Birth Defects Reported After Chemical Attacks in Syria

 Jenny Mulder

”Always the innocent are the first victims, so it has been for ages past, so it is now.” 
~ J.K. Rowling

Nothing is more innocent than a new-born baby, and there is no greater happiness than holding a baby in your arms. However, in the Ghouta region of Syria, a green agricultural belt surrounding the city of Damascus in the south and east, separating the city from the dry grasslands bordering the Syrian Desert, and providing its inhabitants with a variety of cereals, vegetables, and fruits for thousands of years, there was no joy and happiness when severely deformed babies were born after the chemical attack in Ghouta on August 21, 2013. 

Although there can be many reasons for birth defects and there is no proof that the deformations were caused by the chemical attack in Ghouta, if there is the slightest possibility that these defects were indeed caused by chemical weapons, it should be investigated.

The pictures of the deformations are too awful, the pain and emotions impossible to contemplate. It is heart-breaking to look at innocent babies barely recognizable as human, and the thought that this may have been caused by chemical weapons also provokes feelings of outrage, of anger.

For the sake of humanity and justice, if there is any left in this world, for the poor parents of these babies, no matter how difficult this is to watch, the truth must be told, and the world must know who was responsible for the chemical attack in Ghouta, which may have caused the birth defects of these innocent babies.

In the final report of the United Nations Mission to investigate allegations of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic, signed by Professor Ake Sellstrom, Head of Mission, and Dr. Maurizio Barbeschi, signing for the WHO component, and conveyed on December 13, 2013 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the UN General Assembly and Security Council, it is stated that the attacks of March 19, August 24 and August 25, 2013 upon Syrian government soldiers indicate that the rebels were in possession of sarin both before and immediately after the chemical weapon attack at Ghouta of August 21, 2013. It would have been virtually impossible for the rebels to acquire chemical weapons so quickly in late August had they not already previously been in possession of chemical weapons.

Furthermore, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report challenged the US claim that Assad forces used chemical weapons in an attack last August, highlighting that the range of the improvised rocket was way too short to have been launched from government controlled areas.

In the report titled “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former UN weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), examined the delivery rocket’s design and calculated possible trajectories based on the payload of the cargo.

The authors concluded that sarin gas “could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the ‘heart’, or from the Eastern edge, of the Syrian government controlled area shown in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30, 2013.”

Based on mathematical calculations, Lloyd and Postol estimate the rocket with such aerodynamics could not travel more than 2 kilometers. To illustrate their conclusion, the authors included the original White House map that depicted areas under Assad control and those held by the opposition. Based on the firing range and troop locations on August 21, the authors conclude that all possible launching points within the 2 km radius were in rebel-held areas.

In war, truth is the first casualty
~ Aeschylus, Greek tragic dramatist (525 BC – 456 BC)

We know that truth is the first casualty of war. We have seen it time and time again. Lies have accompanied every war. Our leaders lied to us in the run-up to the war against Yugoslavia, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the NATO war against Libya, the Western-backed terrorist war against Syria, the economic warfare against Iran, the destabilization of Venezuela, and the recent coup in Ukraine.

Although all the evidence point in the direction that it were the rebels who used chemical weapons, the news of babies in Syria born with birth defects coincides with a statement of the US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller, that Syria will have to take additional steps before achieving full compliance with commitments it made to eliminate its chemical weapons, thus creating the atmosphere that the government of President Bashar al-Assad is to blame for the birth of the deformed babies.

This distortion of the truth and the attempts to spoil the reputation of Syrian President Al-Assad come only weeks before the presidential elections in Syria, set for June 3. Regardless of the unwavering support of the Syrian people for their President, the Western elites and their allies will always refer to President Al-Assad as a dictator, and will spare no efforts to discredit him.

Any election which doesn’t go the way the Western elites want, or is unlikely to go the way they want is automatically labeled a “sham” or a “parody of democracy,” even before it is held. This is in order to delegitimize the victor, in this case President Bashar al-Assad, who can count on the support of the large majority of the people of Syria, who have suffered from the most heinous war crimes in the ongoing Western-backed terrorist war against them.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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