Yes I anticipated an ad hominem attack re McIntyre.
That was not an ad hominem attack. It was a statement of fact. McIntyre repeatedly has shown to mis-interpret climate data, with the purpose of creating 'doubt' about climate science.
Each time his mis-representations were debunked by climate scientists, in the scientific literature and on RC.
For example, for years he repeatedly mis-interpreted data and methods used in MBH 98 for the reconstruction of global temperature (the hockey stick graph). And then there was ClimateGate, where McIntyre played a key role in mis-interpreting climate scientists email correspondence.
But I'm sure you are aware of all that.
But I am trying to be fair minded, this is not climate related and credit that he has done a large amount of work piecing this together.
I wonder why he did go through these gruesome videos, since there is not a lot he can conclude from it. I have neither the time nor the stomach to verify all his claims about the video's he analyzed, so in my response below, I will for now assume that all his factual claims about moved people are true.
The altering of the dead bodies from video to video I find particularly disturbing.
You probably mean the 'moving' of the bodies between videos.
I find that disturbing also, but it doesn't need to mean anything malicious.
I can imagine that they were quite in shock when they found these people dead, and
- They may have moved the bodies when they were looking for survivors, or
- They may have moved some bodies outside if they believed they were still alive, or
- They may have moved the bodies to take better pictures of their faces for later identification, or
- They may have moved the bodies to separate the ones that were identified from the ones that were not yet identified, or
- They may have moved bodies to show them on camera (like they did with the baby) to the rest of the world,
- We don't know what they felt when they moved these bodies, or if they were even thinking straight after they found all these dead people...
Either way, to me, this chaotic moving of bodies suggests that they did no pre-plan any of this.
Appearance of foam in later videos on bodies that lacked foam in earlier videos.
I think McIntyre only mentioned ONE such case : A woman who has foam on her left cheek in the second video. However, in the first video only her right cheek is visible. So I don't understand why McIntyre concludes that 'foam was applied'. Did I miss something ?
Cause of death in situ sarin or in situ chlorine poisoning ? It doesn't seem likely to me that chlorine could kill people on the spot. McIntyre makes point that victims lack essential characteristics of nerve agent poisoning e.g. (1) rather than pupils being contracted to a pinprick (miosis), they are, if anything, dilated; (2) per Denis O'Brien, nerve agent victims lose bowel control, but no evident soiling. Etc.
I don't have enough experience to conclude anything here.
I'd just like to note that we don't know what killed these people.
There were many reports by medical personnel of symptoms of exposure to Chlorine gas, but also 'something else'. Here is just ONE example :
“Something was working on the nervous system,” said a doctor who asked not to be named. “Chlorine doesn’t do that. While there was clearly chlorine on some of the people we treated, there was also something else.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/12/syria-attack-experts-check-signs-nerve-agentOf course then there is the other claim that victims may have died elsewhere (perhaps suffocated in a fire) and were brought after death to the massacre house.
Again, to me, this chaotic moving of bodies suggests that they did no pre-plan any of this.
If they really wanted to 'stage' this scene with bodies brought in from outside, I would have expected a much more organized effort, of documenting the scene and then proceed with some structured post-mortem process, rather than move people around and videotape it again.
That just doesn't sound like a pre-planned staging effort to me.