14287"},"modified":"2013-08-30T23:08:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-31T03:08:27","slug":"exclusive-syrians-in-ghouta-claim-saudi-supplied-rebels-behind-chemical-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2013\/08\/30\/exclusive-syrians-in-ghouta-claim-saudi-supplied-rebels-behind-chemical-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story does NOT<\/strong> come from The Onion<\/em>.\u00a0 The story\u00a0 from Mint Press News<\/em> is EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,\u201d said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.<\/p>\n

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a \u201ctube-like structure\u201d while others were like a \u201chuge gas bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.<\/p>\n

Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime\u2019s heartland of Latakia on Syria\u2019s western coast, in purported retaliation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan is a favorite of the CIA according to this article, this explains why the Obama administration is so anxious to blame this on Bashir al Assad.\u00a0 The President is trying to cover his ass.\u00a0 Of course, who knows if this story is credible?<\/p>\n

I was watching Secretary of State John Kerry explain some of the evidence they have for blaming Assad.\u00a0 He showed spots on a map where\u00a0 our satellites picked up rockets firing from government held territory and hitting rebel territory.\u00a0 They know when the rockets were fired.\u00a0 What I did not hear him say is that he had any indication the rockets contained a nerve agent.\u00a0 He also did not claim any evidence of a rocket hit near where the nerve agent attack was supposed to have happened.<\/p>\n

The US is not waiting to hear from the UN inspection team what the nerve agent was.\u00a0 My previous post\u00a0Evidence: Syria gas attack work of U.S. allies<\/strong><\/a> quoted an expert who said that sarin gas is absorbed through the skin so that a gas mask would not be sufficient protection for the people treating the victims.\u00a0 If you look at the videos of the doctors treating the victims, they are not adequately protected, and yet there are no reports of the doctors dying.\u00a0 If you look at the equipment worn by the UN inspectors, you see contamination suits that completely enclose the inspectors. This is what you wear if you suspect sarin. Perhaps it was not even sarin that was used.\u00a0 Perhaps this is why the President wants to act now, before reports come in that the agent is something that can be linked back to Saudi Arabia and the CIA.<\/p>\n

If this attack were somehow connected to the CIA, what is the likelihood that the CIA would provide the President with reliable intelligence that pointed the finger back at them.\u00a0 Compare this with the likelihood that they would gin up some intelligence that pointed the finger elsewhere.<\/p>\n

If any of this is true, this would be an impeachable offense in my opinion.<\/p>\n

\n

Surely if this is a legitimate story, this can not be the only place reporting it. Google the phrase <\/strong>nerve gas rebel accident<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Politisite<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>reports the above article and then adds some information from the UK Telegraph, Saudis offer Russia secret oil deal if it drops Syria<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Well, actually the information was in the original article, but it used a link to a Business Insider<\/em> article REPORT: The Saudis Offered Mafia-Style ‘Protection’ Against Terrorist Attacks At Sochi Olympics<\/strong><\/a>. This actually links back to the same Telegraph <\/em>article.<\/p>\n

According to U.K.\u2019s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar\u2019s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas<\/strong><\/a> by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The link just above points to the article, Syria, the Saudi connection: The Prince with close ties to Washington at the heart of the push for war<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Time<\/em> magazine world page has the article, The Known Knowns and Known Unknowns of a Chemical Attack in Syria<\/strong><\/a>. One of the items it talks about is the symptoms from nerve gas attacks.\u00a0 It is in line with the expert I quoted yesterday.<\/p>\n

Video footage coming from the attack sites reveals a horrifying litany of symptoms, from vomiting, difficulty breathing, catatonic states, paralysis, foaming at the mouth, dilated pupils, constricted pupils, tremors, excess salivation and uncontrolled defecation and urination. These could all be symptoms of chemical attack, but they are inconsistent. Nerve agents like sarin, for example, don\u2019t cause foaming at the mouth, but other lung irritants like chlorine gas might. Age, allergies and asthma can also impact how symptoms manifest. The agents in question could be diluted or combined in novel ways that produce an unusual array of symptoms. Even if the videos are unconfirmed, they clearly demonstrate that the victims are suffering horribly and that something terrible has happened to a large number of people. The only way to know for sure what kind of agents were used would be through testing blood and tissue samples of the victims, and environmental samples taken at the site.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, I give up.\u00a0 There are references all over Google to the story, but I have not found one yet that didn’t link back to the original story above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story does NOT come from The Onion.\u00a0 The story\u00a0 from Mint Press News is EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack. However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14287"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14295,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14287\/revisions\/14295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}