[Peace-discuss] Good summaries of why we can conclude the Douma, Syria alleged gas attack didn't happen (a false flag attack)

[J.B. Nicholson]

Here are some good reports on what happened in Douma, Syria on 7 April 2018 and what has happened 
since regarding the apparently embattled OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical 
Weapons. The OPCW was viewed as an impartial chemical watchdog organization but a shift in who 
benefits from OPCW publications (due to management changes) now force us to see the OPCW as 
increasingly an establishment lapdog.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fVdPc-P0LQ -- RT
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-12-strongest-arguments-that-douma-was-a-false-flag-77d300b495c2 
-- Caitlin Johnstone
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/15/the-opcw-and-douma-chemical-weapons-watchdog-accused-of-evidence-tampering-by-its-own-inspectors/ 
-- Jonathan Steele


A few additional notes about the the alleged Douma gas attack of 7 April 2018 from RT's report 
because that is a video report where only automatic transcription is readily available.

This phantom gas attack resulted in a very real coordinated US, UK, and French missile attack on 
Syria. Apparently not even world governments can do this alone; it takes a set of liars to carry 
this off:

- Old liars are ready to serve the establishment's interests: The Navy's footage of this coordinated 
attack was widely replayed on corporate media. On Comcast-owned media, known fabricator Brian 
Williams (now famously) said he was "guided by the beauty of our weapons" while running the footage 
showing the rockets being launched. Three years prior Williams had been suspended without pay by NBC 
News President Deborah Turness for having lied about being in a military helicopter which was 
"forced down after being hit by an RPG [rocket propelled grenade]". Williams was also demoted from 
lead anchor for NBC to breaking anchor for MSNBC.

- New OPCW management lied too: It took a year for the OPCW to publish on this alleged attack and 
the UK was pleased with the result:

https://twitter.com/UK_OPCW/status/1101561760732057601
> Today's OPCW final report on the 7th of April 2018 attack in Douma confirms chemical weapons used 
> demonstrating the vital importance of the opcw's work this confirmed chlorine attack was only the
> latest example of the Assad regime's chemical warfare attacks on its own population
But this alleged gas attack made no sense politically as Assad was winning. People at the time 
stopped to ask why Assad would deploy "chemical warfare attacks on its own population". None of 
these questions show up in the corporate-friendly media (including Democracy Now).

OPCW management cherry picked details in an attempt to make Assad look guilty. One member of the 
OPCW fact-finding mission wrote:
> I was struck by how much the redacted version of the [OPCW] report misrepresented the facts. Many
> of the facts and observations outlined in the full version are inextricably interconnected and,
> by selectively omitting certain ones, an unintended bias has been introduced into the report,
> undermining its credibility.

As more OPCW leaked reports came out, as leakers spoke about what they reported to the OPCW (like in 
Brussels where one leaker spoke) we saw more details of how this plays out.

Former OPCW engineer Ian Henderson wrote:
> Observations at the scene of the two locations, [...] suggest that there is a higher probability
> that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from
> aircraft.

"Manually placed" means both cylinders were likely staged on-site for inspectors to see. Anyone who 
draws this conclusion isn't dutifully repeating the establishment narrative.

Henderson was later kicked out of the OPCW and the OPCW alleged he was not an employee. We later 
learned (via a leaked email) that Henderson was an employee, the OPCW had lied about Henderson being 
an employee and not a hired consultant, and (as you'll see below) there was effort to cover up the 
existence of Henderson's non-conformant report: "get this document [Henderson's report] out of DRA 
[the OPCW's system] and please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA".

- Uncooperative reporters are pushed to quit by media outlets that refuse to diverge from being 
faithful stenographers to power: Tareq Haddad, freelance journalist who resigned from Newsweek when 
it refused to publish his story about documents published by WikiLeaks concerning the alleged Douma 
gas attack. Haddad told RT:

> Tareq Haddad: I kept pushing to try and do the story because I feel like it's of extreme, you
> know, public interest the attacks turned on me -- editors who were kind of nitpicking on certain
> things I was doing in my articles but it was purely on just to be able to attack me in an email.
> So after I kept pushing, kept pushing, I essentially was told a couple of lines about why they
> wouldn't run the OPCW story. At the moment there are very few Western, well, mainstream Western
> journalists that are reporting on this. So I would say this is a complete failure of the media.
> Our job as journalists is to hold government to account and if governments are going to war
> on on false premises then, you know, and we have good evidence to suggest that now, and no one is
> reporting it, then we're not doing our job as journalists.

Fortunately for us, not everyone involved lies.

- WikiLeaks is publishing OPCW Douma documents at https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ which contains 
what they claim it contains (as is the norm with WikiLeaks) internal documentation describing not 
only what the engineers saw on-site but information of the internal cover-up to hide said engineer 
reports such as:

> WikiLeaks: One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of
> the fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It
> includes an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, where he instructs that an
> engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the
> organisation:
> 
> “Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]... And please remove all 
> traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”.
- Outsiders speak up and tell us news that contradicts the establishment narrative: Professor 
Richard Falk was in Brussels when the second whistleblower spoke.

> Professor Richard Falk: Well, essentially he presented evidence and testimonials to the effect
> that the final report could not be justified in the form that it was submitted, and that it had
> been tampered with in such a way as to create a set of conclusions that corresponded with what
> the US and Britain friends hoped would be the outcome of an investigation but the evidence didn't
> support that outcome.
There are other real reporters and clear summaries of what happened and when at the aforementioned 
links.

-J