Chemical Weapons 2017: What Just Happened In Syria?

by Brandon Turbeville

Yet again, on cue, the Western corporate press is on fire with stories of “Assad’s brutality,” and “chemical weapons” attacks against civilians. Obviously, the United States, NATO, and their media mouthpieces are united in condemnation of the Assad government and the Syrian military despite there being no evidence that it committed the attacks. Indeed, the Western powers may blame Assad all they want but all the available credible evidence suggests that the deployment of chemical weapons this time around, like all the others before it, was the work of terrorists and their supporters.

But the evidence does not matter to propagandists and, despite the public appearance that the U.S. President is battling the Deep State apparatus, it seems now that the Deep State and the head of the country are now finally reading from the same page.

The Incident

According to a flurry of reports, an incident occurred on April 4, 2017 in Idlib, Syria in the village of Khan Sheikhoun, where it has been reported that chemical weapons were used or detonated resulting in the death of at least 58 people including 11 children. And that is all we know about the incident. We do not know it was an attack. We do not know it was an accident. We only know that whatever happened has been turned into an international incident aimed at demonizing the Assad government and testing Russia in Syria yet again.

Assad and the Syrian Government Denies Using Chemical Weapons

For its part, the Syrian government has categorically denied launching chemical weapons against civilians or terrorists in Idlib. Russia has reaffirmed that the Syrian military is innocent of the charges brought by the West with a military source telling al-Masdar News that the army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place.”

But to listen to the Western corporate press, one would be excused in believing that there was overwhelming and damning evidence to the contrary as both the press and Western governments continue to hurl accusations at the Syrian government. Indeed, some outlets have even gone so far to blame Russia for dropping chemical-laced missiles into Idlib, an impossibility since Russia was not conducting any airstrikes over Idlib at the time.

The Weapons Depot

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the incident was not a “chemical weapons attack” but the result of an SAA airstrike against a terrorist weapons depot that was also being used for the production of chemical weapons. Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the Defense Ministry Spokesman, stated that the facility was being used to produce these chemical weapons for shipment to terrorist forces inside Iraq. The warehouse that was bombed, according to Konashenkov, was being used to both produce and store shells that contained toxic gas which were then shipped to Iraq and used there. He pointed out that both the Iraqi government and a number of international organizations have confirmed the use of these types of weapons by terrorists operating in Iraq.

Konashenkov added that the terrorists used the same type of weapons in Aleppo, where Russian military experts took samples in 2016. The Russian Defense Ministry claims to have confirmed this information as being “fully objective and verified.” The Ministry also claimed that the victims of Khan Sheikhoun exhibited identical symptoms to those shown by victims in the Aleppo attacks.

“According to Russian airspace monitoring systems, yesterday between 11.30 and 12.30 local time the Syrian aviation carried out an airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhun, targeting a major ammunition storage facility of terrorists and a cluster of military hardware. The territory of this storage facility housed workshops to produce projectiles stuffed with toxic agents,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.

“From this major arsenal, chemical-laden weapons were delivered by militants to Iraq. Their use by terrorists was confirmed on numerous occasions by international organizations and official authorities of the country,” he said.

Video footage from social networks shows that those affected in Khan Sheikhun demonstrate the same symptoms of poisoning as the victims of the Aleppo attack had last fall,” he added. “We assure that this information is completely unbiased and true.”

The terrorists, however, disagree with the Russian statement. As RT reports,

Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, rejected Russia’s version of the incident, saying the rebels had no military positions in the area.

“Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas,” he told Reuters.

“Likewise, all the civilians in the area know that there are no military positions there, or places for the manufacture [of weapons]. The various factions of the opposition are not capable of producing these substances,” he added.

This is false. Khan Sheikhoun is terrorist-held territory and it is held by force. Naturally, the Syrian people in Khan Sheikhoun are no more interested in being ruled by Neanderthal freaks as any other town in the country and thus terrorists must be present to maintain order and prevent Syrians from expressing civilized behavior.

Second, terrorists in Syria have, for years, had the ability to manufacture, produce, and use chemical weapons. Back in December of 2012, after the death squads managed to capture a chlorine factory inside Syria, the Syrian government actually issued a warning that the death squads might attempt to use chemical weapons of this nature in their battle to overthrow and oppress the government and people of Syria respectively. The Syrian Foreign Ministry stated, “Terrorist groups may resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people … after having gained control of a toxic chlorine factory.”

Likewise, the chemical weapons attacks in Ghouta were initially blamed on Assad and the Syrian government but later found to be the work of the Western-backed terrorists who had gone so far as to capture civilians from Lattakia and use them as human stage props for video footage and propaganda purposes.

It was also reported in August of 2012 that the death squads had managed to capture a missile site belonging to the Syrian army which contained chemical weapons. The death squads erroneously claimed that the reason for attacking the site was to prevent the Assad government from using the weapons against members of the “opposition.” Regardless, one does not have to speculate very much as to the possibilities available here – in June, the death squads gain access to chemical weapons. In August, they gain access to a delivery mechanism in the form of missiles.

It is just such a coincidence that should cause one to examine another event which occurred shortly before the assault on the missile site. In July 2012, Tony Cartalucci of LandDestroyerReport, described “reports of so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ militants seen trying on gas masks, along with reports of Libyan chemical weapon caches & equipment being discovered in Damascus.”

Together with the acquisition of the missile delivery capability by virtue of the conquering of the Syrian missile site and the possession of the chemical weapons themselves via Libya, the acquisition of gas masks points to the preparation for the launch of an actual chemical attack, or at least the possibility of it, on the part of the death squads.

As one of the death squad members stated to Reuters in April, 2012, “The rebels are getting better at bomb-making; as you know, desperation is the mother of invention.” Reuters also commented that the death squads were now able to develop “more sophisticated bombs” due to “rare outside donations” although Reuters did not attempt to name those mysterious sources.

Moving forward to August 2012, a false flag plot was discovered which had been hatched between NATO and Saudi Arabia that would have staged a chemical weapons deployment in Syria either by mercenary firms or by the NATO-backed death squads, an attack that would subsequently have been blamed on the Assad government, thus serving as a pretext for NATO intervention and the creation of a “buffer zone” in the country.

The source reporting the impending attack stated to Syrian news channel Addounia that a Saudi Arabian firm “had fitted 1400 ambulance vehicles with anti-gas & anti-chemical filtering systems at a cost of $97,000 dollars each, in preparation for a chemical weapons attack carried out by FSA rebels using mortar rounds. A further 400 vehicles have been prepared as troop carriers.”

Interestingly enough, the attack was set to make use of white phosphorous, sarin and mustard gas. It then stands as yet another questionable “coincidence” that, among the weapons possessed by the Libyan regime and now in the hands of the death squads, was large quantities of bulk mustard agent.

Nevertheless, the potential false flag attack reported by Addounia was set to be launched on densely populated areas, most likely Daraa, a city on the Syria/Jordan border, after which the newly fitted ambulances would pour into Syria under the guise of humanitarian aid. Although painted with the labels, “Syrian People’s Relief,” the ambulances would actually be nothing more than armored personnel carriers designed to capitalize on a manufactured disaster for the purpose of deploying such personnel in order to create the desired buffer zone.

Furthermore, the same company that manufactured and fitted the ambulances to be used in the attack is one that is based in Riyadh and was negotiating a contract with the Yemeni government for the manufacture of military vehicles for the Yemeni army.

In December 2012, a video was obtained by the Syria Tribune and subsequently released in their report and posted on YouTube which allegedly shows the NATO-backed death squads testing chemical weapons on “lab” rabbits.

As the Syria Tribune describes the video,

The video (see here) starts with several scenes showing chemical containers with Tekkim labels (Tekkim is a Turkish chemicals company) and some lab equipment, while playing Jihadists chants in the background. A glass box then appears with two rabbits inside, with a poster on the wall behind it reading The Almighty Wind Brigade (Kateebat A Reeh Al Sarsar). A person wearing a lab mask then mixes chemicals in a beaker in the glass box, and we see some gas emitting from the beaker. About a minute later, the rabbits start to have random convulsions and then die. The person says: You saw what happened? This will be your fate, you infidel Alawites, I swear by ALLAH to make you die like these rabbits, one minute only after you inhale the gas.

The Syria Tribune also comments that “Judging from the rabbits’ reaction, the gas must be a nerve agent. The number of containers, if not a bluff, indicates ability to produce a considerable amount of this gas. Deployment could be by means of a smoke generator placed in the target area, an explosion, possibly a suicide one, of a ”chemmed” car, or simply by using a humidifier.”

In March, 2013, yet another YouTube video was released which contained a clip of a second “test” of chemical weapons on captive rabbits by the death squads.

The video also contains an alleged audio recording of a phone conversation between two Free Syrian Army fighters discussing the “details of a plan to carry out a chemical weapons attack capable of impacting an area the size of one kilometer.”

The recording of the phone conversation is supposed to be between two FSA terrorists, one located in Syria and the other outside of the country. The terrorist inside Syria, Abu Hassan, asks the one on the other end of the line to send a message to Sheikh Suleiman, a then-terrorist-held military base in Aleppo, and asked for “two chemical bombs . . . . phosphoric” so that they could “finish this whole thing.”

“I want them to be effective,” states Hassan, adding, “The radius of the strike, or reach of the gases, has to be 1km.”

The video also contains a clip of the death squads openly announcing their plans to engage in chemical weapons attacks, all the while surrounded by bottles of nitric acid and other substances.

Was It Sarin or Something Else?

Writer, journalist, and analyst, Brad Blankenship questions whether or not the attack was actually sarin gas.

“First, it was not sarin gas that was used, but was most likely chlorine gas,” he says. “Victims reported a smell from the exposure to whatever chemical was used, while sarin gas is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. The Syrian opposition has had access to the means to produce chlorine gas for some time, has used these weapons frequently as it is cheap to produce, easy to use, and they receive a steady supply of chlorine agents from the Saudis, which have at times been ceased by the Syrian Arab army, particularly in Aleppo where photographs have been released.”

Indeed, as Blankenship points out, the terrorists have long had the ability to produce, manufacture, and deploy chlorine gas as well as other chemical weapons since early on in the conflict.

Why Would The Syrian Government Use Chemical Weapons? Why At Khan Sheikhoun?

Considering the hysteria over chemical weapons and the constant attempts by Western governments to use them as an excuse to invade Syria, why on earth would the Syrian government use them even if the government did indeed retain the weapons? Such an act would be absolutely foolish in terms of world public opinion and in terms of the opinion of the United Nations. On top of that, Khan Sheikhoun is not even militarily significant, so why would the Syrian government choose to use chemical weapons at this location and not somewhere more important?

“It is unlikely that such an attack was carried out deliberately by the Syrian armed forces,” says Blankenship. “The Syrian Arab army is decisively winning the war at this point in the conflict on essentially every front– a resort to weapons of mass destruction would be not only militarily irrational (considering Khan Sheikhoun is nowhere near the front line), but would be politically absurd considering the new US admin’s statement last week that the Assad government would no longer be the primary target in Syria. It is important to be skeptical of the idea that a government at war that relies on broad cross-sectional support from its own people to maintain its sovereignty is willing to attack its own civilians.”

Did Chemical Weapons Get Released At All?

To go a bit further down the rabbit hole, there might be a very real possibility that the chemical weapons attack did not take place at all, even as an unknowing side effect to a Syrian Air Force strike against a terrorist weapons depot. Only a day after the incident took place, a litany of holes are beginning to show up in the story posed by Western governments, terrorists, and the corporate Western press.

Sources

One of the first red flags regarding the official story of this incident is the fact that the sole source of the reports come from the “opposition,” i.e. the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, White Helmets, and terrorists themselves.

The SOHR, of course, is a notorious pro-terrorist organization run by one man out of England and funded by a nameless “EU country.” SOHR is, at best, only connected to Syria through its connections to terrorists and Western intelligence agencies.

The White Helmets have been extensively exposed in my previous writings and even more so by Vanessa Beeley of 21st Century Wire and The Wall Will Fall. One may read for days the treachery of the White Helmets listed in the articles below. Suffice it to say, however, that the White Helmets are nothing more than a terrorist support group as well as an ever-ready Hollywood propaganda video team. The group has been known to stage a number of “atrocities” allegedly “committed by the Assad regime” only to be revealed later as frauds. Indeed, White Helmets supporters even demonstrated how easy it is to fake such tragic scenes when, during a street demonstration in Europe, the demonstrators painted themselves to look like victims of the evil Bashar al-Assad. Any “evidence” produced by this group is completely untrustworthy and should be regarded as propaganda. That being said, it should be noted that it was this very group that produced the first videos of the incident which were disseminated throughout the Western media as fact.

• White Helmets Show Solidarity With al-Qaeda – Hold Citizens Hostage In Damascus With No Water
• Medical Doctors Question Veracity Of Footage In White Helmets Documentary; Al-Qaeda Wins Documentary
• White Helmets NGO: A ‘Rescue And Assist’ Operation Under Guise of Human Rights
• White Helmets: War By Way Of Deception
• EXPOSED: Syria’s White Helmets Are al-Qaeda’s ‘Civil Defense’

Of course, in this video, it does appear that whether or not the incident was staged or real, children were actually killed, making the possibility of a “staged” incident even more gruesome on the part of any group that may have staged it.

As Mimi al-Laham (aka Syrian Girl) writes,

Several children appear in the videos suffocating from an unknown chemical substance, while others appear to have unexplained head injuries. It is known 250 people were kidnapped by Al-Qaeda last week from the nearby city of Hama, which is the same number as the current body count of wounded and killed civilians.

The Terrorist Doctor

One of the rock stars of this latest incident is alleged doctor, Shajul Islam, a Pakistani British doctor who is being used as a source for many of the reports being used by Western media and is being represented as a selfless hero saving innocent lives during this whole event. However, for a doctor in the middle of one of the biggest gas attacks and atrocities of the war, Islam is quite active on social media and the media in general. Indeed, one only need access Islam’s Twitter page to see that the young doctor is tweeting info in real-time that patients and victims are pouring into the hospital. Shouldn’t a doctor be treating these victims instead of tweeting about them? In fact, at one point, Islam actually put out an offer to video chat with anyone who wished to interview him. This from a doctor allegedly tending to hordes of emergency chemical weapons victims.

But there is much more to Islam than meets the eye. In fact, Islam had faced terror charges in England for kidnapping and torturing two British journalists in Syria. He was even struck off the British medical register. Other sources, such as Dutch media, have even taken to describing Islam as a “rebel,” thereby demonstrating his allegiance to al-Qaeda, an organization not known for its love of innocent civilians.

The organization that sent medical equipment to Islam, Prism The Gift Fund, is being criticized (slightly) because it provided Islam with the material (which no doubt goes to terrorists and terrorist brigades) which was supposed to be delivered to refugees.

Questionable “Convenient” Circumstances

It is also worth noting that the White Helmets, who were operating in the same area as the incident, were provided with sarin-protective respirators and hazmat suits. Photos exist which show these terrorists trying on the suits one month ago in the same location as the attack that took place on Tuesday. Despite the nature of a Sarin attack (contact with skin can cause the same symptoms as inhalation), the photos show the heroic White Helmets team handling the victims who had, apparently, just been gassed, without their suits and with no gloves on their hands.

As Laham writes,

The al-Qaeda-linked rebels have claimed the chemical was sarin gas used by the Syrian government; however, the OPCW has confirmed Syria no longer has chemical weapons and completely dismantled their stockpiles in 2013.

In contrast, the rebels have not gotten rid of the chemical weapons at their disposal.

According to award winning journalist Seymour Hersch, intelligence reports show the rebels smuggled in chemical weapons from Libya through Turkey with the approval of Hillary Clinton.

In 2013, so-called moderate rebels had filmed themselves killing rabbits with gas and threatening to kill religious minorities. ISIS is also known to be in possession of chemical weapons having conducted attacks on Syrian forces in Deir Ezzor.

However weaponized, sarin would have killed or at least injured unprotected first responders. Sarin can be absorbed through skin and requires a full body suit; however, the White Helmets appeared to wear only masks and no gloves while they handled exposed victims. Others in the vicinity appear not to be wearing a mask at all and are yet unaffected.

Weaponized sarin is a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) capable of killing thousands. If sarin was indeed used, it must have been a weak, non-weaponized form.

Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media and neo-con politicians have been quick to regurgitate the al-Qaeda-linked rebels version of the events before any investigation takes place.

Laham also reports that a day prior to the attack, Gulf-based Orient TV ran a story where it stated that “Tomorrow we are launching a media campaign to cover the airstrikes on Hama country side including the usage of chemical warfare against civilians.” What is that but demonstration of foreknowledge of the attack?

The attack also comes shortly after the United States suggests that it is no longer focused on forcing Assad to step down. Within days, Nikki Haley and Rex Tillerson began to walk back on that statement and only a few days after that, just as Steve Bannon is removed from the National Security Council, we have the attacks at Khan Sheykhoun. Now, Trump himself is claiming that Assad has “crossed many, many lines.” When asked about his plan to deal with Syria, he only responded cryptically, “you’ll see.”

Syria No Longer Has Chemical Weapons

Faced with one of the most apathetic, distracted, and ignorant populations in the world, the Western corporate media is accustomed to making numerous ridiculous claims without evidence to back them up. This time, the narrative is that the Syrian government has used sarin gas. The problem with that claim is that the Syrian government does not have sarin gas to use. In fact, it gave up all its chemical weapons in 2014, as confirmed by the OPCW. As the BBC reported in June of that year,

The last of Syria’s declared chemical weapons have been shipped out of the country for destruction, the international watchdog OPCW says.

“The ship has just left the port,” the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu, said in The Hague.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the Syrian government is responsible for the attack in Khan Sheikhoun. In fact, while an accidental discharge of chemical weapons from a facility bombed by the Syrian government is possible, there is also the distinct possibility that the attack was actually staged from the very beginning by Western intelligence agencies and their terrorist pawns operating on the ground in Syria such as the White Helmets.

After the questionable chemical weapons attack, Western world leaders have reacted like little children on Christmas day, virtually hopping up and down with excitement at the thought of finally being able to team up against Syria. Israel has hypocritically condemned attacks on civilians despite the fact that, for Israel, attacks on civilians is simply part of the national culture. Europe’s banana republic, France, has also roundly condemned the Syrian government, sheepishly looking toward Britain and the United States with wonder in its eyes that begets the question, “Are you guys really going to attack Syria? If you are, can we play to?”

Of course, England’s Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and the real deal across the pond have responded with their own ridiculous rhetoric, with Trump even stating that Assad has crossed a number of lines for him. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has even threatened to act unilaterally if the United Nations does not vote to invade and destroy Syria.

Russia, however, has reaffirmed its support for the Syrian government.

Regardless of any disagreement between Donald Trump and the Deep State apparatus which may or may not have existed previously, it appears that the President and the intelligence community are finally on the same page.

With Western Europe and Russia at odds over NATO’s imperialist agenda in the Middle East, the world once again faces a dire set of consequences if the confrontation goes from a Cold War to a hot one.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.