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The most damaging assertion made by Mr. Hersh is his insinuation that the insurgent group Jabhat al-Nusra may have been responsible for the chemical attacks. As a life-long professional in defense against chemical weapons, it seems increasingly improbable to me that a non-state actor, Nusra or otherwise, perpetrated the sarin attack on 8/21. Even if Nusra has an individual who might understand the science of how sarin is be made, there is a wide gulf between understanding the basic chemistry and perpetrating the 8/21 attacks.
Mr. Hersh patently ignores the practical barriers to al-Nusra, or any other Syrian non-state faction for that matter, producing enough sarin to have done the 8/21 attacks. A large, but still indeterminate number of people (Hersh is right to point out discrepancies in the fatality figures) over a large area were killed or injured. The practical reality of chemical warfare is that it is far less efficient, in terms of amount of material required, than most laymen understand. Numerous casualties over a large area require a large amount of material. A lot of sarin was used. My own attempts to apply Cold War-era methodologies to reverse-engineer the attack gave me a rough range of sarin from 370 kg to 4400 kg of sarin. Although my methods are too lengthy to state here, my best guess is that the real answer is somewhere in the middle of this range, perhaps a ton. The current total of "Volcano" rockets so far discovered is eight, giving a yield of perhaps 400-420 kg of sarin, well within this range.
Mr. Hersh seems unaware of just how hard accumulating a ton of sarin might be. It can’t be summarily waved away as he does by saying (I paraphrase) that “Nusra has a guy who knows how to do it.” A ton of sarin is no easy undertaking for anyone to manufacture, regardless of expertise or access to precursors. Sarin manufacture, as I pointed out in various places, is complex and can’t be done in a kitchen or bathtub, and certainly not in the quantities needed for the 8/21 attack. To put it into proper perspective, in 1994-1995 the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan built a purpose-built facility, spent many millions, and had a number of chemists and engineers. (Amy Smithson describes the Aum operation quite well in her book, “Ataxi.”) But the best that Aum could do, despite mastering the mechanics of the process, was to produce bucket-sized quantities. To produce at the scale required for the 8/21 attack, a large, sophisticated, and very expensive factory-scale facility is needed. By hinting that Nusra performed the attack, he implies the presence of such a factory somewhere. Where is it? Sarin doesn’t get conjured up out of nothing.
full: https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/524969-524969-why-seymour-hersh-has-it-wrong-this-time
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