Whose sarin? (Obama exposed for Syria false-flag)

London Review of Books ^ | 19 December 2013 | Seymour Hersh

[Abiotic]

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat....

[redgolum]

Friend, you are splitting hairs.

Both acts were assassinations. Litvinenko was more than a common criminal. Less (maybe) than the guy in Yemen, but he was tied to a group that was funding Russia's terrorists in Chechnya.

[Parmenio]

If Litvinenko committed crimes, then Russia should have asked Britain to extradite him so it could put him on trial. Russia did have options other than assassination. That is not possible with terrorists who are hiding out in the mountains in Yemen. You are using the time-tested leftist technique of declaring moral equivalence to excuse the Putin regime’s actions.

[redgolum]

It is tactics.

We could have asked Yemen to turn over the targets, but political they would have not been able to. So we blew up his house.

Russia did ask for him, Britain said no. Again, Litvinenko was connected to terrorists. So they killed him.

The big difference is we asked Yemen before we blew up the house.

IMO, both are hard to justify.