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ANKARA: Fisk Falls into the Same Trap as Hersh

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  • ANKARA: Fisk Falls into the Same Trap as Hersh

    Daily Sabah, Turkey
    April 12 2014


    ROBERT FISK FALLS INTO THE SAME TRAP AS HERSH

    The Independent's Fisk falls into the same trap as Hersh, believing
    claims denied by all and supporting his arguments with fallacies

    by Tevhid Nazmi BaÅ?türk

    ISTANBUL ' Veteran journalist and self-declared "Ottoman Empire
    correspondent," Robert Fisk on Thursday published an article in The
    Independent that backed the claims made by Seymour Hersh earlier this
    week in the London Review of Books. Hersh's article raised controversy
    and drew criticism from across the world as the White House along with
    many journalists and experts debunked his accusations against Turkey
    and the U.S. Now it seems that his "old mate" (in Fisk's own words)
    has run to his defense in the form of a rant that matches in scale the
    bizarreness of Hersh's piece.

    Fisk even adds his own accusations, which, like the accusations of
    Hersh, have no viable backing and come from arguably non-existent
    sources.

    The fact that the article, clearly intended to attack Prime Minister
    ErdoÄ?an's personal character and not his policy, looks to things as
    irrelevant as ErdoÄ?an's language pronunciation as a gateway to attack
    him as an individual.

    Fisk even claims that Turkey was behind the alleged March 16 attack on
    Armenians in Kasab, stating that it was Turkey that armed the
    insurgent groups responsible for the attacks.

    This accusation holds no truth as it was a joint effort by the Turkish
    Foreign Ministry and legitimate opposition groups to safely evacuate
    Kasab's Armenian population from the battle which raged around the
    city.

    Daily Sabah spoke to Feeda Majnoun, a senior official within the Free
    Syrian Army (FSA), earlier this week to clarify what had occurred in
    Kasab, revealing a story of friendship and cooperation rather than the
    blatant force pitched by Fisk. "Firstly, we apologize to the Armenians
    because we entered their church without permission and disturbed them
    because of the ongoing war," said Feeda Majnoun, who helped organize
    the Armenians' safe transfer to Turkey. "We are really sorry that
    Kasab turned into a warzone and the Armenians had to leave their
    homes."

    Majnoun continued, "After the military operations, it became
    impossible to stay in the region. The electricity is gone, public
    transport is not operating, there are continuous bomb attacks. That's
    why the youth of the region fled to the southern region of Latakia
    while the elders stayed here. We told the elders that they may stay
    here as long as they want and we will try to meet their requirements
    to the utmost.

    "After staying there nearly 10 days, we handed over the Armenians to
    Turkish officials on the YayladaÄ?ı border," explained Majnoun. "The
    Armenians underwent medical examinations immediately and their needs
    were met by the Turkish officials."

    Later in the article Fisk goes on to build on Hersh's alternative
    reality in which the U.S. and Turkey provided the al-Nusra Front with
    the Sarin gas chemical weapons which killed nearly 1,500 and injured
    3,000 in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, despite the United Nations
    pinpointing the attack to Assad regime forces. Fisk adds insight to
    Hersh's accusation, stating that this alleged transaction, which the
    U.S. and Turkey falsified, claiming that the Sarin weapons provided to
    the insurgent group came from Muammar al-Gaddafi's supplies, stocks
    that were destroyed prior to the Libyan revolution and his death in
    2011.

    Daily Sabah once again spoke to Dan Kaszeta, a chemical, biological
    and radiological defense expert to see if Fisk's alternative reality
    had any factual basis. "As far as the possibility that the sarin was
    old Libyan stock? I seriously do not believe this is possible, for
    several reasons. First, the sarin used on Aug. 21 was made in a way
    that indicates it was likely to have been mixed soon before use,
    so-called binary sarin. We know this due to the decomposition products
    of one of the key ingredients, found in the samples by the OPCW-
    [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] U.N. team,"
    said Kaszeta. "Second, it appears that a new and innovative process,
    not seen before, used the chemical hexamine as an 'acid scavenger' in
    the binary sarin. To the best of anyone's knowledge, this technique
    had not been used elsewhere. If Libya had that technique, I have not
    heard this. But the Syrian Assad regime confessed to Ake Sellstrom
    that hexamine was in their formula for sarin and the Syrian state made
    an official declaration to the OPCW that they had an inventory of 80
    tons of hexamine as part of their chemical weapons program," he
    continued. "Also, there is no evidence that Libya was able to produce
    sarin with any longevity of shelf-life. Very few countries have
    mastered the dark art of refining sarin to a level of purity that
    allows it to last years, not months.

    The U.S. and Soviet Union spent many years and vast resources learning
    how to refine the residual acid out of sarin. The U.S. and Soviet
    Union used something called the Di-Di process to create sarin which
    they could then store for decades. However, it is clearly obvious that
    the sarin used on Aug. 21 was not made by this method and the Syrian
    regime's method was not this either. I seriously doubt that Gaddafi
    had somehow mastered the secret to make sarin that was going to last
    for a long time in storage," Kaszeta said, casting away any
    plausibility of Fisk's accusations.


    http://www.dailysabah.com/politics/2014/04/12/robert-fisk-falls-into-the-same-trap-as-hersh

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