How do you investigate CW attack in a foreign country in the midst of a civil war?
This is how (article excerpts):
Satellite Imagery
On Aug. 21, regime forces were observed making further preparations for a chemical attack, “including through the utilization of gas masks,” according to the intelligence summary. Soon afterward, satellites and other surveillance aircraft picked up the flashes of rockets and artillery shells being fired from government positions toward rebel-held and contested villages east and south of the city. The first reports of a gas attack appeared on social-media sites soon after the projectiles landed.
....
Three days before the rockets fell outside Damascus, a team of Syrian specialists gathered in the northern suburb of Adra for a task that U.S. officials say had become routine in the third year of the country’s civil conflict: filling warheads with deadly chemicals to kill Syrian rebels. The preparations, as described by U.S. intelligence analysts, continued from Aug. 18 until just after midnight on Aug. 21, when the projectiles were loaded into rocket launchers behind the government’s defensive lines. Then, at 2:30 a.m., a half-dozen densely populated neighborhoods were jolted awake by a series of explosions, followed by an oozing blanket of suffocating gas.
Motive for Chemical Weapons
The document proposes a possible motive for the attack — a desperate effort to push back rebels from several areas in the capital’s densely packed eastern suburbs — and also suggests that the high civilian death toll surprised and panicked senior Syrian officials, who called off the attack and then tried to cover it up.
...........
Echoing the findings of a British intelligence assessment a day earlier, the report links the Assad government to “multiple” chemical weapons attacks in the past year, including a small-scale attack in the same part of the Damascus area that was struck Aug. 21.
It suggested that a relatively controlled use of chemicals had in recent months become part of the normal military strategy whenever government forces were unable to push back rebel offensives or break through defensive fortifications.
“The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons over the last year primarily to gain the upper hand or break a stalemate in areas where it had struggled to seize and hold strategically valuable territory,” it says. “We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on Aug. 21.”
Indeed, in the week before the attack, government troops had been repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to dislodge rebels from dozens of villages east of Damascus, despite the use of aircraft, helicopters and heavy artillery barrages. The fighting appeared to have stalled when, on Aug. 18, U.S. intelligence agencies observed a team of chemical weapons specialists being activated in Adra, a northern suburb “near an area that the regime uses to mix chemical weapons, including sarin,” the document states. The ordnance team was attached to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, a military-run institute linked to Syria’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Who's To Blame?
While unusually detailed, the assessment does not include photographs, recordings or other hard evidence to support its claims. Nor does it offer proof to back up the administration’s assertion that top-ranking Syrian officials — possibly including President Bashar al-Assad — were complicit in the attack.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nearly-1500-killed-in-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-us-says/2013/08/30/b2864662-1196-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story_1.html
The Phone Call Evidence:
The U.S is confident that Syria was behind the deadly chemical weapons attack after intercepting a phone call from a Syrian defence chief demanding an explanation from its chemical weapon military unit for the action, according to new claims.
Just hours after the attack last Wednesday an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of the unit, demanding answers, according to website Foreign Policy. The phone call was intercepted by U.S spies according to the website, and is now the reason that America is confident that it was carried out by the regime.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2403778/Syria-crisis-U-S-spies-certain-Assad-used-nerve-gas-intercepting-defence-chief.html
Proof that chemicals been used before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6CZtF6pGvQ&feature=youtu.be (at minute 4 see Syrian official flag in bottom right corner)
This is how (article excerpts):
Satellite Imagery
On Aug. 21, regime forces were observed making further preparations for a chemical attack, “including through the utilization of gas masks,” according to the intelligence summary. Soon afterward, satellites and other surveillance aircraft picked up the flashes of rockets and artillery shells being fired from government positions toward rebel-held and contested villages east and south of the city. The first reports of a gas attack appeared on social-media sites soon after the projectiles landed.
....
Three days before the rockets fell outside Damascus, a team of Syrian specialists gathered in the northern suburb of Adra for a task that U.S. officials say had become routine in the third year of the country’s civil conflict: filling warheads with deadly chemicals to kill Syrian rebels. The preparations, as described by U.S. intelligence analysts, continued from Aug. 18 until just after midnight on Aug. 21, when the projectiles were loaded into rocket launchers behind the government’s defensive lines. Then, at 2:30 a.m., a half-dozen densely populated neighborhoods were jolted awake by a series of explosions, followed by an oozing blanket of suffocating gas.
Motive for Chemical Weapons
The document proposes a possible motive for the attack — a desperate effort to push back rebels from several areas in the capital’s densely packed eastern suburbs — and also suggests that the high civilian death toll surprised and panicked senior Syrian officials, who called off the attack and then tried to cover it up.
...........
Echoing the findings of a British intelligence assessment a day earlier, the report links the Assad government to “multiple” chemical weapons attacks in the past year, including a small-scale attack in the same part of the Damascus area that was struck Aug. 21.
It suggested that a relatively controlled use of chemicals had in recent months become part of the normal military strategy whenever government forces were unable to push back rebel offensives or break through defensive fortifications.
“The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons over the last year primarily to gain the upper hand or break a stalemate in areas where it had struggled to seize and hold strategically valuable territory,” it says. “We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on Aug. 21.”
Indeed, in the week before the attack, government troops had been repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to dislodge rebels from dozens of villages east of Damascus, despite the use of aircraft, helicopters and heavy artillery barrages. The fighting appeared to have stalled when, on Aug. 18, U.S. intelligence agencies observed a team of chemical weapons specialists being activated in Adra, a northern suburb “near an area that the regime uses to mix chemical weapons, including sarin,” the document states. The ordnance team was attached to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, a military-run institute linked to Syria’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Who's To Blame?
While unusually detailed, the assessment does not include photographs, recordings or other hard evidence to support its claims. Nor does it offer proof to back up the administration’s assertion that top-ranking Syrian officials — possibly including President Bashar al-Assad — were complicit in the attack.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nearly-1500-killed-in-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-us-says/2013/08/30/b2864662-1196-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story_1.html
The Phone Call Evidence:
The U.S is confident that Syria was behind the deadly chemical weapons attack after intercepting a phone call from a Syrian defence chief demanding an explanation from its chemical weapon military unit for the action, according to new claims.
Just hours after the attack last Wednesday an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of the unit, demanding answers, according to website Foreign Policy. The phone call was intercepted by U.S spies according to the website, and is now the reason that America is confident that it was carried out by the regime.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2403778/Syria-crisis-U-S-spies-certain-Assad-used-nerve-gas-intercepting-defence-chief.html
Proof that chemicals been used before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6CZtF6pGvQ&feature=youtu.be (at minute 4 see Syrian official flag in bottom right corner)
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