They're going after Seymour Hersh on Syria

Well, at least they are no longer ignoring Seymour Hersh's research into the sarin attacks in Syria. In fact, there's a bona fide backlash...

The main criticisms seem to be:

1. Hersh ignores the fact that the attacks appear to have been carried out using Volcano rockets, which have been filmed in the possession of regime forces (this is Eliot Higgin’s main criticism)....

So? We know that the rebels have raided Syria's weapons stores. And Assad isn't the only one in the world with those rockets.

2. That the Sarin sample allegedly tested at Porton Down, and which didn’t match any known Sarin from the Assad regime’s arsenal, came from Russian Intelligence, and is therefore of questionable reliability. This to me is a reasonable criticism, because Russian Intelligence do have a vested interest in exonerating the Assad regime. But as Hersh tells it, the scientists at Porton Down – who you wouldn’t expect to easily fall for the ruses of Russian Intelligence – appear to have accepted the sample as genuine.

If Porton Down has reason to distrust the provenance, let's hear it from Porton Down. The fact that we haven't heard from Porton Down is, I think, telling.

3. That the U.N. have said that the Sarin came from government stockpiles, with Just Security quoting a U.N. report which reads ‘the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military’.

While the report does indeed say this, the use of ‘likely’ is a bit of a qualifier, and suggests a degree of doubt. This reading is further backed up by the fact that the very same report, in reference to chemical weapons attacks in Syria, then says ‘In no incident was the commission’s evidentiary threshold met with regard to the perpetrator’ (p.19).

So, what's next? Are these people going to claim that My Lai didn't happen?

Turkey has gone after Hersh in a big way -- but this, of course, is to be expected. At this point, simply quoting an official denial from the United States State Department is hardly likely to convince anyone of anything.

The Daily Beast tries to dismiss Hersh's scenario as unlikely, but offers research which tends only to buttress his findings.

In the meantime, the NYT and the WP continue to ignore what Hersh has to say.

And nobody is talking about the Benghazi angle.