On the night of June 26, the White House Press Secretary released a statement, via Twitter, that,
"the United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children."
The tweet went on to declare that,
"the activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4 chemical weapons attack," before warning that if "Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price."
A Pentagon spokesman backed up the White House tweet, stating that U.S. intelligence had observed "activity" at a Syrian air base that indicated "active preparation for chemical weapons use" was underway. The air base in question, Shayrat, had been implicated by the United States as the origin of aircraft and munitions used in an alleged chemical weapons attack on the village of Khan Sheikhun on April 4. The observed activity was at an aircraft hangar that had been struck by cruise missiles fired by U.S. Navy destroyers during a retaliatory strike on April 6.
The White House statement comes on the heels of the publication of an
article by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in a German publication,
Die Welt, which questions, among many things, the validity of the intelligence underpinning the allegations leveled at Syria regarding the events of April 4 in and around Khan Sheikhun. (In the interests of full disclosure, I had assisted Mr. Hersh in fact-checking certain aspects of his article; I was not a source of any information used in his piece.) Not surprisingly, Mr. Hersh's article has come under attack from many circles, the most vociferous of these being a UK-based citizen activist named Eliot Higgins who,
through his Bellingcat blog, has been widely cited by media outlets in the U.S. and UK as a source of information implicating the Syrian government in that alleged April chemical attack on Khan Sheikhun.
Comment: More on this nefarious Western-backed propaganda outfit