I've briefly read over the articles on both sides of Hersh's claims and so far I'm not entirely convinced either way. It reads like an assortment of hearsay on both sides. 'My experts are better than yours'. From what I gather even the trajectory analysis' are in question, as they point to the rockets being delivered from a base 9km away, whereas the rockets themselves have an operational range of around 2.5 km?
Hoping to read the rest of Hersh's original article a bit later on (too damn long - got work) but I'm doubtful it's going to sway me. As much as I respect the guy's credentials, and the fact that he previously has brought light on grievous US government cover-ups, he just doesn't present enough evidence to back up his claim in this case. Citing 'senior intelligence sources' is all well and good, but it's really no different than the Obama administration saying 'we have concrete evidence... but we can't show it to you'. Fucking dog and pony show.
To this day my biggest red flag on the situation was the Obama administration's strong, war-like stance on the matter. The desire to go in regardless of congressional vote - totally on the up and up. Based on track records alone, I want to believe Hersh, but it's just not enough. He's got to bring more to the table.
Here's a piece on the missiles:
http://eaworldview.com/2013/09/syri...ctories-for-the-chemical-weapons-rockets-hrw/
There's also the fact that these are both well-known rebel holdout areas from which they have repeatedly staged attacks and planned operations. You could theoretically say that that indicates the rebels wanted to make it look all the more convincing by hitting themselves, but we're talking about the heart of the resistance in Damascus. I think it seems a bit beyond the pale to murder your own families like that.
And I tend to agree about Hersh; he's not exactly a ballistics expert. Neither am I, but he seems not to even get into the technical aspects of the attack, and is instead relying on the tried and true Washington tactic of he-said-she-said to implicate people without evidence. I think he's very much like Bob Woodward in that he did a lot of critical reporting in the 60s and 70s, but he's past his prime and has been roped into certain journalistic and political communities that are more interested in an anti-government ideology than in the facts.
RE: Obama, they did release an unclassified report on the attack:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press...n-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21
But if you're not inclined to believe administration intelligence prima facie, then I imagine it wouldn't be terribly convincing. FWIW, I don't think anything in there is particularly under dispute, precisely because they watered it down to make it unclassified.
I think the administration tried to avoid this thing for as long as it could, while supplying very limited funds and equipment to the rebels. This has been going on since, what, 2011, and only now the US says anything about it? By all indications, Obama made that "red line" comment in the midst of the campaign as an aside to tell people we
wouldn't be getting involved, and then Assad used the CW, so he felt backed into a corner. There's also enormous pressure from the Saudis, the Gulf States, Turkey, Jordan, etc. to wholesale bomb the regime. We've rejected all of it, and it has brought U.S.-Saudi relations to the worst point in decades, which I would argue is another sign of how badly we want to avoid involvement.
I'm not going to beat a dead horse, but I guess from my perspective, the administration tried to pretend the war wasn't happening, and then felt forced to do something back in August. When Putin and Assad finally agreed to destroy the CW, Obama jumped on it- rightfully so, I would argue, since it avoids U.S. involvement and gets rid of the weapons.
BTW, I've seen Bush and the Iraq war referenced a lot in this thread. I'm sure a separate thread on that would engender a very
lively debate
, but I think it's actually a rather complex and interesting case of how thing can go wrong and it might be interesting to discuss it. Then again, I'm not sure how much people want to bring political debate to the top of the off-topic forum on a regular basis.
