BEIRUT (AP)
-- The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but
the American public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence -
no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications -
connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged
chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.
In
the absence of such evidence, Damascus and its ally Russia have
aggressively pushed another scenario: that rebels carried out the Aug.
21 chemical attack. Neither has produced evidence for that case, either.
That's left more questions than answers as the U.S. threatens a
possible military strike.
The early morning
assault in a rebel-held Damascus suburb known as Ghouta was said to be
the deadliest chemical weapons attack in Syria's 2 1/2-year civil war.
Survivors' accounts, photographs of many of the dead wrapped peacefully
in white sheets and dozens of videos showing victims in spasms and
gasping for breath shocked the world and moved President Barack Obama to
call for action because the use of chemical weapons crossed the red
line he had drawn a year earlier.
Yet one week
after Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the case against Assad,
Americans - at least those without access to classified reports -
haven't seen a shred of his proof.
There is
open-source evidence that provides clues about the attack, including
videos of the rockets that analysts believe were likely used. Some
experts also think the size of the strike, and the amount of toxic
chemicals that appear to have been delivered, make it doubtful that the
rebels could have carried it out.
The Obama
administration, searching for support from a divided Congress and
skeptical world leaders, says its own assessment is based mainly on
satellite and signal intelligence, including indications in the three
days prior to the attack that the regime was preparing to use poisonous
gas.
But multiple requests to view that
satellite imagery have been denied, though the administration produced
copious amounts of satellite imagery earlier in the war to show the
results of the Syrian regime's military onslaught. When asked Friday
whether such imagery would be made available showing the Aug. 21
incident, a spokesman referred The Associated Press to a map produced by
the White House last week that shows what officials say are the
unconfirmed areas that were attacked.
The
Obama administration maintains it intercepted communications from a
senior Syrian official on the use of chemical weapons, but requests to
see that transcript have been denied. So has a request by the AP to see a
transcript of communications allegedly ordering Syrian military
personnel to prepare for a chemical weapons attack by readying gas
masks.
The U.S. administration says its
evidence is classified and is only sharing details in closed-door
briefings with members of Congress and key allies.
The
assessment, also based on accounts by Syrian activists and hundreds of
YouTube videos of the attack's aftermath, has confounded many experts
who cannot fathom what might have motivated Assad to unleash weapons of
mass destruction on his own people - especially while U.N. experts were
nearby and at a time when his troops had the upper hand on the ground.
Rebels
who accuse Assad of the attack have suggested he had learned of
fighters' plans to advance on Damascus, his seat of power, and ordered
the gassing to prevent that.
"We can't get our
heads around this - why would any commander agree to rocketing a suburb
of Damascus with chemical weapons for only a very short-term tactical
gain for what is a long-term disaster," said Charles Heyman, a former
British military officer who edits The Armed Forces of the U.K., an
authoritative bi-annual review of British forces.
Inconsistencies over the death toll and other details related to the attack also have fueled doubts among skeptics.
The
Obama administration says 1,429 people died in 12 locations mostly east
of the capital, an estimate close to the one put out by the
Western-backed Syrian National Coalition. When asked for victims' names,
however, the group provided a list of 395. On that list, some of the
victims were identified by a first name only or said to be members of a
certain family. There was no explanation for the hundreds of missing
names.
In Ghouta, Majed Abu Ali, a spokesman
for 17 clinics and field hospitals near Damascus, produced the same
list, saying the hospitals were unable to identify all the dead.
Casualty
estimates by other groups are far lower: The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights says it only counts victims identified by
name, and that its current total stands at 502. It has questioned the
U.S. number and urged the Obama administration to release the
information its figure is based on. The AP also has repeatedly asked for
clarification on those numbers.
The
humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders says it has not been able to
update its initial Aug. 24 estimate of 355 killed because communication
with those on the ground around Damascus is difficult. That estimate was
based on reports from three hospitals in the area supported by the
group.
Moreover, the group, whose initial
report was cited in U.S. and British intelligence assessments, has
rejected the use of it "as a justification for military action," adding
in a disclaimer published on its website that the group does not have
the capacity to identify the cause of the neurotoxic symptoms of
patients nor the ability to determine responsibility for the attack.
French
and Israeli intelligence assessments back the U.S., as does reportedly
Germany's spy agency, on its conclusion the Syrian regime was
responsible. However, none have backed those claims with publicly
presented evidence.
Some have suggested the
possibility, at least in theory, that the attack may have been ordered
by a "rogue commander" in Assad's military or fighters seeking to frame
the regime.
Testifying Wednesday before the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel rebuffed a
congressman's bid to declassify one of the key pieces of intelligence
Kerry publicly cited last week: intercepted communications telling
Syrian military units to prepare for the chemical strikes.
Still,
there was very little pushback from members of Congress on the
government's conclusion that the Syrian regime was responsible.
Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the intelligence was "very compelling"
and that senators have had more access to classified information on
Syria than they've had on anything in her two decades in the Senate.
Asked
if that was enough to merit a U.S. military reaction, she said: "Yes,
it's enough for me. I think the prohibition on chemical weapons is
well-founded."
But Hisham Jaber, a retired
Lebanese army general who closely follows Syria's war, said it would be
"political suicide" for the regime to commit such an act given Obama's
warning. He also questioned U.S. assertions that the Syrian rebel
fighters could not have launched sophisticated chemical weapons. He said
that some among the estimated 70,000 defectors from the Syrian
military, many of them now fighting for the opposition, could have been
trained to use them.
"It is conceivable that
one or more know how to fit a rocket or artillery shell with a chemical
agent," said Jaber, who also heads the Beirut-based Middle East Center
for Studies and Political Research. He claimed Syrian insurgents have
acquired chemical weapons, bought from tribes in Libya after the fall of
dictator Moammar Gadhafi, through Saudi interlocutors. Other weapons
from Libya have been used in the conflict, though Jaber did not offer
evidence to support his chemical weapon claim.
Saudi
Arabia has been a chief supporter of the opposition. Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, head of Saudi intelligence, recently flew to Moscow, reportedly
on a mission to get Russia to drop its support for Assad.
Syrian
government officials and Assad accused foreign fighters of carrying out
the attacks with the help of countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey in
the hopes of prompting an international military intervention.
Syria
says some of its own soldiers were badly contaminated in Jobar, on the
edge of Damascus, as they went into tunnels cleared by the rebels. U.N.
experts, who had been collecting tissue and other samples from victims
in Ghouta, also visited the Mazzeh military hospital in Damascus, taking
samples from injured soldier there.
Two days
after the Ghouta attack, state television broadcast images of plastic
jugs, gas masks, medicine vials, explosives and other items that it said
were seized from rebel hideouts. One barrel had "made in Saudi Arabia"
stamped on it.
In the U.S., the case for
military action has evoked comparisons to false data used by the Bush
administration about weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003
invasion of Iraq.
Multiple U.S. officials have
told AP that the intelligence pictures on the Aug. 21 attack was "not a
slam dunk" - a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet's insistence
in 2002 that U.S. intelligence showed Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction - intelligence that turned out to be wrong. They cite the
lack of a direct link between Assad and the chemical assault - a
question the administration discounts by arguing Assad's responsibility
as Syria's commander in chief. A second issue is that U.S. intelligence
has lost track of some chemical weaponry, leaving a slim possibility
that rebels acquired some of the deadly substances.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin - a staunch ally of Assad - said if there is
evidence that chemical weapons have been used, specifically by the
regular army, it should be submitted to the U.N. Security Council.
"And
it ought to be convincing. It shouldn't be based on some rumors and
information obtained by intelligence agencies through some kind of
eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that," he told The
Associated Press in an interview late Tuesday.
David
M. Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University in New
York, said the scale of the attack makes it very unlikely that anyone
other than the regime was behind it.
"I think
it was a calculated risk by the Assad regime to push to see how far he
can go while causing a great deal of political disruption," he said.
"It's a huge gamble, but he's in a very risky situation."
---
AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier reported from Washington.
---
Associated Press writers Greg Katz in London and Richard Lardner and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.
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