Russian nerve gas? What Russian nerve gas?
by digby
Robert Mackey at the Intercept:
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT has concluded it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the attempted murder of a former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter last week in the English city of Salisbury, Prime Minster Theresa May said on Monday.
While the police investigation into the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia is not yet complete, May told Parliament that chemical weapons experts from a nearby British military facility reported that the two were “poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia,” one of a group known as novichok.
“There are, therefore, only two plausible explanations,” the prime minister said, “either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders couldn’t say clearly that the administration agrees with that conclusion:
“Look, we’ve been monitoring the incident closely, take it very seriously,” Sanders said. “The use of a highly lethal nerve agent against U.K. citizens on U.K. soil is an outrage. The attack was reckless, indiscriminate and irresponsible. We offer the fullest condemnation, and we extend our sympathy to the victims and their families and our support to the U.K. government. We stand by our closest ally and the special relationship that we have.”
They asked her over and over again if the administration agrees with May’s conclusion that Russia was the source of the nerve agent and this was all she would say.
That is not normal, people. Not normal at all.
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