Dennis Kucinich Questions White House’s Gas-Attack Narrative (Audio and Video)

In the days since an alleged gas attack by the Syrian government spurred President Trump to retaliate with 59 Tomahawk missiles, new evidence has emerged questioning the official White House narrative. Theodore A. Postol, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently argued that the White House Intelligence Report on the alleged attack “contains false and misleading claims,” and that “the assumption in the WHR that the site of the alleged sarin release had not been tampered with was totally unjustified, and no competent intelligence analyst would have agreed that this assumption was valid.”

Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio, echoed this argument in an interview with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill earlier this week.

“Do you believe that this was a chemical weapons attack by Assad’s air force or military on April 4th?” Scahill asks at the start of the interview.

“No,” Kucinich responds. “The rush to judgment and the absolute refusal to ask for an independent inquiry to promote an independent investigation, to demand access to the forensics of it, raises questions about whether there was an agenda and whether or not this was in fact a false flag attack.”

Listen to the full podcast, below, which also features analysis from journalist Murtaza Hussain and from Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer wrongly accused in 2002 of having terrorist ties.

Kucinich continues:

If the response to the assumption of a chemical weapon attack is a military strike, then certainly, it brings in a higher level of responsibility on the part of America to demand an independent inquiry, to ask for the forensics, to ask for access to the site, to take samples of fragments, to take tissue samples, to interview witnesses, to interview victims. I mean, all these things should have been done. And the fact that there was a rush to judgment and they weren’t done does raise serious questions. …

The demonization of Assad is part and parcel of an effort to push regime change. It’s not about creating peace in Syria. You know, this idea of regime change always ends up being a game of ulterior motives that results in a country that is targeted.

This is not the first time Kucinich has voiced skepticism about the alleged attacks. During an April 9 interview on Fox News, he again explained the need for a full investigation into the Trump administration’s claims:

“We should have had an investigation here,” Kucinich says, “and then made the determination as to who was responsible.”

Also raising questions: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, who said she was “skeptical” that Syria was responsible for the alleged attack earlier this month.

—Posted by Emma Niles