Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.
Technically, the production of certain agents- Sarin included- is not that difficult, provided you have the money and a little bit of know-how. Several splinter groups over the past few decades have made it and nerve agents like it with varying degrees of success. The problem has generally been, and will be in the future, with dispersal. It's really hard to reliably disperse anything other than a fuckton of agent over any significant parcel of territory without a lot of specific technology- much more difficult to produce and deploy than the chemical itself. Which is why, presumably, there was just as much focus put into the missiles and missile fragments found and identified, and potential firing vectors that by and large led back to known Syrian launch areas, as there was focus put into the environmental presence of the agent itself. As for early warning:
"The sensors detected no movement in the months and days before 21 August, the former official said. It is of course possible that sarin had been supplied to the Syrian army by other means, but the lack of warning meant that Washington was unable to monitor the events in Eastern Ghouta as they unfolded." Bullshit. Around the same time last year that the US detected potential Sarin production by the Assad regime (December), there were also very public reports in the news of large chemical stockpiles being transferred and disseminated across the country. Don't have time to link right now, will later. I remember thinking, "there's no way Assad would use these. This is clearly a message to the international community: 'this is what stands to fall into enemy hands if the current regime fails, so you'd better either help us or stay out of our way.'" I was wrong in that regard. There was a good article in this week's New Yorker about some Syrian sleuth-work that touches on the nerve-missile thing. Can't link because it's locked, but if people have a New Yorker subscription, it's worth the read. This article feels kind of tinfoil hattish. A lot of what's chronicled in terms of press releases and what the Obama admin made public could easily be attributed to the fact that they were given the onerous deed of building a bulletproof case for military intervention in Syria in the face of an American audience with waning (if any) patience for wartime activity, and a congress that was at this exact same point very publicly looking for a reason to impeach the president on any grounds possible. It's not really necessary to turn it into more of a "there's more evidence pointing towards Al Nusra and less pointing towards Assad" thing. There's no doubt Al Nusra and AQ affiliates the world over could easily produce plenty of scary shit. But they'll disperse it the old fashioned way- a ziploc bag punctured with an umbrella tip. What happened in Syria- both in scope and method- points way more towards the Syrian government.
See, and I think you're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, plenty of groups could produce Sarin, and a few have. But it's on the other side of a bright white line - very few organizations have resorted to NBC since WWI. It's not so much "can you make Sarin" it's "WILL you make Sarin." It's the kind of move that takes you out of the "armed dissident" column and places you squarely in the "DR. EVIL" column. Nobody outside the lunatic fringe has tried to justify chemical weapons since… ever. So when you're painting Assad as a Very Bad Man who will do Very Bad Things and the guys he's arrayed against are, you know, cooking up nerve gas, it comes across as disingenuously simplistic to say "there's a good side and a bad side in Syria." It's sloppy, in my opinion. What the whole of the middle east comes down to is "we don't want the Muslim Brotherhood to catch on anywhere, ever, because it's the IRA to Al Qaeda's Sinn Fein." But since the Muslim Brotherhood is popular, well-funded and supported by broad swaths of South Asia, you can't say "we prefer secular regimes even when they're genocidal because at least they don't take their orders from Allah." 'cuz really, that's what the Soviets said about Afghanistan.
Two books you oughtta read: The Sacred Age of Terror (Benjamin and Simon) Terror in the Mind of God (Jurgensmeyer) They both address, to some degree or another, your last point re. preferring secular sons of bitches versus Islamist (Islam-ish?) theocracies. First one digs into the roots of radical Islam and its ultimate evolution into the modern AQ apparatus. Second one addresses the specific dangers posed by hard-line insurgencies with strong religious underpinnings. Heavy focus on Millenarian elements. Interesting, terrifying. In regards to this article: I don't think anybody with little more than a network news view of Syrian events truly believes that this is a "good versus evil" situation. Yes, Assad is the quintessential "Very Bad Man." And, as it turns out, he's in a power struggle with a lot of fractious elements, some of which include other Very Bad Men. Who happen to be bankrolled by AQ, among other unsavory franchises. And this all happens to be playing out in the front yards of ordinary Syrian citizens- the only actors on the stage who aren't clearly bastards, and aren't really involved in the fight beyond fulfilling the role of propaganda/cannon fodder, and who probably won't benefit from any possible outcome. This is all pretty clear. But that's not the point of this article, is it? The point of this article is "are we really sure that those Sarin attacks were by Assad? Really?" The answer to which, at this point, seems to be a resounding "Yes." Followed by, "Please, Mr. Hersh, chill the fuck out with this shit." There are plenty of good reasons to bring all of the information to light that he did, chiefly to paint the Syrian situation with the shades of nuance that it deserves. The only bad reason I can think of to spit it all out at once is to try and fabricate doubt in a situation that doesn't merit it. Last August's chemical event points pretty clearly to Assad, for the reasons I brought up before. Are there other bad players on the board? Sure. But they didn't do this, not this time. So to point yet another finger at the Obama administration for acting on shoddy intel, or, worse yet, for inventing evidence and rationale for their own benefit? That's bad reporting. Not to mention- talk about nuance- why would it be in the Obama admin's best interest to reach the conclusion that they did? It's not like Obama is chomping at the bit to overextend our military influence even further than it already is. Nor is it in his best interest to push an unpopular option (military strike) on a public still smarting from the WMD in Iraq "oopsie" and a congress basically creaming their jeans for the opportunity to put him in a moral/political/constitutional quandary. On top of that, and as we've both already established- it's not like the U.S. wants any of the current rebel opposition to Assad actually winning the war. That would be a fucking nightmare on so many levels. So what impetus could the administration possibly have for coloring the truth against Assad, as Hersh is arguing? You can call Obama many things, but catastrophically stupid is not one of them.