Comment by ceejayoz
4 years ago
The assertions in the Wikileaks docs are contested, and focus on a single incident when the war has had multiple.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-dou...
For example, that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack happened is not disputed by Russia; they dispute who did it.
Bellingcat has been pretty reliable but their investigations around the chemical attacks were very... flawed. It happened for sure, but their analysis of how the events unfolded on the ground was so lacking (not their fault, OSINT can only get you so far in a chemical attack) that imo they probably should've just not published their initial articles. Doesn't mean they can't be right on the OPCW controversy, but it's still something to keep in mind
But in any case, while yes there is a dispute around who did it... Russia was never claimed to be the responsible by anyone. The two options are either the syrian government or the rebels, and that's true for all the chemical attacks.
So the GP was completely wrong, Russia did not use chemical warfare in syria!
Bellingcat quite literally created the propaganda -- they teamed up with Dan Kazesta to invent the hexamine nonsense, pushed it among the neocon circles (all of the ex-Just Journalism people, Atlantic Council, Foreign Policy, Henry Jackson Society affiliates, and so on) and then wrote their own narrative.
Their biggest target throughout their efforts? Ted Postol, professor emeritus of science at MIT, who they claimed was a Russian disinformation agent for finding the theoretical chemistry ridiculous and not practical.