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You are here: Home / Politics / America / Breaking: White House Statement on Syrian Chemical Weapons

Breaking: White House Statement on Syrian Chemical Weapons

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The White House has just released the following statement:

It went up at 10:04 PM EDT on Sean Spicer’s official twitter feed, but is not yet up on the Office of the Press Secretary Statements and Releases page.

Unless someone’s been reading the Mass Atrocity Prevention and Response Handbook*, which presents publicizing mass atrocities/potential mass atrocities as having a potential deterrent effect, I have no idea why this information would be released right now. It is possible that LTG McMaster thinks this may actually deter a forthcoming action. It may be something else entirely. But this is a type of public strategic communication I’m not used to seeing out of any administration – Democratic or Republican.

While we wait for more information: Open Thread!

Update at 10:45 PM EDT:

* The author of the handbook is a friend and former colleague.

 

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  1. 1.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I just mentioned the possible deterrent effect on Twitter. So if it doesn’t happen, we won’t know if it was deterred or if the information and/or analysis was wrong.

  2. 2.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Here’s Nikki Haley, but she’s been running her own foreign policy, so who knows what this means.

  4. 4.

    Manyakitty

    @Jeffro: That was my first thought. What else is happening now and why are they trying to hide it with an apparently empty statement?

  5. 5.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Huh. Trump continues to obsess over last week’s WaPo report on his Russia connections.

    Edited to replace the Maggie Haberman tweet with the DJT tweet.

  6. 6.

    japa21

    I love the wording. They have identified potential preparation. Not actual preparation, but potential preparation. What the heck does that mean?

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Simple. When nothing happens, Dolt 45 will loudly claim credit. And find a way to piss on Obama in the same statement.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: I have a professional disagreement with the mass atrocity specialists at the Peace Keeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) guys about this stuff. I don’t think there is any empirical evidence that shaming – preemptive or after the fact – deters mass atrocities regardless of how they’re committed. I also have some problems with some of the theoretical adaptations from counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, such as the spreading ink spot concept.

    The spreading ink spot concept was developed by the French and applied in Algeria because of the specific human geography of Algeria. Specifically the need for groups to come to oasis and other places where water could be accessed in order to do so. The French determined if they could clear and hold these locations then Algerians could be coopted and reconciled to the counterinsurgency in exchange for access to the water. It worked and they described this clear, hold, and reconcile strategy as the spreading ink spot. They tried to adapt it in Vietnam with the strategic hamlet concept, but it had disastrous results. What they wound up doing was fortifying the Vietcong’s external lines for them leaving the Vietcong freedom of movement and activity within the areas ringed by the secured hamlets. Unlike in Algeria, the Vietcong did not need to go to any specific hamlet for any specific reason. So the spreading ink spot strategy of clear, hold, and force reconciliation failed in Vietnam. For more on this, please see Bernard Fall’s Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency.
    http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/navy/art5-w98.htm

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: Late. He’s a night owl, sleeps in, then has a late morning exercise regime before getting down to work in the early afternoon right after lunch.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    Jay Michaelson is on O’Donnell. We went to elementary and middle school together.

  16. 16.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: The trouble is that the deterrence idea is out there, so Trump can use it to say he’s better than Obama at that red line stuff if nothing happens. Assad’s track record suggests that he will use cw when and where he pleases and doesn’t much care what anyone thinks or threatens.

    Nikki Haley’s statment that Russia and Iran will be blamed is more dangerous. The indications are that neither approves of Assad’s use of chemical weapons, although Russia is quick to cover up for him. That coverup is also face-saving on their side, so it makes sense in a way that doesn’t indicate approval. It’s of a piece with the administration’s trying to push China to handle North Korea. It ignores that one nation can seldom dictate to another in any detailed way, so it doesn’t contribute to a solution and is likely to p*ss people off. That seems to be a common thread in Trumpian strategy – don’t contribute to a solution, but p*ss people off.

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    I’ll guess Raytheon’s looking at below-projected net earnings for the quarter about to end and needs a Tomahawk boost, if you get my drift.

  25. 25.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: No. I’m too tall. Also, I prefer to work out in the afternoon. Unless I’m on temporary duty and staying in a hotel. Then I like to get up earlier enough to check comms, at least do a cardio split, get cleaned up, eat, and get to my temporary duty station. Then I work out a second time in the afternoon/evening if there is time.

  27. 27.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s possible, although I don’t expect coordination of the kind that that could imply for Haley’s tweet. Of course, it could be that her foreign policy intersected with theirs at that point. The stopped-clock phenomenon.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: Fortunately I’m not in charge of monitoring that for Balloon Juice! I’m gonna check some of the Israel nat-sec reporters on twitter and see what they have.

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    Apparently this didn’t go through the Interagency, so it is possible that LTG McMaster was out of the loop as well.
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/white-house-says-syria-may-be-preparing-another-chemical?utm_term=.yr9jZYMYv#.vuy0m4d4j

    Five US defense officials reached by BuzzFeed News said they did not know where the potential chemical attack would come from, and were unaware the White House was planning to release its statement. Usually such statements are coordinated across the national security agencies and departments before they are released.

    A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the matter and referred questions to the White House statement. A State Department spokesperson also referred BuzzFeed News to the White House statement and said the agency did not have anything to add.

    Secretary of Defense James Mattis departed earlier Monday evening for a three-day trip to Germany and Belgium, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Joseph Dunford was in Afghanistan.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    via Cole’s twitter

    Yashar Ali‏Verified account
    @ yashar
    Yashar Ali Retweeted Yashar Ali
    WOW: “Officials at US Central Command told BuzzFeed News they have “no idea” what prompted the statement.”

  38. 38.

    Another Scott

    @Cheryl Rofer: I think that tells us all we need to know.

    Even if there was a good reason to make such a statement, there’s no common plan on what the next step is. The military has no idea what’s up. Trump doesn’t have enough competent people in place to come up with a coherent strategy and articulate it.

    I’m kinda with Adam on this. Assad doesn’t care what Trump thinks or even what Putin thinks. Assad is in a fight to the death for his family and his regime. If he thinks that using chemical weapons (again) will help him defeat his enemies and survive, that is what he will do. Nikki tut-tutting and yelling about consequences is about 725th on his top 725 things to worry about.

    If someone does soon use chemical weapons in Syria, and it gets lots of public attention (not a sure thing), then he will have painted the US into a corner. It’s an invitation for someone (Assad or otherwise) to entice Donnie into a trap.

    Remember that the IC wasn’t willing to say with reasonable certainty that Assad was behind the first attack after Obama declared his “red line”. What proof (that can be disclosed without compromising “sources and methods”) can be given that would be accepted by reasonable people?

    We’ll see… :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  39. 39.

    Smiling Mortician

    @Adam L Silverman: Holy shit. So the WH just made it up? They must be really worried about either the Senate vote or something worse we haven’t heard about yet.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: Part of the problems with this stuff is actually knowing when a mass atrocity is occurring, which has an effect on the guidance given to troops in regard to response. For instance, if you’re the commanding general and you issue guidance about how your forces are to respond to mass atrocities in theater, you have to give examples of what to respond to. Often this includes finding mass graves or finding people engaged in mass burials. But here’s the rub on the latter: how do you know those digging the mass graves aren’t survivors trying to quickly inter their dead so they can get to safety? There’s a lot of nuance that gets lost between the doctrine and concept, what may or may not actually have happened, and actual responses.

  42. 42.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Smiling Mortician: I have no idea. They are not consulting me. At the very least, if this is legit, it didn’t bubble up from theater, through the Combined Joint Task Force to CENTCOM to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor. Rather it’s coming from the other direction and hasn’t been pushed down through the normal chain. I think Ambassador Haley’s tweet is actually in response to the White House statement.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Nope, that seems to be it. It appears that everyone is out of the loop other than who issued this to Spicer’s shop to release. Based on the reporting, as of right now, this is clearly top drown driven, with no Interagency input and with no comms down the chain of command.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Five US defense officials […] were unaware the White House was planning to release its statement. Usually such statements are coordinated across the national security agencies and departments before they are released.

    As Charles P. Pierce and our own Kay, among others, have reminded us almost daily since at least last November 9, this is not normal.

  45. 45.

    Aleta

    Igor Zorin is a Russian government official who has spent nearly $8 million on waterfront South Florida homes, hardly financially prudent given his bureaucrat’s salary of $75,000 per year. He runs a state-owned broadcasting company that, among other duties, operates sound systems for the annual military parade that sends columns of soldiers and tanks rumbling through Moscow’s Red Square.

    Zorin has other Miami connections, too: His local business associate, Svyatoslav Mangushev, a Russian intelligence officer turned Miami real-estate investor, helped found a biker club called Spetsnaz M.C. …
    …
    Zorin and Mangushev have ties in both Russia and the United States: In Russia, security firms that have been linked to Mangushev have won $2.4 million worth of contracts from Zorin’s agency since 2015. In Miami, Mangushev once transferred a Florida company that owned a $1.5 million condo out of his name and into Zorin’s. No deed of sale was recorded, meaning the price paid — if any — is unknown.

    The condo is one of three units Zorin owned at Trump Palace, a ritzy tower in Sunny Isles Beach built by a local developer and branded by the Trump Organization. Their total value? $5.4 million. Zorin still owns two condos there, plus a $3.3 million home in Bal Harbour.

    Mangushev is a former officer in Russia’s security service, the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. He first appeared in Miami around 2010.

    In Russia, he ran a group of companies called Alpha-Anticriminal that provided security for some of Russia’s biggest state-owned companies and government agencies. The Alpha-Anticriminal companies were listed under the name of a relative until 2014, according to Russian corporate records.

    Alpha Team is an elite Spetsnaz counter-terrorism unit that operates within Russia’s security service. Mangushev told Russian media that he is a former Alpha Team officer and that many of his employees are veterans of Russia’s security service.

    -Miami Herald

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Aleta: Yep, I saw that last week. There’s a lot of granular details in the reporting. Such as a Russian expat who is a member of the Russian expat biker gang that Zorin’s oligarch friend put together in south Florida is also a sheriff’s deputy in south Florida. As I repeatedly remark: penetration at all levels.

  49. 49.

    Cheryl Rofer

    This is friggin’ crazy.

    What would usually happen is that intelligence would come in, possibly from overhead photos, possibly from humans on the ground, possibly more than one source. The intel agencies would put their heads together, possibly with Centcom, and come up with an estimate as to what was happening and what it meant. Back before the major cw disarmament of Syria, the intel was that they saw stuff being transferred around from known cw depots, iirc.

    So then, as Adam says, the intel people would meet as resources with Centcom, State, NSC, maybe others, to decide what to do about that. “What to do” would include whether or not to make a public statement. As has been pointed out by others on this thread, saying something commits you. That was Obama’s mistake in saying “red line.” So Trump has limited his options by releasing the statement. Or someone has limited those options for him, possibly Cohn-Watnick and Miller, who would love a war with Iran. Nikki Haley has put the “it’s your fault, not ours” trademark on it to further limit options. Although Trump does whatever, so maybe those options are not as limited as they would be for someone else. The trouble is that all this, and Trump’s temperament, point to action rather than the restraint Obama exhibited when the Russians came up with a plan to disarm Assad’s cw.

    @Another Scott: There’s no evidence that anyone but Assad has cw in Syria. And his supplies are limited. I saw some commentary today that suggested that Israel’s becoming more involved may signal that the war may be coming to an end. If Assad feels that way, he will use cw. (And you’re agreeing with me, too.)

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    And that’s why I used it as one of the tags for the post.

    So you did. Sorry, missed that. (I don’t always read through the list of thread tags. Perhaps I should start.)

  56. 56.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @JDM: Welt seems to be moving away from Hersh’s article. Hersh has one, maybe two, unreliable sources. He used to write for the New Yorker, but their fact checking was too rigorous for his last two or three articles, so he went to the London Review of Books. Now they’ve had enough of him. He simply doesn’t understand the science and is totally in thrall to his source(s), who get a lot of things wrong. Bellingcat has done a good job of debunking his stuff. He is a useful tool for Assad, but other than that, I think Assad doesn’t even think about him.

  58. 58.

    GregB

    So the Trump element of surprise thing about not forewarning the adversary is no longer operative in Trumpland?

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JDM: Hersh today is not Seymour Hersh of even fifteen years ago. I would take his reporting and commentary with a very large grain of salt.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: It is a shame to see what he’s become. He’s let his skepticism become paranoia and as a result his critical thinking has faltered while his creative thinking has run rampant leaving him with conspiracy thinking.

  71. 71.

    RandomMonster

    @japa21:

    I love the wording. They have identified potential preparation. Not actual preparation, but potential preparation. What the heck does that mean?

    cf. The Iraq War run-up, “weapons of mass destruction program-related activities”.

  72. 72.

    El Caganer

    THIS IS BULLSHIT. IT IS NONSENSE. ASSAD HAS NO – ZERO – NO REASON TO USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS ON ANYBODY. But that makes no difference, of course, he’s just another Slimey Araboid, like that Iraqi whatizname and his weapons of mass destruction and on and on and on it goes. Fuck this on toast. I’m going back to the Old Country and changing my citizenship. Nothing worth staying here for.

  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    @Cheryl Rofer: Yes, we’re in violent agreement. ;-) I think Assad has been behind the vast majority of the chemical weapons attacks (possibly excluding some of the chlorine gas attacks – I dunno). But let’s remember Goldberg’s article – The Obama Doctine:

    “As previous storms in history have gathered, when unspeakable crimes were within our power to stop them, we have been warned against the temptations of looking the other way,” Kerry said in his speech. “History is full of leaders who have warned against inaction, indifference, and especially against silence when it mattered most.”

    Kerry counted President Obama among those leaders. A year earlier, when the administration suspected that the Assad regime was contemplating the use of chemical weapons, Obama had declared: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime … that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

    […]

    But the president had grown queasy. In the days after the gassing of Ghouta, Obama would later tell me, he found himself recoiling from the idea of an attack unsanctioned by international law or by Congress. The American people seemed unenthusiastic about a Syria intervention; so too did one of the few foreign leaders Obama respects, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. She told him that her country would not participate in a Syria campaign. And in a stunning development, on Thursday, August 29, the British Parliament denied David Cameron its blessing for an attack. John Kerry later told me that when he heard that, “internally, I went, Oops.”

    Obama was also unsettled by a surprise visit early in the week from James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, who interrupted the President’s Daily Brief, the threat report Obama receives each morning from Clapper’s analysts, to make clear that the intelligence on Syria’s use of sarin gas, while robust, was not a “slam dunk.” He chose the term carefully. Clapper, the chief of an intelligence community traumatized by its failures in the run-up to the Iraq War, was not going to overpromise, in the manner of the onetime CIA director George Tenet, who famously guaranteed George W. Bush a “slam dunk” in Iraq.

    While the Pentagon and the White House’s national-security apparatuses were still moving toward war (John Kerry told me he was expecting a strike the day after his speech), the president had come to believe that he was walking into a trap—one laid both by allies and by adversaries, and by conventional expectations of what an American president is supposed to do.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Donnie seems to be on his way to being willing lead by the nose into the trap that Obama avoided.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    Lizzy L

    I realize — Adam has said — that this is in no way normal, but I am boggling at its coming from the White House Press Secretary, on his Twitter feed no less. I wonder if the State Dept was notified that such an announcement was being contemplated. I feel pretty safe in guessing they were not told, and we know CENTCOM wasn’t. It’s crazy.

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    This seems familiar…
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.797741

    Netanyahu, after all, has come to identify the well-being of the State of Israel with his own personal fortune. It doesn’t matter if Israel reneges on promises, if it doesn’t keep agreements, if the government shows the world that it is beholden to extreme religious kooks, as long as Netanyahu keeps himself in power just a little bit longer. That’s worth any price in the world.

  79. 79.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Another Scott: So much good stuff in that Goldberg article. And yes, Donnie is dumb enough to walk into all sorts of traps. Josh Marshall had a good analysis today of Donnie’s “negotiating style.” I think there’s a lot to it. The only problem is that it’s pretty much the inverse of negotiating internationally.

    Apparently State wasn’t consulted either.

  81. 81.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Nah. The kittehs are starting to agitate for their late-night snack, so I think I’ll make this my last comment for tonight. I fully expect this to turn out to be nothing. Maybe a tweet from The Man tomorrow morning when he sees it on Fox. But think of all the threats he’s made and hasn’t carried out. Yes, there were those cruise missiles into Syria, but nothing, nada against North Korea except words and whining at China. Haley has started the whining at Russia and Iran, so that’s probably the worst that will happen.

  82. 82.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @Cheryl Rofer: I meant Putin and his associates somehow getting to her. But probably very unlikely. She’s small potatoes and too well protected

  86. 86.

    Christopher Hades

    I like how all the experts on Twitter are saying goodbye to this world while I’m freaking like hell.

    Because it’s always good to make the common man scared to death.

  90. 90.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    There was that odd warning to American news consumers a couple weeks ago about unsourced stories that never lead to anything.

    Now this.

    Curiouser and curiouser….

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Christopher Hades: @Christopher Hades: I think it is okay to go to make breakfast plans before going to sleep. If CENTCOM doesn’t know what the White House is talking about, then CENTCOM and its subordinate operational commands aren’t going to be doing much. And should an actionable targeting packet be produced targeting the capability the White House press release is refering to and the JAGs bless off on it, then you’ll see a conventional operation. But even this is going to be a stretch. There is no Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Syria/against the Syrian government and forces, there is no UN resolution authorizing intervention. A deterrent action is highly unlikely as it would be a de facto declaration of war against Syria. Which would also be a de facto declaration of war against Syria’s allies: Russia and Iran.

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @West of the Rockies (been a while): When the vast majority of political appointments, not just the 600 or so that require senatorial confirmation, aren’t being filled, there’s no clearly articulated policy (good, bad, or otherwise), which means there’s no real strategy, then you’re going to get what we’ve got.

  96. 96.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Well, in his defense, Trump did say he was the only one who could fix things… guess that means he doesn’t need any help?

  99. 99.

    sharl

    @liberal: My impression is that Bellingcat is pretty good at what it does. Any bias that might arise from their work likely has more to do with their project selection, which in turn seems to be mostly determined by who is willing and able to pay for their services. My understanding has been that usually turns out to be interests aligned with Western governments, e.g., the people funding think tanks and maybe media organizations; maybe they get direct government contracts as well, but I don’t know.

    Folks like the anti-interventionists aren’t likely to have big financial supporters to pay for Higgins and his crew, unless maybe someone like Pierre Omidyar decides to step up at some point, and although I assume there are some funding sources Higgins won’t deal with. Honestly though, I haven’t followed Bellingcat closely for awhile, but their persistent and thorough investigative work on the MH17 shoot-down was impressive.

  100. 100.

    zach

    We know where the chemical weapons are are. They’re in the area around Damascus and Homs and east, west, south and north somewhat.

    Just get it over with so we can start the 20-year clock for rebuilding after another muddling mess.

    Like I’ve said here before: I think Trump’s cut a deal with Russia on Syria (maybe his first real “deal”). We get to make a lot of people happy buying missiles to blow stuff up in Syria and depose Assad. Trump will put a lot of the liberal interventionist international community in a position of having to praise his bold action and doing so without leading to a broader war with Russia and Iran. Secretly, Russia and Iran get to pick who fills Assad’s shoes; in public, it’ll be sold as Trump standing up to Russia for the good of humanity.

    Probably the plan was to wait until the next claims of a chemical attack, but that didn’t come soon enough and now we’re just making things up like we did in Iraq when Saddam called our bluff and Hans Blitz was getting too close to the truth.

  102. 102.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @liberal: @zach: I see we have a couple of open-source skeptics. I’ve personally worked through some of what Bellingcat presents. In addition to the US intel report, there are also assessments from the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The information is there, and thoroughly damning of the Syrian government. I’ve argued with the Syria trolls about the Ghouta attack, and they’re a nasty lot. If you have reasonable questions, I’m willing to answer, but I’m not going to refute every dumb “the rebels could have done it.” And along with Hersh, don’t bother to cite Ted Postol. He doesn’t even know elementary chemistry.

    Outline of the evidence:
    1) The Syrian government makes its sarin shortly before it uses it, by mixing two precursors. In order to make that work, an acid scavenger must be used. The Syrian government uses hexamine, which most others don’t use. Stocks of hexamine were part of what was declared and destroyed in removing Syria’s cw. If chemical analysis finds hexamine, the Syrian government did it. And that has been the case now for every sarin attack.
    2) If it’s delivered aerially, the Syrian government did it. The rebels don’t have that kind of air support.
    3) Nobody has ever found anything remotely like a production plant controlled by the rebels. There would be significant amounts of waste, and you can’t make sarin in your kitchen. Anything that will kill you with a pinhead of it on your skin needs special facilities.

    Nobody has shown that any other party has those capabilities. I want to see at least one of those refuted if you are going to claim the Syrian government didn’t do it.

  104. 104.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Cheryl Rofer: If your anti-intervention argument feels the need to deny that the side the US state opposes has done something ‘beyond the pale” (chemical weapons, ethnic cleansing*), then it’s clearly not about human rights but just refusing to grant the state has any legitimate point about the matter. A completely sufficient case against going to war there is:
    1) Even with the commission of war crimes by Assad the situation in Syria is precarious enough that further intervention could easily make things worse, and
    2) Trump will fuck up the response.

  105. 105.

    zach

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I see we have a couple of open-source skeptics.

    I have no idea, but I know pure bull when I see it and that’s what the White House released as its best argument. It went unnoticed when released because Trump tweeted something stupid or did something else stupid IIRC. I assume the Intel community doesn’t back the White House version enough to release an actual intelligence assessment; same was true for much of the Iraq claims. Fool me once, etc.

    FWIW I’m at least equally skeptical of Hersh’s story. If Russia/Syria has the evidence he claims, they’d release it to the extent possible or at least have a consistent story to tell.

    Not at all qualified to comment on the chemistry, but you are — thanks for the summary.

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