The Whole World Is Entitled To An Inquiry

Peter Hitchens writes: 

A huge international news story broke last week, but I doubt you will hear about it anywhere else [oh, some of us did, but never mind]. 

It seems very likely that the decision we, France and the USA made in April 2018 to bomb Syria was based on a mistake as big as the fictional weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international body which examines alleged incidents of the use of poison gas, has just confirmed to me that a devastating leaked document from its Dutch HQ is genuine.

The document, written by one of the OPCW’s most experienced investigators, shows that it is highly unlikely that gas canisters found at the scene of an alleged poison gas attack in Douma, Syria were actually dropped from helicopters – as has been widely believed and claimed.

The claim is crucial to the case for bombing Syria. A copy of the leaked document can be found on the Peter Hitchens blog. 

Yet the OPCW’s official report on the event made no mention of any such doubts, which it surely should at least have referred to.

What is going on at the OPCW? It is a valuable organisation, containing many fine people, with a noble purpose, but has it been placed under pressure, or even hijacked, by political forces which seek a justification for military intervention in Syria? 

Given that a decision between war or peace, affecting the whole world, could one day hang on its judgements, I think the whole world is entitled to an inquiry into what is happening behind its closed doors.