Statement by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, At a St

[leveymg]

21. Some other major inconsistencies and misrepresentations in this matter:

Last edited Tue Sep 17, 2013, 10:34 AM - Edit history (1)

Much has been made about statements made to the press by US and UK officials following the release of the UN Syrian chemical weapons report. Some of these require scrutiny, as they are representations that do not appear in the actual UN report, and at closer examination do not line up with the documented evidence.

The following extract from a Reuters report via The Jerusalem Post of the exchange with reporters that followed release of the report: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Britain-France-US-UN-report-leaves-no-doubt-that-Assad-regime-used-chemical-weapons-326297

[div class="excerpt" UK Ambassador to the UN Lyall Grant stated,
"In response to a question Mr Sellstrom (a scientist who headed the UN study) confirmed that the quality of the sarin was superior both to that used in the Tokyo subway but also to that used by Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war," he told reporters.

"This does not point to a cottage industry chemical," said Lyall Grant, taking a swipe at earlier comments by Churkin. Churkin said in July that a Moscow analysis found "cottage industry" quality sarin gas was used in an alleged March 19 attack, which he blamed on the rebels.

The report, itself, makes no reference to the quality or origins of the sarin. It appears that Grant is quoting Sellstrom about samples of sarin taken from the western impact site where standard Soviet-provided military munitions were used. It is not at all clear that the same agent was used at the Ein Tarma target site, where improvised rockets were used.

The investigators studied five impact sites and were able to determine the likely trajectory of the projectiles at two sites: Moadamiyah and Ein Tarma.

As pointed out in my response above, the trajectory indicates the improvised devices were launched from a contested area, not from a regime-controlled territory as initially claimed by the State Dept. Report. Furthermore, the HRW and UN evidence now indicates there were two neighborhoods targeted, each by a separate force with different weapons, not 12 as is still claimed by the US Government.

Eliot Higgins, who blogs under the name of Brown Moses and has been tracking videos of weapons used in the Syria conflict, wrote that he has not seen the opposition using the munitions identified in the report: a variant of the M14 artillery rocket and a 330 mm caliber artillery rocket.

This last item that goes to "technical evidence" is completely disingenuous. The Brown Moses blig itself in June pointed out that the larger devices are virtually identical to improvised rockets that have been used by Hezbollah militia since they first appeared in Syria late last year.

Finally, we come to Samantha Power's own statement, and based on the facts we know contradict it, her words do not have an authentic ring: http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/214290.htm

Let me also remind you of what we know coming into today's briefing. In the days before the attack, Assad’s chemical weapons experts prepared for an attack. They distributed gas masks to regime troops. They fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 12 neighborhoods that the regime had been trying to clear of opposition forces. And here again I want to underscore, it defies logic to think that the opposition would have infiltrated the regime-controlled area to fire on opposition-controlled areas.