Not P.....but Seymour Hersh admitting his self-blocked blindness....

[Hübschräuber]

The question was never whether Assad used violence against his own people or whether his secret police tortured people. As far as I can tell, nobody on this list ever denied that this was the case. I certainly didn't.

It is common knowledge that the US sent people to Syria to get tortured ("extraordinary rendition") before they decided after September 11, 2001, that they might just do the torturing themselves.

The question was whether Assad or his army perpetrated a CW attack in Ghouta on August 21, 2013.

If they did, this would have been unbelievably stupid. A year before, Obama had drawn his "red line" regarding the deployment of CW by the Syrian government. Assad had had a front seat when the US took out the murderous dictator Saddam Hussein based on lies about WMD. Being a murderous dictator himself (although the apparatus was built up by his father, he bore the responsibility), one would have expected Assad to think twice before provoking a military intervention by the US.

If you are the embodiment of pure evil, however, which Assad had by that point somehow morphed into, as somehow has happened to every perceived or real enemy of the West, of course you don't care for self-preservation. You just kill civilians with Sarin, no matter what. Because you're evil.

I found this idea ridiculous from the outset. In my view, it is just cheap propaganda, straight out of Arthur Ponsonby's principles of war propaganda as updated by Anne Morelli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_basic_principles_of_War_Propaganda). Sadly, it works. There's a sucker born every minute.

Also, surely everybody remembers that in the eyes of the intelligence community this was "not a slam dunk".

On the other hand, the so-called moderate rebels had a strong interest to draw the US into the war.

But I may be wrong. Perhaps Assad is indeed a psychopath who merrily risks being executed by an occupying power if he can only kill some more civilians with poison gas.

In the end what counts is the evidence. For those interested, here are some helpful links (also relating to Seymour Hersh's supposed retraction):

https://x.com/PiersRobinson1/status/2004150733772579196











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Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> schrieb am Samstag, 27. Dezember 2025 um 02:12:

> And really, you don’t need to have THAT long a memory to have it be clear
> to you now who the REAL useful idiots were, and who had clarity of
> historical and moral vision re: the true nature of Assad’s regime back in
> the day… and where those opposing groups fell on the spectrum of
> understanding about the reality of Putin’s regime and it’s goals, actions
> and methodologies in Ukraine and elsewhere, including American electoral
> politics (and the potential deadly serious ramifications of said games
> without frontiers, and we’re nowhere close to having found our way out of
> THOSE woods yet), what with there being pretty much a 1:1 relationship
> between said cohorts.
>
> I wonder if and whether or not, we will begin to see some half-assed
> apology attempts start popping up here any time soon? If I were a betting
> man… I probably wouldn’t.
>
> Cheers!
> Yer Old Pal Jerky,,,
>
> On Wednesday, December 24, 2025, Mark Kohut mark.kohut at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > https://x.com/OzKaterji/status/2003763713829134374?s=20
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l