Striving for clarity in Syria (np)(261 words)

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Love the word count...

I can not aspire to DM's levels of "pithiness" but have tried to keep 
links and sources at a minimum. If you need any corroboration for my 
claims, please say so.

> Fabrication of WMD data to support 2nd Iraq War
> Depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, profiteering, civil unrest, rise of ISIL
> (Deeply ashamed as an American)
> (Zoom in)

One might add: babies taken from incubators and left to die on the 
floor; imminent genocide in Benghazi; Viagra handed out to Gaddafi's 
troops in order to commit mass rape as a weapon of war.

Atrocity propaganda in order to generate public support for regime 
change. Nicolas Sarkozy's stepfather's father's "Mighty Wurlitzer" at work.

After these conscious and coordinated lies which have cost the lives of 
hundreds of thousands people and led to the destabilisation of the whole 
region, including the emergence of slave markets in Libya, anybody who 
*unquestioningly* believes claims about atrocities committed by a head 
of state targeted for regime change is quite obviously a complete and 
utter idiot.

George Orwell's Oceania and Gore Vidal's "United States of Amnesia" come 
to mind as well as various quotes from H. L. Mencken, although this 
peculiar forgetfulness is by no means restricted to the US.

> Syria - militarized ISIL sweeps into Syria, challenging Assad, who is already unpopular.

We let ISIL/Daesh grew, said Kerry and Obama, the one about Syria, the 
other about Iraq, in order to put pressure on Assad and al-Maliki, 
respectively.

Then there is the DIA memo:

"There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared 
Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is 
exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to 
isolate the Syrian regime (...)"

The "supporting powers to the opposition" are "The West, the Gulf 
countries and Turkey".

See also:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-a7362071.html

The West saw ISIL and al-Qaeda not as the enemy but as a strategic asset.

> Also, Douma was one of 3 contested areas. In the other 2, rebels were not slaughtered, but evacuated to the north - this is a surprisingly humane move.

Indeed. With tedious regularity it was announced that there would be a 
mass slaughter if Assad's troops would win this or that battle, 
particularly with regard to Aleppo. It never happened. It was nothing 
but atrocity propaganda.

See also Bana Alabed, the seven-year-old girl from Aleppo tweeting in 
perfect colloquial English, which neither she nor her mother could 
remotely reproduce when interviewed, about #holocaustaleppo.

I think that never before children have been as cynically exploited for 
propaganda purposes as in this conflict.

> If the chemical assaults were faked by the rebels, it was a truly desperate act that bespeaks a lack of strategic thinking, wasn’t it? Since the rebels still lost the territory?
> 
> If the chemical assaults were faked by unknown parties (French Intelligence, Mossad, MI-6, CIA) ostensibly on behalf of the rebels (if the rebels participated) or simply on spec -
> 
> Who? Why? How?

I deem it "highly likely", to coin a phrase, that the following is the case:

Who and how? James Le Mesurier's White Helmets staged the hospital 
scene, they or someone else transported the dead bodies to the apartment 
building from somewhere or, in the worst case scenario, killed the 
victims themselves in order to use them as stage props, put the dead 
babies on top for better effect and placed the gas cylinders on the bed 
in the apartment upstairs.

BBC Syria producer Riam Dalati:

"Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children 
to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why 
some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative."

https://www.mintpressnews.com/bbc-producer-says-syria-douma-chemical-attack-footage-was-staged/255152/

The Syrian American Medical Society, the Violations Documentations 
Center and the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM) 
informed the world that Assad had once again used CW against civilians 
mere hours before his troops won the battle. Besides chlorine gas, these 
organisations suggested the much more deadly Sarin or a similar poison 
gas had been used. This particular claim was later debunked by the OPCW 
but, of course, the US, the UK and France didn't need no stinkin' 
evidence to attack Syria.

Why? Again, to generate public support for military intervention. This 
has been the modus operandi ever since opposition forces performed the 
false flag CW attack in Ghouta and the BBC produced the fake documentary 
"Saving Syria's Children" in the run-up to the vote in the House of 
Commons on military action against Syria. Which was when all of this 
started in earnest.

Thanks to the House of Commons and Barack Obama, who was told that the 
CW attack in Ghouta was "not a slam-dunk" and rightfully, in my view, 
prided himself on not having given in to the pressure of the 
"foreign-policy establishment" (aka the MIMC) by deciding not to attack 
Syria, it did not work in 2013. But the opposition forces and their 
handlers have been at it ever since. And they have gotten at least a few 
illegal air strikes and, after Khan Sheikoun, four dead children out of it.

Grounds for impeachment, I'd say, if an American President could be 
impeached for breaking international law...

Instead the media called Trump "presidential" and quoted Leonard Cohen 
on "the beauty of our weapons".

Generally speaking, I am with Patrick Cockburn, when he says:

"All wars always produce phony atrocity stories – along with real 
atrocities. But in the Syrian case fabricated news and one-sided 
reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen 
since the First World War. The ease with which propaganda can now be 
disseminated is frequently attributed to modern information technology: 
YouTube, smartphones, Facebook, Twitter. But this is to let mainstream 
media off the hook: it’s hardly surprising that in a civil war each side 
will use whatever means are available to publicise and exaggerate the 
crimes of the other, while denying or concealing similar actions by 
their own forces. The real reason that reporting of the Syrian conflict 
has been so inadequate is that Western news organisations have almost 
entirely outsourced their coverage to the rebel side."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n03/patrick-cockburn/who-supplies-the-news

What he doesn't mention is that the activists, media centers, first-aid 
organisations etc. that the Western news organisations receive their 
information from, are, without exception as far as I can tell, funded by 
Western governments.

To end on a, err, lighter note, here is a CNN reporter sniffing on a 
child's backpack in order to find out whether it is contaminated with a 
poisonous gas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQoTWhwoPoo

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without 
laughing.”

An educated moron (courtesy of Mark Kohut)