Eliot Higgins writes: Yesterday, the London Review of Books published a second piece by Seymour Hersh on the August 21st Sarin attack. In an earlier piece published in December 2013, Hersh had approached the attacks from two angles, that the White House had used dodgy intelligence in the build up to intervention in Syria, and that the evidence suggested the munition used were improvised, and therefore it was likely the opposition was responsible. While the first point is certainly worth exploring, especially in light of information gathered about the attacks since August 21st, the second point was extremely flawed, with there being clear evidence of the government using the type of munitions linked to August 21st going back to late 2012, which I detailed in my piece Sy Hersh’s Chemical Misfire.

In his latest piece on August 21st, Seymour Hersh presents a narrative where the Turkish intelligence services aided the Syrian opposition in carrying out a false flag attack on August 21st, using one “former intelligence” source in particular. EA Worldview has already put together an excellent response highlighting some of the major flaws in Hersh’s piece, in particular the use of one source for most of his accusations, and I’d like to focus on one particular aspect of the attacks that Hersh appears to be ignorant of, or has chosen to ignore.

In the aftermath of the Sarin attack on Eastern Ghouta on August 21st, the remains of munitions that were practically unknown where recorded at several impact sites (shown below)

After months of research it has been possible to gather a significant amount of information about these rockets. [Continue reading…]