In my 15/4/18 post Sydney Morning Herald Readers & Syria, I recorded the Herald readership's reaction to the question: Do you think Australia should join a joint response to the [April 7] Syrian chemical attack [in Douma]? 39% of readers answered 'yes'.
The following data, from the OPCW interim report (which no Australian corporate media outlet, including the Herald, to my knowledge, has shown any interest in), is dedicated to that 39%, who, no doubt misled by years of anti-Syrian government propaganda in the paper, thought we should shoot first and ask questions later:
"No traces of any nerve agents have been found at the site of a suspected chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma, an interim report issued by the OPCW says, adding that several chlorine compounds were detected... The purported chemical incident in Douma allegedly took place on April 7. A week later, Washington and its allies launched a massive retaliatory missile strike against Syria, without waiting for the OPCW to start its investigation of the incident." (Nerve agents not found in samples from Syria's Douma - interim OPCW report, rt.com, 6/7/18)
PS 9/7: Sydney's Sun-Herald finally got around to mentioning the OPCW's report. It was buried inside another report - Rebels surrender south to Assad (Suleiman al-Khalidi, Reuters) - and mentioned only that "'various chlorinated chemical's" were found at the site... indicating chlorine may have been used as a weapon." IOW, there was no mention of nerve agents.
1 comment:
There were reports on the BBC and the ABC that the OPCW had said that there was a chemical attack using chlorine rather than Sarin. OPCW said nothing of the sort! It said that it had detected some chlorinated substances. Here is a good discussion at Moon of Alabama.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/
Of course, OPCW is no longer trustworthy as it has been weaponized by the UK and the US, but on this occasion it does seem to have been reasonably professional.
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