As Western establishment politicians and media rose in one voice to accuse the Syrian government forces of launching a sarin gas attack on its civilian population in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, informed observers were reminded of the blatantly false intelligence used in 2003 to accuse Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction ready to be deployed against the West, and again in 2013 to charge Damascus with use of chemical weapons.

As we now know, they were based on lies, or in more polite terms, on “faulty intelligence”. Nonetheless, U.S. President Trump, after being fed fake intelligence, decided to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airfield in (cf. SAS 15-16/17). Despite pleas by many experts, organizations, and governments, the United States and the EU have refused to endorse an investigation by an international commission of independent experts, who would actually carry out a routine probe on the ground in Syria, taking samples, etc., both at the alleged site of the attack and at the Shayrat airfield.

Instead, a team from the Organization for the Prevention of the Use of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), headed by two British nationals, is investigating from afar, on the basis of “evidence” presumably provided by al Qaeda forces in Syria and their White Helmets, who are the only ones with direct access to the area.A UN Commission of Inquiry has also concluded that some sort of chemical substance had been released, but admitted it was unable to determine how it had been released or by whom.

From a technical standpoint, the official White House Report on the event, designed to justify the missile attack, has been decisively refuted by Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science and Security Policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a series of reports.

The latest one, issued on April 18, under the title, “The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur,” presents even stronger proof that no sarin attack took place in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria on April 4, 2017, based on the wind patterns and the presumed point of impact. Moreover, the images featured in the White House report show a hamlet whose walls are carved out of rock, which is impossible at that location.

He and others have pointed to the fact that the health workers at the alleged site are wearing no protective gear. Had this been a sarin attack, they would have died or suffered severe injuries. There can be no excuse for the USA.

E.I.R., Strategic Alert, The Schiller Institute