Lingering doubts over Syria gas attack evidence

[dipsydoodle]

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.

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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.

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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.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AP_ML_SYRIA_ATTACK_SCENARIOS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-08-03-35-25

[SamKnause]

1. Requests

Standard reply; It is classified.

Standard action; Send out a copy that has been redacted so severely to make zero sense and is totally useless for obtaining, or verifying facts.

[jakeXT]

2. Something like that

And, in fact, as far as I can tell, not a single member of Congress has actually seen the underlying document. What’s been provided to us so far is a four-page unclassified document and, if we bother to go down to the bowels of the congressional facility here, a 12-page classified document. But that classified document cites 300 underlying intelligence reports, none of which have been released to any member of Congress, despite the fact that we all have classified clearance. And I indicated that if there is some possibility that the administration is misleading the public regarding any of those 300 documents, then that has to be dispelled. We can’t go to war by mistake again.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/5/rep_alan_grayson_on_syria_congress

[eridani]

3. There is nothing new under the sun, it would seem

http://quotationsbook.com/quote/44696/#sthash.cdr0lcGy.dpbs

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purposeand you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, I see no probability of the British invading us but he will say to you be silent; I see it, if you dont.

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

[soundsgreat]

4. very good and balanced overview - rec nt