Chers Artistes pour la Paix,

ouf, quelle séquence de dix jours!

D’abord, ces images insoutenables d’enfants assassinés, nouvelle forme de massacre des innocents, dont toute guerre se repaît, mais l’horreur des gaz en amplifie la portée. Puis le déferlement médiatique, au service du complexe militaro-industriel-académique, où certains collègues de l’UQAM se sont hélas signalés par leur « analyse » démontrant que les puissances occidentales se devaient de bombarder Assad (cf entrevue de Charles-Philippe David à RDI pendant l’émission le club des ex du 22 août). Et La Presse y allait aussi de ses exhortations guerrières. Power Corporation, qui finance la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand et La Presse, est aussi commanditaire de Northrop Grumman, fabricant avec Lockheed Martin des  F-35, des drones armés et des bombes nucléaires (voir le site informatif http://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Chapter8.pdf sur ICAN.org). Bref, le 22 août, il ne semblait y avoir que le Vatican pour dénoncer les hurlements guerriers, et… notre page facebook.

Voici la lettre que les Artistes pour la Paix ont finalement envoyée au ministre des Affaires étrangères après la fin de semaine :

L’Honorable John Baird

Monsieur le ministre des Affaires étrangères,

Président des Artistes pour la Paix, je m’indigne de la formulation infâmante par Radio-Canada de la question du jour au Club des Ex jeudi dernier: « incapable de condamner le massacre d’innocents à l’arme chimique, l’ONU est-elle encore pertinente dans sa forme actuelle? » L’empressement de l’ONU d’envoyer une équipe pour enquêter a bien démontré que l’ONU condamne ce massacre par une arme de destruction massive. L’ONU est d’ailleurs la seule puissance pertinente dans le monde pour dénoncer le recours aux armes de destruction massive : le démontre clairement l’action depuis son plan en cinq points de 2008 par son secrétaire-général Ban Ki-moon pour éliminer l’arme nucléaire.

Que l’ONU ne se précipite pas pour lyncher le président Assad à la suite de nos vertueux journalistes est à son honneur, comme l’a démontré en son entrevue à RDI Jocelyn Coulon, directeur du réseau francophone de recherche sur les opérations de paix.

Rappelons enfin que BRITAM, une corporation britannique fabricante d’armes, si on en croit un coulage d’informations à la wikileaks, contemplait le 22 janvier dernier la possibilité de livrer un obus libyen d’arme chimique soviétique aux opposants syriens pour faire croire à la culpabilité du président Assad. La prudence de l’ONU est donc toute indiquée et le Canada – tout comme Radio-Canada – serait fort avisé de s’écarter du sentier de la guerre, tant que la culpabilité d’Assad dans cette dernière attaque ne sera pas démontrée hors de tout doute. Et même alors, le rappel du sort tragique de l’Irak devrait représenter un frein à toute aventure militaire irréfléchie de la part de notre pays.

Nous comptons, monsieur le ministre, sur votre sage prudence déjà démontrée lors de notre échange de courriels sur le Traité de Commerce des Armes à l’ONU.

Pierre Jasmin

président

www.artistespourlapaix.org

cc Stephen Harper, premier ministre

Bref, tout semblait engagé irrémédiablement dans le sentier de la guerre. Le président français Hollande, fort de sa victoire militaire au Mali contre Al-Qeida, veut inexplicablement aider l’opposition syrienne, noyautée par le même Al-Qeida. Et comment, pour nous pacifistes, mobiliser les foules contre la guerre, alors que le président sanguinaire Assad est soutenu par les terroristes du Hezbollah, le Parti de Dieu libanais, et que la Syrie pleure 100 000 morts?

Aujourd’hui vendredi le 30 août, soudainement, le ton de La Presse devient nuancé, même en première page. C’est qu’entretemps, il s’est passé un réveil de la démocratie au parlement (évidemment pas au nôtre, prorogé) …britannique, qui a, surprise totale, désavoué son premier ministre. Cela s’est passé par une discussion NON-PARTISANE où les travaillistes ont eu l’humilité de reconnaître la vénalité de leur ancien chef Tony Blair au service de Bush Jr dans la décision catastrophique il y a dix ans d’envahir l’Irak, à feu et à sang depuis. Des députés conservateurs se sont joints aux travaillistes, décidant que la paix valait mieux que leur fidélité à leur premier ministre, d’où un vote en sa défaveur. Et on parle enfin d’attendre les résultats de l’enquête de l’ONU avant de prendre pour acquises les accusations d’utilisations d’armes de destruction massive par Assad.

Quant à la Russie et la Chine, elles ont beau jeu de soulever le cas de la Libye, où le feu vert à des frappes chirurgicales de l’OTAN pour protéger les insurgés de Bengazi avait dégénéré jusqu’à renverser et tuer Kadhafi.

Et accusé de couardise par les Républicains le doigt sur la gâchette et par les médias américains au service du complexe militaro-industriel-académique, le pauvre Obama, isolé, semble avoir si peu de lest face au Pentagone et à la CIA désireux d’en découdre militairement. Au moins, si le président américain décide d’une action guerrière au mépris de la population syrienne qui grossira sûrement le nombre des réfugiés déjà évalué à près de deux millions, ce sera assurément une action brève et limitée, les seules qui ont des chances de succès…

En espérant ces quelques lignes utiles à votre compréhension de la situation volatile actuelle.

Pierre Jasmin, 30 août, 14h 00

PS  Échec à la guerre fait savoir que:
« dans l’éventualité du début de bombardements contre la Syrie au cours des prochains jours, nous tiendrons un rassemblement de protestation devant le Consulat des États-Unis, le jour même : à 17 h 30 si cela se produit pendant la semaine OU à 13 h 30 si cela se produit la fin de semaine. Si les attaques ont lieu après cette heure, l’action se tiendra le lendemain. »

Ajout daté du 1er janvier 2014:

NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

30 December 13
The New York Times has, kind of, admitted that it messed up its big front-page story that used a « vector analysis » to pin the blame for the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government, an assertion that was treated by Official Washington as the slam-dunk proof that President Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people.
But you’d be forgiven if you missed the Times’ embarrassing confession, since it was buried on page 8, below the fold, 18 paragraphs into a story under the not-so-eye-catching title, « New Study Refines View Of Sarin Attack in Syria. » But this Times article at least acknowledges what has been widely reported on the Internet, including at Consortiumnews.com, that the Times’ « vector analysis » – showing the reverse flight paths of two missiles intersecting at a Syrian military base – has collapsed, in part, because the range of the rockets was much too limited.

There were other problems with the « vector analysis » that was pushed by the Times and Human Rights Watch, which has long wanted the U.S. military to intervene in the Syrian civil war against the Syrian government.

The analytical flaws included the fact that one of the two missiles – the one landing in Moadamiya, south of Damascus – had clipped a building during its descent making a precise calculation of its flight path impossible, plus the discovery that the Moadamiya missile contained no Sarin, making its use in the vectoring of two Sarin-laden rockets nonsensical.

But the Times’ analysis ultimately fell apart amid a consensus among missile experts that the rockets would have had a maximum range of only around three kilometers when the supposed launch site is about 9.5 kilometers from the impact zones in Moadamiya and Zamalka/Ein Tarma, east of Damascus.

The Times’ front-page « vectoring » article of Sept. 17 had declared: « One annex to the report [by UN inspectors] identified azimuths, or angular measurements, from where rockets had struck, back to their points of origin. When plotted and marked independently on maps by analysts from Human Rights Watch and by The New York Times, the United Nations data from two widely scattered impact sites pointed directly to a Syrian military complex. »

An accompanying map on the Times’ front page revealed the flight-path lines intersecting at an elite Syrian military unit, the 104^th Brigade of the Republican Guard, based northwest of Damascus, near the Presidential Palace. This « evidence » was then cited by U.S. politicians and pundits as the in-your-face proof of the Syrian government’s guilt.

The Times/HRW analysis was especially important because the Obama administration, in making its case against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, had refused to release any evidence that could be independently evaluated. So, the « vector analysis » was almost the only visible nail in Assad’s coffin of guilt.

Short-Range Rockets

In Sunday’s article – the one below the fold on page 8 – the Times reported that a new analysis by two military experts concluded that the Aug. 21 rockets had a range of about three kilometers, or less than one-third the distance needed to intersect at the Syrian military base northwest of Damascus.

The report’s authors were Theodore A. Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Richard M. Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories.

The Times noted that « the authors said that their findings could help pinpoint accountability for the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades, but that they also raised questions about the American government’s claims about the locations of launching points, and the technical intelligence behind them. … The analysis could also lead to calls for more transparency from the White House, as Dr. Postol said it undermined the Obama administration’s assertions about the rockets’ launch points. »

Finally, in the article’s 18^th paragraph, the Times acknowledged its own role in misleading the public, noting that the rockets’ estimated maximum range of three kilometers « would be less than the ranges of more than nine kilometers calculated separately by The New York Times and Human Rights Watch in mid-September. … Those estimates had been based in part on connecting reported compass headings for two rockets cited in the United Nations’ initial report on the attacks. »

In other words, the much-ballyhooed « vector analysis » had collapsed under scrutiny, knocking the legs out from under Official Washington’s certainty that the Syrian government carried out the Aug. 21 attack which may have killed several hundred civilians including many children.

The Times article on Sunday was authored by C.J. Chivers, who along with Rick Gladstone, was a principal writer on the now-discredited Sept. 17 article.

The erosion of that « vector analysis » article has been underway for several months – through reporting at Web sites such as WhoGhouta and Consortiumnews.com – but few Americans knew about these challenges to the Official Story because the mainstream U.S. news media had essentially blacked them out.

When renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh composed a major article  citing skepticism within the U.S. intelligence community regarding the Syrian government’s guilt, he had to go to the London Review of Books to get the story published. [See Consortiumnews.com’s « Deceiving the US Public on Syria. »]

Even Ake Sellstrom, the head of the United Nations mission investigating chemical weapons use in Syria, challenged the vector analysis during a Dec. 13 UN press conference, citing expert estimates of the missiles’ range at about two kilometers, but his remarks were almost entirely ignored. 

A Replay of Iraqi WMD

Besides the deaths from the Sarin itself, perhaps the most troubling aspect of this episode has been how close the U.S. government came to going to war with Syria based on such flimsy and dubious evidence. It seems as if Official Washington and the U.S. mainstream news media have learned nothing from the disastrous rush to war in Iraq a decade ago.

Just as false assumptions about Iraq’s WMD set off a stampede over that cliff in 2003, a similar rush to judgment regarding Syria brought the U.S. government to the edge of another precipice of war in 2013.

The New York Times and other major U.S. news outlets propelled the rush to judgment in both cases, rather than questioning the official stories and demanding better evidence from U.S. government officials. In September 2002, the Times famously fronted an article linking Iraq’s purchase of some aluminum tubes to a secret nuclear weapons program, which – as Americans and Iraqis painfully learned later – didn’t exist.

In the case of Syria, another potential catastrophe was averted only by a strong opposition to war among the American public, as registered in opinion polls, and President Barack Obama’s last-minute decision to seek congressional approval for military action and then his openness to a diplomatic settlement brokered by Russia.

To defuse the crisis, the Syrian government agreed to destroy all its chemical weapons, while still denying any role in the Aug. 21 attack, which it blamed on Syrian rebels apparently trying to create a casus belli that would precipitate a U.S. intervention.

With very few exceptions, U.S. news outlets and think tanks mocked the notion of rebel responsibility and joined the Obama administration in expressing virtual certainty that the Assad regime was guilty.

There was almost no U.S. media skepticism on Aug. 30 when the White House stoked the war fever by posting on its Web site what was called a « Government Assessment, » a four-page white paper that blamed the Syrian government for the Sarin attack but presented zero evidence to support the conclusion.

Americans had to go to Internet sites to see questions raised about the peculiar presentation, since normally a decision on war would be supported by a National Intelligence Estimate containing the judgments of the 16 intelligence agencies. But an NIE would also include footnotes citing dissents from analysts who disputed the conclusion, of which I was told there were a number.

The Dogs Not Barking

As the war frenzy built in late August and early September, there was a striking absence of U.S. intelligence officials at administration briefings and congressional hearings. The dog-not-barking reason was that someone might have asked a question about whether the U.S. intelligence community was in agreement with the « Government Assessment. »

But these strange aspects of the Obama administration’s case were not noted by the major U.S. news media. Then, on Sept. 17 came the New York Times front-page article citing the « vector analysis. » It was the Perry Mason moment. The evidence literally pointed right at the « guilty » party, an elite unit of the Syrian military.

Whatever few doubts there were about the Syrian government’s guilt disappeared. From the triumphant view of Official Washington, those of us who had expressed skepticism about the U.S. government’s case could only hang our heads in shame and engage in some Maoist-style self-criticism.

For me, it was like a replay of Iraq-2003. Whenever the U.S. invading force discovered a barrel of chemicals, trumpeted on Fox News as proof of WMD, I’d get e-mails calling me a Saddam Hussein apologist and demanding that I admit that I had been wrong to question President George W. Bush’s WMD claims. Now, there were ugly accusations that I had been carrying water for Bashar al-Assad.

But – as John Adams once said – « facts are stubborn things. » And the smug certainty of Official Washington regarding the Syrian Sarin case gradually eroded much as a similar arrogance crumbled a decade ago when Iraq’s alleged WMD stockpiles never materialized.

While it’s still not clear who was responsible for the Aug. 21 deaths outside Damascus – whether a unit of the Syrian military, some radical rebel group or someone mishandling a dangerous payload – the facts should be followed objectively, not simply arranged to achieve a desired political outcome.

Now, with the New York Times’ grudging admission that its « vector analysis » has collapsed, the pressure should build on the Obama administration to finally put whatever evidence it has before the world’s public.

[For more details on this issue, see Consortiumnews.com’s « NYT Replays Its Iraq Fiasco in Syria. »