Many times, excellent news and analysis comes from well informed readers…and one site that has been doing an excellent job of covering the conflict in Syria, and fostering well informed reader debate on the Syrian conflict is Moon of Alabama.
I encourage all of The Duran readers to bookmark this excellent news resource.
In an article entitled, “Syria – The Aid Convoy Attack Points To Further Escalation“, an excellent cui bono argument, as to who benefits most from the UN convoy attack, is presented…
But independent from what happened is the question of motive.
Why would the Syrian Air Force attack the Syrian Red Crescent with which it has good relations and which also works in all government held areas? Why would the Syrian or Russian forces attack a convoy which earlier had passed through government held areas and checkpoints and was thereby not carrying contraband? I find no plausible reason or motive for such an attack. Nor has anyone else come forward with such.
A few days ago the “rebels” had accused the UN, which had goods on the convoy, of partisanship and said they would boycott it. “Rebels” in east Aleppo had demonstrated against UN provided help and said they would reject it. There was a general rejection of the ceasefire by the “rebels” and they were eager to push for a wider and bigger war against Syria and its allies. Al-Qaeda in Syria even made a video against the ceasefire. A part of the ceasefire deal is to commonly fight al-Qaeda. They naturally want the deal to end. The attack on the aid convoy seems to help their case.
The motive argument makes an attack by the “rebels” plausible and an attack by Syria and its allies implausible.
If the cui bono argument made by Moon of Alabama is not enough, we have this excellent analysis presented by a Moon of Alabama commenter (with the handle “PavewayIV”), which deserves consideration, if not for its excellent technical substance, then definitely for its shout out to The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris and his post on the UN convoy attack posted yesterday…
First, an article in a similar vein (the title explains it all) by Alexander Mercouris on TheDuran: Making up the news: How the Western media misreported the Syrian convoy attack. I’m not familiar with TheDuran but the article is informative and well-written like the ones produced here by b.
Second, the blessing/curse of being ex-military is sounding like a nut to most of you when I bring up these minute details that I think are terribly significant. Given that, take this for what it’s worth:
There are several variations of the Hellfire missile fired from U.S. drones like the Predator. As evidenced by vidoes of Hellfire strikes beginning with the Iraqi war, one very popular flavor seems to be the AGM-114N variant. It contains a pretty energetic PBX-112 explosive charge surrounded by a layer of metal particles. Fine-mesh fluorinated aluminum in case you were curious. Without getting into the physics of it all, I’ll just say that this design came out of research to produce a ‘better’ fuel-air explosive.
The Metal-Augmented Charge (MAC) Hellfire AGM-114N belongs to the thermobaric category of weapons – ones designed to kill/destroy by an extended blast overpressure wave rather than conventional explosive’s overpressure spike. A secondary effect of a MAC/thermobaric weapon’s hotter, longer-duration blast wave is that it’s more likely to set things on fire than a conventional explosive. Not as much as a incendiary-purpose weapon, but more so than conventional explosives.
Isn’t killing people efficiently by more clever designs fascinating? It is to Lockheed-Martin shareholders, but I digress. At any rate, plenty of info out there on the AGM-114N and theromobarics if you’re interested.
Now, the MAC-enhanced blast of the U.S. Hellfire missiles produces an interesting visual effect at night. After the decay of an intensely-bright and well-consolidated blast flash, you can see what look like little sparkles at the edge of the receding explosion. The sparkles are residue of the burnt fluorinated aluminum that undergo a secondary burning, of sorts. It’s very distinctive once you notice it. The Russians have thermobaric bombs as well, but they are of a different design and the blast usually looks different – non-existent sparkles because of a micronized metal powder, or long-duration sparkles on very large charges for whatever reason.
So (sorry, TL:DR already) I notice that many of the MSM-replays of the supposed rebel convoy attack video was edited in a particular way to mask what is plainly (to me) a MAC blast. The BBC reports are a good example. Their version is enlarged, shaky and blurry consistent with the poor head-chopper production standards. But it is an edited version of the much clearer original video. ABC must have produced their report before the censorship memo went out. If you look at only the first second of this ABC video and try to pause it during the blast, you can see a few frames with the visual effect I’m talking about.
So what am I yammering about that has any relevance here? This: If this video was shown to me outside the context of the convoy attack, I would guess it was a Hellfire strike somewhere. Now we hear from Russia that a Predator drone (typically Hellfire-armed) was loitering around the ‘bombed convoy’ area immediately before and after the attack. An attack that produced no crater (typical of the air-blast of a thermobaric Hellfire) and numerous fires (also more likely from a thermobaric Hellfire). Then I see the curiously-edited video on most MSM seemingly intended to obscure the signature blast of a thermobaric Hellfire. [adjusts tin-foil hat] I think you know where I’m going here.
Just to set the stage for the next chapter of lies, CENTCOM or the U.S. DoD will undoubtedly deny that a U.S. drone attacked the convoy (not that any journalist will bother asking). AS we saw in the SAA/Deir EzZor attack though, it’s not necessarily a U.S. aircraft. The U.S. can deny responsibility if needed because 1) any of a number of ‘coalition partners’ have Hellfire-armed Predators violating Syrian airspace every day, and 2) all Predators of coalition partners are not necessarily under the command of their military or the CJTF-OIR coalition. The CIA, for instance, has plenty of armed drones in the Middle East. Not that these potential loopholes will be needed or used – the U.S. isn’t bashful about flinging outright lies when convenient and difficult to disprove.
This isn’t offered as any kind of proof the U.S. did it – it’s just reasonable speculation. I’m sure our inquisitive and unbiased investigative journalists in the press will get to the bottom of this in no time.
Via: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/syria-the-aid-convoy-attack-points-to-further-escalation-.html
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