US attempts to sabotage UN chemical weapons investigation

A man holds the body of a dead child among bodies of people activists say were killed by nerve gas near Damascus August 21, 2013.

The reason is obvious - the last time the United Nations investigated claims of chemical weapons use in Syria, its inspectors concluded that it was the rebels and not Assad’s forces who were likely behind the sarin gas attack.

Eager to avoid a repeat that would completely derail the march to war, the White House in concert with Britain has repeatedly attempted to scupper the UN investigation or render it meaningless.

In the latest example, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration told UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that “there wasn’t adequate security for the U.N. inspectors to visit the affected areas to conduct their mission,” a clear warning (or a blatant threat) that inspectors should pull out entirely.

It was announced today (Tuesday) that inspectors had postponed their work until Wednesday for “safety” reasons.

This warning followed an incident, almost certainly the work of US-backed rebels, where a convoy of UN vehicles was fired upon by a sniper, causing the inspectors to temporarily suspend their work. Rebels have repeatedly acted with hostility against UN workers and peacekeepers, with one FSA group kidnapping 21 peacekeepers back in March.

While discouraging the UN from completing its investigation, the US and Britain have already declared that last week’s attack involved the use of chemical weapons and that it was the work of Bashar al-Assad’s forces, despite numerous other examples where rebels have prepared and used chemical weapons themselves.

Even when Syria allowed UN inspectors to enter the affected region, the Obama administration responded that it was “too late,” and that the evidence could have been destroyed - so why bother investigating at all?

Washington and Downing Street are preparing to dive headlong into another potentially catastrophic war in the Middle East based on the evidence of a collection of YouTube videos. As in Iraq, it doesn’t really matter how flimsy the actual justification is because the decision to attack Syria was already made over a year ago, with a hyped humanitarian crisis being the agreed upon pretext, and the intervening period was merely an exercise in manufacturing a casus belli.

Why is the Obama administration and the British government so keen to prevent or dismiss as irrelevant the UN’s investigation?

The only reason is that it would threaten the already agreed upon narrative that Bashar al-Assad, in complete defiance of any logic, ordered a chemical weapons attack right when UN inspectors were already in the country, timing the attack at the most opportune moment to justify western military intervention.

With western warplanes now already in place in Cyprus, along with a number of warships at sea, the die has been cast and the UN chemical weapons investigation will continue to be sabotaged or simply ignored, lest it turn up evidence that contradicts the rush to war.