Tulsi Gabbard Gets Some Vindication
Tulsi Gabbard Gets Some Vindication
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard speaks in Detroit on July 31, 2019 during the second of
two Democratic presidential primary debates hosted by CNN. (Paul Sancya / AP
Photo)
In the aftermath of the second Democratic primary debate on July 31, Hawaii
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard emerged as the most Googled of all candidates, an
indication that her performance (which included a stunning takedown of
California Sen. Kamala Harris over her criminal justice record) attracted
the attention of many viewers. This heightened level of attention produced
blowback, both from Harris, who dismissed Gabbard as "an Assad apologist" (a
reference to Syrian President Bashar Assad), and from the mainstream media,
typified by CNN's Chris Cuomo, who alleged that Gabbard-a major in the
Hawaiian National Guard, with two tours of duty in the Middle East under her
belt-is taking the side of Assad over the U.S. intelligence community and
U.N. inspectors when it comes to assigning blame for chemical weapons
attacks against Syrian civilians.
"What you are referring to are [sic] cynicism as skepticism that I have
expressed, because I've served in a war that was caused by people who lied
to us, who lied to the American people, who presented false evidence that
members of Congress and U.S. senators believed and voted for a war that
resulted in the loss of lives of over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in
uniform," Gabbard replied to Cuomo. "It's our responsibility as lawmakers
and as leaders in this country to make sure that our U.S. military is not
being activated and deployed to go to war unless we are certain a) that it
serves the best interests of the American people; and b) that that action
will actually have a positive impact. The questions I'm raising are based on
this experience that I've had."
As someone who challenged the position of the U.S. government regarding
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs before the 2003 invasion and
occupation of Iraq, I believe that Gabbard's skepticism over allegations
that the Assad government used chemical weapons to attack the towns of Khan
Shaykhun in 2017 and Douma in 2018 is well placed.
Gabbard has detailed her concerns about allegations of chemical weapon use
in Syria on her campaign website. Her position, and her reliance on the work
of Theodore Postol, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who
has published critical assessments of both the Khan Shaykhun and Douma
incidents, has drawn the ire of many in the mainstream media and elsewhere,
including Eliot Higgins, founder of the website Bellingcat, who published a
scathing rebuttal of both Postol's work and Gabbard's reliance on it.
My purpose here is not to check the veracity of Postol's research, rebut
Higgins' claims or fact-check Gabbard's web page. What I will do, as a
veteran Marine Corps intelligence officer and experienced weapons inspector,
is throw my weight behind Gabbard's expression of skepticism.
The chemical incident at Douma on April 7, 2018, has been largely
debunked-the initial claims regarding the use of the nerve agent sarin have
been shown to be false, and evidence has emerged that indicates that a pair
of chlorine tanks claimed to have been dropped by helicopters belonging to
the Syrian military as weapons were, in fact, manually placed at the scene
by opposition forces. There is no doubt that the initial assessment of the
situation used by the U.S. government to justify a military strike in
response to the allegations regarding Douma was fundamentally flawed, and
that Gabbard-alone among all the Democratic presidential hopefuls-was
correct to expressed her doubt over its veracity.
More complicated is the incident that occurred at Khan Shaykhun on April 4,
2017. Here, investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) claim to have uncovered evidence that civilians from
Khan Shaykhun were exposed to Sarin. The key question surrounding the Khan
Shaykhun incident isn't whether Sarin was used, but rather who used it. The
U.S. government and the OPCW have concluded that the Syrian government is
responsible for the attack. Postol, Gabbard and I all have concerns over
that conclusion.
No independent investigator has been to the site of the Khan Shaykhun
incident, including the OPCW investigators who assert Syrian government
responsibility. This is a crucial fact that fundamentally affects how data
is evaluated. Khan Shaykhun was, at the time of the alleged attack, under
the control of opposition forces loyal to the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida
offshoot. Several nongovernmental organizations also were present, including
the White Helmets, a civil defense/rescue organization, and the Syrian
American Medical Society, or SAMS, which provides volunteer medical care in
opposition-controlled Syria. Both the White Helmets and SAMS operated under
the auspices of the Nusra Front while working in the Khan Shaykhun region.
In conducting its investigation, the OPCW relied exclusively upon the White
Helmets and SAMS for information regarding the alleged attack, access to
alleged victims of the attack for interviews and medical testing, and
physical samples alleged to have been removed from the scene of the attack.
This reality is fatal to the credibility of any finding issued by the OPCW.
In my 10-plus years as a weapons inspector in both the former Soviet Union
and Iraq, I helped write the book on on-site inspections, including
developing initial procedures for establishing chain of custody for chemical
samples gathered during an inspection. I can assert, without fear of being
contradicted, that there can be no formal, legally binding attribution or
conclusion made from evidence that lacks an absolute chain of custody from
moment of collection to final analysis. This was the case with the United
Nations Special Command (UNSCOM) in Iraq, and with the U.N. mission to
investigate alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria. That mission, which
operated in Syria from Aug. 19 through Sept. 30, 2013, is on record as
rejecting numerous evidentiary materials on the basis of being unable to
"independently verify the information received" or "verify the chain of
custody for . sampling."
The OPCW, however, modified its procedures to allow the introduction of both
the White Helmets and SAMS into the evidentiary chain of custody, embracing
them as a means of information verification even though OPCW investigators
were not part of the initiating processes involved in witness selection and
screening. This failure to adhere to fundamentals has cast doubt on the
credibility of the OPCW's findings, if for no other reason than that it
allowed an al-Qaida-affiliated entity-the Nusra Front-to fundamentally shape
its investigation, thereby opening its conclusions to challenge.
Postol and Higgins expend significant effort on discussing the science of
sarin; I take a more basic approach to the Khan Shaykhun incident: How did
the sarin get there? The OPCW concludes that "a relatively large bomb"
delivered "from a medium or high altitude, of between approximately 4,000
and 10,000 m[eters]" is the probable delivery means of the sarin used at
Khan Shaykhun. This assessment is highly problematic, especially because it
was impossible for the aircraft the OPCW asserts was used to deliver this
bomb-a Syrian air force Su-22-to accomplish this task. If it was impossible
for the Syrians to drop a chemical bomb on Khan Shaykhun from an aircraft,
then the entire episode, as recounted by the OPCW-based upon evidence
provided by the Nusra Front, the White Helmet and SAMS-must be viewed as a
fabrication.
The OPCW cites radar maps provided by the United States and France that
place an Su-22 aircraft over Khan Shaykhun on the morning of April 4, 2017.
"The aircraft was depicted as flying in a circular loop pattern in the
vicinity of Kafr Zayta and north-east of Khan Shaykhun," the OPCW report
noted. "The map indicated that the closest to Khan Shaykhun that the
aircraft had flown had been approximately 5 [kilometers] away."
This information conforms with Syrian air force logs provided to the OPCW by
the Syrian government, as well as a statement provided by a Syrian pilot who
flew the Su-22 aircraft on the morning of April 4; the pilot claimed the
closest he had flown to Khan Shaykhun was seven to nine kilometers, while
carrying out an attack using conventional munitions near the village of Kafr
Zayta, situated approximately eight kilometers southwest of Khan Shaykhun.
The OPCW said it consulted with an unnamed "weapons expert" to determine
"the confluence of distance and altitude from which it might be possible to
hit Khan Shaykhun with an aerial bomb." The "expert" concluded that
"depending on a number of variables such as altitude, speed and the flight
path taken, it would be possible for such an aerial bomb to be dropped on
the town from the aforementioned distances." The OPCW did not provide the
variables used by the "expert" in making this determination, or an example
by which these variables could produce the outcome claimed.
There is a simple reason why it did not-the "expert" is dead wrong.
A briefing provided by a Russian air force officer directly contradicts the
OPCW claims that an Su-22 aircraft dropped a bomb on Khan Shaykhun on the
morning in question. For the Su-22 to carry out an attack, the Russian
officer noted, it must visually acquire the target and, from an altitude of
no more than 4,000 meters, fly directly at the target at a speed of 800 to
1,000 kilometers per hour. Based upon these parameters, the release point of
a bomb would be between 1,000 and 5,800 meters distant from the target. Even
then, the Su-22 would require an additional three to nine kilometers to make
a turn away from the target after dropping the bomb. The radar track used by
the OPCW shows an Su-22 aircraft flying west of Khan Shaykhun, on a path
parallel to the town. The flight path is not consistent with that needed to
deliver a bomb on Khan Shaykhun.
While Western "experts" have dismissed the Russian presentation as a
charade, I find it credible. As a former aircrew member of a Marine Corps
OA-4 Skyhawk light attack aircraft, which possesses performance
characteristics similar to that of the Su-22, I have flown air-to-ground
strike missions similar to that claimed for Khan Shaykhun. I could fly the
flight profile indicated by the U.S. radar track 100 times, and never get a
bomb anywhere near the area where the Khan Shaykhun crater in question is
located. This point is furthered by the fact that a basic analysis of the
crater puts the azimuth of strike nearly perpendicular to the line of flight
of the Su-22 when passing west of the town; for a bomb to have been
delivered, the aircraft would have had to significantly depart from its
flight path, overflying the target, before turning and resuming its course.
The radar shows no such deviation. (The "loops" flown by the aircraft north
of Khan Shaykhun could likewise never have provided the direction of attack
needed to deliver a bomb to the crater in question.) This is the crux of the
problem facing the OPCW-it claims that an aerial bomb loaded with sarin was
used to strike Khan Shaykhun, and yet the evidence it provides regarding the
presence of the sole vector capable of delivering this weapon-the Syrian
Su-22-disproves its case.
The tale of the Syrian Su-22 represents both the alpha and omega of the
allegations of Syrian government complicity regarding the use of sarin at
Khan Shaykhun. One can debate sarin persistency, alternative vectors for
agent delivery and other tangential issues until they are blue in the face.
But for the Nusra Front, White Helmet and SAMS narrative to be viable, there
must have been an attack by a Syrian air force Su-22 that delivered an
aerial bomb to the center of Khan Shaykhun. Yet the evidence provided
demonstrates conclusively that this could not have occurred. Based upon this
reality, everything that follows must be viewed as a "false flag" incident
or, as Gabbard's website notes, "evidence to suggest that the attacks may
have been staged by opposition forces for the purpose of drawing the United
States and the West deeper into the war."
"I believe," Gabbard states on her website, "that we should all carefully
look at the evidence before coming to any conclusions as to whether or not
al-Qaeda or the Syrian government were responsible for these particular
attacks." That she has done so with a critical eye is not only commendable,
but what one would expect from a soldier who seeks to be the commander in
chief of the U.S. military.
That the mainstream media continue to attack Gabbard for her stance on Syria
and chemical weapons is indicative of the low bar that exists for American
journalism today. That President Trump and all the Democratic presidential
candidates have failed to display a modicum of intellectual curiosity about
what really happened in Douma and Khan Shaykhun should alarm any American
who professes to care about issues of war and peace.
Scott Ritter
Contributor
Scott Ritter spent more than a dozen years in the intelligence field,
beginning in 1985 as a ground intelligence officer with the US Marine Corps,
where he served with the Marine Corps component of the Rapid.
Scott Ritter