FOREWARNING: Long and not properly edited
Another day, another war crimes accusation.
The accusations worked so well in Ghouta in 2013 the US has again accused the SAA of deploying chemical weapons, specifically SARIN, a potent nerve agent, on the local populace. Again, there has been no evidence presented to support such an accusation and again, popular western media is saturation-bombing public opinion without actually presenting any evidence.
The short of it is this - the SAA, Syrian government forces, have reversed virtually all gains made by the moderate jihadis in the last few months. They're on the doorstep of Homs, Al-Qaeda's last real stronghold in the country. Apparently, this position of strength was the perfect opportunity for Assad (yes, he personally dropped poison-gas canisters from a flying broomstick) to begin indiscriminantly bombing civilian neighbourhoods with potent nerve agents. After the gas attack in Ghouta, 2013, he surrendered all chemical weapons and precursors to the US for destruction, so he must've cooked up an entirely new arsenal and chosen this juncture to reveal it to the world. Donald Trump, hero that he's become, won't tolerate civilians being killed unless it's by US or Israeli warplanes and drones with precision munitions - he responded to the supposed gas attack by pre-empting any investigation into the matter with a barrage of Tomahawk missile strikes into a nearby Syrian airbase, destroying a number of Syrian jets and killing multiple civilians, but somehow leaving the runway intact. He'd apparently been kind enough to warn Russian command beforehand, so that they were able to evacuate personnel and hardware prior to the strike.
For those sane enough not to cheerlead military esclation that could indeed lead to a nuclear exchange, the version of events detailed above, which is more or less the mainstream media's 'official timeline of events', leaves more questions than answers.
The first point worthy of contention is of course, 'Assad used chemical weapons'. There would've been no strategic benefit for him to do so, and none has been suggested - the media tries not to discuss this point, but the official line seems to be 'to see if he could get away with it'. Thanks Nikki Haley - I didn't think the US could field a worse 'diplomat' than Sam Powers, but here we are. I only hope they were affirmative action hires.
This closely mirrors what happened in Ghouta in 2013 - there was a gas attack in a suburb of Damascus, and Assad was immediately blamed. The attack did not work to his advantage and there was no tactical benefit to using gas at all - such was stated at the time by the head of the UN's investigation team, Carla de Ponte. Her remarks and 'inconclusive' report were largely ignored, and the US pressed ahead in preparing direct military intervention. Thenkfully, Russia were able to strike a deal - the US would not invade if Assad surrendered all of his chemical weapons stocks to be destroyed. All weapons and precursors were reported destroyed on a US ship by a UN team in 2014. It's also worth mentioning that the sarin residue collected from the attack site was compared against samples from Assad's stockpiles and it was nowhere near a match - a completely different synthesis route was apparently used. This analysis was again ignored, reportedly because the samples were obtained through Russia and hence 'unreliable', though it was later revealed that MI6 performed their own independent analysis and came to the same conclusion.
If all of Assad's chemical weapons stores had been depleted, where did this current batch come from? Sarin is among the weapons that have been reported to be smuggled through Turkey to the Moderate Jihadis, but it would seem that project hasn't fared so well because it hasn't turned up on the battlefield. They likely dont have the facilities to safely handle or use it. That hasn't stopped them from synthesizing other chemical weapons - the process to produce mustard gas, the first 'modern' chemical weapon, is fairly straightforward and they've taken facilities capable of industrial-scale chlorine gas production, both of which have been documented as used sporadically by Jihadi groups in both Syria and Iraq. In one instance, the Al-Zinki Movement, US-certified 'Moderate Rebels' were caught firing mortar rounds loaded with chlorine gas into populated areas - when pressed on the matter, the US state department declined to remove them from the 'Moderate' list and stated 'one instance doesn't necessarily make them terrorists'.
It's through this lens that the gas attack begins to make more sense. The official Russian report of the incident, which has been buried by popular media, is that the SAAF carried out an airstrike on a rebel facility that they did not know at the time was a stockpile for those aforementioned chemical weapons. The resulting explosion, according to the report, released chlorine, mustard gas and base organophosphate compounds (implying they were attempting to synthesize nerve agents like sarin, but hadn't yet succeeded) into the local area.
Media taken at the attack site seems to corroborate this - 'White Helmets' and other first-responders tended to the dead and dying wearing only gas masks; sarin persists for some time in an environment and can be absorbed through the skin, necessitating full-body NBC protection for rescue crews. Many of the dead were shown to be foaming at the mouth, a symptom not associated with nerve-agent deaths. Photos and videos of the plume used as 'evidence' prove the opposite - Sarin is heavier than air and rapidly falls into fog the same way that cropdusted pesticides do.
At first glance it seems as though the response, 53 cruise missiles launched from the USS Porter and USS Ross into the Al-Shayrat airbase to the southwest of Homs, is typically rash US foreign policy. On closer inspection, though, it makes a lot less sense.
First, Russia was forewarned of the attack - roughly two hours before the actual strike they received communications through low-level military channels indicating that they should remove hardware and personnel from the base. The fact that they were forewarned at all is strange enough, but the fact that the warning came through military channels rather than standard political ones indicates that it may not have been officially sanctioned by the US authorities. Further, damage to the airbase was surprisingly minimal - 53 cruise missiles were launched but only half made it to their targets, mostly destroying munitions containers (claimed to be chemical weapons stocks) and several disabled aircraft awaiting maintenance. The core facilities of the airbase including the runways were largely undamaged, and the base was restored to be able to support aircraft on the same day.
Such a high number of missile failures is far outside of reasonable expectations - the US has fielded Tomahawk missiles since the 80s and they have an excellent track record for reliability and accuracy. A 50% failure rate could potentially be attributed to old or faulty missiles, but debris recovered from the base indicates that the majority (if not all) of the missiles were manufactured between 2014-2015. The simplest answer would be interception by the Russian S300/S400 systems stationed at Tartus and Latakia, but there have been no reported interceptor launches and no witnesses describe midair explosions. Assuming they weren't intercepted, the next most likely culprit (though nowhere near as well documented and shrouded in rumour) is Russian ECM/ECW technology.
It's difficult to know exactly what Russian ECM/ECW units are capable of - their specific capabilites are highly classified in Russia and the US is ostensibly being very quiet about the matter. Several months ago there was an incident where two SU-22s with ECM pods swooped, strafed and circled the USS Donald Cook - the US chastised Russia for 'unsafe and provocative maneuvres', but rumours abound that large numbers of sailors were either transferred or discharged due to stress. The SU-22s were apparently able to disable all of the ship's electronic targeting systems leaving it defenceless while they performed simulated attacks. There have been several unverified reports of Israeli warplanes having to vacate Syrian airspace because their FCS had been shut off, and the recent simultaneous maintenance on all 12 of the US' active duty aircraft carriers was reportedly to replace much of their copper wiring with fibre optics in an effort to defeat Russian ECM.
Russian military manufacturer KRET CONCERN specialises in electronic warfare. Specifically, their KRASUKHA series is designed to counter AWACS and low-orbit satellites - the latest models claim to be able to fry standard radio receivers within the 200km range, and Russian-language advertising media hints at the capability to interfere with or even override cruise missile control systems.
Assuming those capabilities are true, we can then assume that KRASUKHA-4 systems were able to steer away any missiles that were meant to hit critical infrastructure, perhaps by fooling their terrain contouring system into thinking there was a mountain ridge running the length of the runway or similar. It's all conjecture at this point, but it would go a long way to explaining the dud missiles and the lack of real damage.
If all of the above assumptions are correct, the timeline is as follows:
The US, knowing the target is a chemical weapons plant, feeds Russian/Syrian military intelligence on a rebel installation, not warning them of what it is (the missile attack would need to be pre-planned; there was not enough time for it to be spontaneously launched after the chemical attack). The SAA strikes the target, releasing chemical agents into the surrounding area. The US pre-empts any investigation, blaming Assad as usual, and means to level Al-Shayrat airbase in an effort to halt the SAA's advance against Al Qaeda in Homs (this serves the dual purpose of giving their 'moderate terrorists' time to regroup and significantly slowing the operation, giving the US a better chance of taking Raqqa before the SAA gets there). Russia unexpectedly interferes with the attack, stopping critical damage from occurring.
If the goal was to create a pretext to cripple the SAA advance on Homs, it makes no sense that the Russians were given forewarning at all. Given that it didn't come through official channels it's possible there was a leak, but the operation would've only been discussed in the highest levels of government and military; even the ships meant to launch the attack would not have been made aware until it was commenced.
Donald Trump came to power largely on a platform of co-operation with Russia and general isolationism, reducing international military interference and focusing on improving domestic infrastructure rather than pouring funds on foreign interventions - it's extremely strange that he's completely turned that policy around, especially given the now-famous tweets he sent advising Obama not to do exactly what he's doing now. The fact that he didn't even call for an investigation into the chemical attack prior to the missile strike is more typical Neoconservative establishment policy than his own.
Which makes sense. Trump was genuinely idealistic coming into the presidency, but has been wholly unprepared for how little power the president truly has over the jackals surrounding him. The one person who could've really spearheaded the changes he promised was Michael Flynn, and the establishment forced him to throw Flynn away. He didn't even fight it; he accepted Flynn's resignation based on ridiculous charges instead of mediating between Flynn and Pence and now he has no capability to make the change he wanted. As a result, he's become little more than a rebellious face for the establishment - like Obama, he promised change but can't (or in Obama's case, won't) deliver.
It's been rumoured that Trump was goaded into authorising the strike explicitly to leave him open to impeachment for entering into a war without congressional approval - it seems to me that it was more forceful than that, and that Trump was unable to stop it from happening. He may have even leaked plans at the last minute to prevent an international catastrophe, even though he could, and may be prosecuted for treason.
