Dispatches: Mapping the Sarin Flight Path :umad:

[88m3]

September 17, 2013

The UN inspectors investigating the chemical weapons attack on two suburbs in Damascus last month weren’t supposed to point the finger at the party responsible for the killings. But even so, the Sellstrom report revealed key details of the attack that strongly suggest the government is to blame, and may even help identify the location from which the Sarin-filled rockets that killed hundreds of people on August 21 were fired.

In appendix 5 of their report, after describing the size and structure of two rocket delivery systems used, they go one step further and actually reveal the direction some of the rockets likely came from. Using standard field investigative techniques examining the debris field and impact area where the rockets struck, the report provides precise azimuths, or angular measurements, that allow us to work out the actual trajectory of the rockets.

“Impact site number 1 (Moadamiya) and impact site number 4 (Ein Tarma),” the inspectors wrote, “provide sufficient evidence to determine, with a sufficient degree of accuracy, the likely trajectory of the projectiles.” They go on to say that 3 of the rockets they inspected had bearings of 34 and 35 degrees for 2 of the rockets that landed in Moadamiya, and 285 degrees for 1 of the rockets that landed in Ein Tarma.

Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible.

The two attack locations are located 16 kilometers apart, but when mapping these trajectories, the presumed flight paths of the rockets converge on a well-known military base of the Republican Guard 104th Brigade, situated only a few kilometers north of downtown Damascus and within firing range of the neighborhoods attacked by chemical weapons.

According to declassified reference guides, the 140mm artillery rocket used on impact site number 1 (Moadamiya) has a minimum range of 3.8 kilometers and a maximum range of 9.8 kilometers. The Republican Guard 104th Brigade is approximately 9.5 km from the base. While we don’t know the firing range for the 330mm rocket that hit impact site number 4, the area is only 9.6km away from the base, well within range of most rocket systems.

Click to enlarge map

This isn’t conclusive, given the limited data available to the UN team, but it is highly suggestive and another piece of the puzzle.

While this base will be an early port of call for international teams charged with securing Syria’s chemical weapons under a US-Russian plan to prevent future attacks, it is critical we do not forget about Ghouta’s victims and bring those guilty of this war crime to justice.

We keep saying this because it matters so much: it is vital to hold accountable those who have used chemical weapons in the recent past. The UN Security Council – including Russia and the US – should refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court as part of the upcoming resolution. Only by authorizing an impartial, independent investigation will we ensure justice for the victims in Ghouta.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/17/dispatches-mapping-sarin-flight-path


Don't let science get in the way, usual suspects.

 

[88m3]

crickets

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

lesson here kids: if you want to kill your own people just don't use chemical weapons.

 

[88m3]

 

[MVike28]

i see the revolutionary brigade is avoiding this thread

Bashar was riding with the coalition in 91 and 03 when they attacked Iraq cause the tables turned.

 

[MVike28]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/w...top-forces.html?ref=world&_r=0&pagewanted=all




Details buried in the United Nations report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack point directly at elite military formations loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, some of the strongest findings to date that suggest the government gassed its own people.

The inspectors, instructed to investigate the attack but not to assign blame, nonetheless listed the precise compass directions of flight for two rocket strikes that appeared to lead back toward the government’s elite redoubt in Damascus, Mount Qasioun, which overlooks and protects neighborhoods and Mr. Assad’s presidential palace and where his Republican Guard and the army’s powerful Fourth Division are entrenched.
“It is the center of gravity of the regime,” said Elias Hanna, a retired general in the Lebanese Army and a lecturer on strategy and geopolitics at the American University of Beirut. “It is the core of the regime.”
In presenting the data concerning two rocket strikes — the significance of which was not commented upon by the United Nations itself — the report provides a stronger indication than the public statements of intelligence services of the United States, France or Britain that the Syrian military not only carried out the attack, but apparently did so brazenly, firing from the same neighborhoods or ridges from which it has been firing high-explosive conventional munitions for much of the war.
Looming over a tense capital and outlying neighborhoods bristling with anger and fear, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also a complex inseparably linked to the Assad family’s rule, a network of compounds and positions occupied by elite units led by members of the president’s inner circle and clan.
The units based on the mountain are “as close to the Assad regime as it’s going to get,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr. Hokayem added that theories that the chemicals had been launched by a rebel mole seeking to discredit the government were unlikely because of the solidity and tight control of those units.
Mr. Assad’s government and its ally Russia have continued to claim publicly that Syrian rebels were responsible for the attacks, which killed hundreds of people, many of them children, in the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades. But the United Nations data, if accurate, would undercut that claim and appear to erase some of the remaining ambiguity.
Rebel forces have never penetrated the major military installations of Mount Qasioun. In tactical and technical terms, they would almost certainly have been unable to organize and fire sustained and complex barrages of rockets from that location undetected.
The United Nations’ evidence was gathered through standard measurements and investigative techniques at the places where sarin-filled rockets struck on Aug. 21.
At one impact site, investigators found both the place where the rocket had passed through a “vegetal screen” above a wall just before it hit the ground, and the small impact crater itself.
They noted that “the line linking the crater and the piercing of the vegetal screen can be conclusively established and has a bearing of 35 degrees.”
At another impact area in another section of Damascus, a 330-millimeter rocket landed on what investigators described as “earthy, relatively soft ground, where the shaft/engine of the projectile remained dug in, undisturbed until investigated.”
The rocket’s shaft, the investigators noted, “pointed precisely in a bearing of 285 degrees.”

 

[88m3]

i see the revolutionary brigade is avoiding this thread

Bashar was riding with the coalition in 91 and 03 when they attacked Iraq cause the tables turned.

probably on patrol in Damascus right now

avoiding this thread like reality

 

[88m3]

@Broke Wave where they at?

 

[Broke Wave]

@Broke Wave where they at?

So the following angles are dead

1. Rebels did it because they want intl response - No response coming

2. Assad didn't do it because why would he? Obvious that the world would respond - nobody responds

3. No third party verification of Pentagon claims - OP


the fake doves are all over the place on this one breh

 

[Calmye]

Still ain't got anything to do with America in terms of military action

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

this should be upped
@BarNone @Brown_Pride

 

[ugksam]

accuse your enemies of committing war crimes, brehs

 

[88m3]

ripping souls out of you, ignorant fukks

 

[Resident Geordie]

Russia says UN chemical attack report biased

Findings called "one-sided" by minister who says Syria has provided new evidence implicating rebels in August 21 attack.
Russia has dismissed a United Nation report on the August 21 sarin gas attack in Damascus as "biased and one-sided" and says it has Syrian-supplied evidence that shows rebels were responsible.

The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said on Wednesday that his country was disappointed with the UN report published this week, calling it "distorted and one-sided".

"We are disappointed, to put it mildly, about the approach taken by the UN secretariat and the UN inspectors, who
prepared the report selectively and incompletely," he said after talks with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

Ryabkov said the regime had given Russia material implicating rebel groups in the August 21 attack, and later stated on Russian television that it was "given to Mr [Ake] Sellstrom who headed the group of UN inspectors" but that it did not "receive adequate attention in the report."

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said the regime's evidence would be presented to the UN.

The UN report, released on Monday, did not ascribe blame but detailed munitions and rockets used in the August 21 attack, their likely point of origin and their capacity. One missile used could hold 56 litres of sarin gas. As little as 0.5mg of sarin can kill an adult.

The US holds Assad responsible for the August 21 attack, which it says killed 1,429 people. The regime denies responsibility and its ally Russia maintains that there is no evidence implicating Assad.

The UN later said its conclusions were beyond questioning. "The findings in that report are indisputable," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said. "They speak for themselves and this was a thoroughly objective report on that specific incident."


Meanwhile, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) group released its analysis of the UN report,saying that it showed two of the missiles fired on August 21 originated from a Republican Guard compound.

"Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible," Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for HRW, said.

Hower, the evidence was "not conclusive", he said.

Ryabkov is on a visit to Damascus to present the Syrian regime with the results of the agreement between Russia and the US reached in Geneva, Switzerland, to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.

He said he emphasised to Muallem the importance of the Syrian side "strictly and swiftly" handing over details of its chemical weapons arsenal to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the first step in the agreement.

The Russia-US agreement is aimed at warding off the threat of US-led military action as retribution for the chemical attack.

Ryabkov said he assured the Syrian side that there was "no basis" for a UN Security Council resolution on the chemical weapons agreement to invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter that allowed the use of force and tough sanctions.

He said this could only be considered if the UNSC was able to confirm violations of the convention on chemical weapons. "This is a hypothetical situation."

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/09/2013918133721144472.html

Even bias ass HRW can't even stand next to their "evidence" when they have been quick in the past to point to rumours and hearsay in the Syrian and earlier conflicts as fact.

To quote the "limitations” the UN team itself put on the credibility of their findings

pg21.

Limitations
The time necessary to conduct a detailed survey of both locations as well as take samples was very limited. The sites have been well travelled by other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team.

http://www.un.org/disarmament/content/slideshow/Secretary_General_Report_of_CW_Investigation.pdf

The area was held by the terrorists before, during and after the UN investigatoin, are we really going to trust these Christian-beheading Islamists, cannibals, murderers and an international assortment of al-Qaeda linked terrorists to not try and fabricate evidence?

Nice try guys but another fail.

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

be a conspiracy theorist, brehs

another L