♫ can’t get enough of that novichok, novichok, novichok...♫

Oops! New York Times corrects Skripal story, says no ‘dead ducks’ or ‘sick kids’ from ‘Novichok’, 6 Jun, 2019, RT.com

“The New York Times has corrected a report that UK officials had shared photos with the CIA depicting children and animals who’d been exposed to the so-called Novichok nerve agent after coming into contact with the Skripals.

The Times reported on April 16 that the British government had supplied images of “young children hospitalized” and of dead ducks, inadvertently poisoned after interactions with Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia at a park in Salisbury in March of last year. The paper pointed to the “sloppy work of the Russian operatives” who were blamed for what London calls a nerve agent attack last year.

While the original story claimed the images were used to convince US President Donald Trump to expel 60 Russian diplomats from the US in response to the Skripal episode, the Times now says no such photos exist.

“An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the photos that [CIA Director] Gina Haspel showed to President Trump during a discussion about responding to the nerve agent attack in Britain,” reads the correction, issued almost two months after the original story was published.

Haspel, instead, presented the president with generic images illustrating the harmful effects of some nerve agents, while the British claims of sick kids and poisoned birds were based on “early intelligence reports,” the corrected story says.

While the Times amended the story and added an editor’s note, the paper apparently forgot to scrub a photo caption describing a “slipshod attack that also sickened children, killed ducks and required careful cleanup.”

Prior to the correction, there were already signs that something was off about the story. Shortly after the Skripal incident, British tabloid the Daily Mirror reported that three children were indeed hospitalized after feeding ducks in a Salisbury park with the Skripals, but blood tests revealed that the children were fine.

One of the boys reportedly even ate some of the bread supplied by Skripal and intended as bird-food. According to UK authorities, Sergei Skripal’s hands were coated in a highly-lethal nerve agent at that moment; it is unclear how the child could have avoided poisoning.”

But still, nothing changes the fact that Moscow had officially sanctioned the assassination attempt on the Skripals, and never mind about all those expelled Russian ambassadors (60 from the US, plus 20 other nations).  They were probably spies in any event.  Good riddance!

Also see Neil Clark’s  ‘Hospitalized children & dead ducks? The ‘official’ Skripal narrative goes completely quackers’, April 19, 2019, RT.com  which includes:

“You can imagine the conversation, as scripted by Cleese, Chapman and Clark…

Haspel: ‘Look Mr President. I know a dead duck when I see one, and I’m looking at it right now’

Trump: ‘No, he’s not dead, he’s, he’s resting… Beautiful plumage!’

Haspel: ‘The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead. And its name was Donald!’

Trump: ‘Oh my God, let’s kick out the Russkie duck killers!’”

Me, I think they were faking Novichok deaths…just for the ‘ell of it.

“There are so many unanswered questions, but arguably the most important one is this: why haven’t we seen or heard anything from Yulia and Sergei Skripal?

Yulia’s last video appearance was last May. Her father hasn’t been shown since his hospitalization, which we are told he recovered from.

If Yulia and Sergei accepted the UK government narrative, namely that the Russia state was behind their poisoning, then why haven’t they been brought out before the cameras, at a secret location, to say as much? Think what a great propaganda coup this would be.

Interestingly, a book published last year by Mark Urban, a BBC diplomatic editor, concedes that Sergei Skripal was initially reluctant to believe that the Russians had tried to kill him.

Even more puzzling is the fact that Sergei has not called his 91-year-old mother Yelena. If he is indeed being looked after by British security services, in order to protect him from another assassination attempt, then why hasn’t he been allowed to call home to say he’s ok?  A simple ‘Hi Mum, don’t worry about me, I’m being looked after and I’m fine’ would suffice.

“She is waiting for his phone call. She needs nothing else. She needs one phone call from her son,” Skripal’s niece Viktoria said last September. The fact that he still hasn’t called home, suggests that Sergei Skripal is either dead, or unable to talk. If the latter, why haven’t we been told that he’s lost his voice? If the former, then how did he die?”

Related:  from Jeffrey St. Clair’s July 20, 2018 July 20, 2018 ‘Roaming Charges: Are You Putin Me On?:

I’d hoped he was Putin us on about the #TreasonSummit in Helsinki, and that he’d taken HRW seriously:

“When it comes to immigrants from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Putin’s policies [< HRW Aug. 2013] of racial profiling, prolonged detention and interrogation are so stern that they would make J. Beauregard Sessions long for another “how-to” session with his old pal Sergey Kislyak.”

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)