U.S.-Led
Coalition Already Using Idlib Chemical Attack As Pretext For War In
Syria
A
deadly chemical attack was carried out in northwestern Syria’s
Idlib Province early Tuesday, killing at least 58 people. The United
States and its allies have been quick to blame Syria’s government
for orchestrating the attack, despite a significant lack of proof.
By
Whitney Webb
4
April, 2017, 2017
After
an unsuccessful attempt to blame the Syrian government for a 2013
gas attack in Ghouta that
was most likely carried out by al-Qaeda’s Al-Nusra Front, the
U.S.-led coalition’s pretext for a military intervention in Syria
to oust President Bashar al-Assad has largely crumbled as Russian
diplomats were
able to negotiate a deal with
the United Nations on behalf of their Syrian allies.
Nearly
four years later, history seems to be repeating itself, with Syria’s
government being accused, once again by NATO allies, of carrying out
yet another chemical weapons attack in al-Qaeda-held Idlib Province.
The attack has left at least 58 dead.
But
this time the stakes are higher, as the U.S.-led coalition has
recently deployed thousands
of troops in
Syria that are set to remain long after Daesh and other terrorist
groups are eradicated. To make matters worse, Vitaly Churkin, the
Russian UN envoy who
helped negotiate the
2013 agreement and prevent U.S.-led military intervention, lies
dead under
still -undisclosed circumstances.
With coalition members already accusing the Syrian government of
violating the 2013 agreement, it appears that the specter of foreign
military intervention in the embattled nation may again be on the
table, threatening the peace conference regarding Syria set
to begin today in
Brussels.
For
the U.S. and its allies, the timing couldn’t be better to finalize
their regime change operation in Syria – an operation that has
been documented for over 25 years.
A familiar pattern
This
frame grab from video provided on Tuesday April 4, 2017, by the
Syrian anti-government group, the Edlib Media Center, shows victims
of a suspected chemical attack, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun,
northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP)
News
broke early Tuesday morning of yet another tragedy in the nearly
six-year-long “civil war” in Syria, this time in the northwestern
province of Idlib, where a chemical gas attack is estimated to have
killed 58 people, including 11 children, according to multiple media
reports. Two groups – the White Helmets and the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights – have blamed the Syrian government for the
attack.
The
Syrian Army has flatly denied the charges, stating
that the army “has
not and does not use [chemical weapons], not in the past and not in
the future, because it does not have them in the first place” – a
reference to the 2013 agreement whereby the Syrian government
dismantled its chemical weapon stores as part of the accord that
avoided U.S.-led military intervention.
However, mainstream media
reports along
with Western
nations are
already adopting the accusations against the Syrian government as
fact. In a near-repeat of 2013, these nations seem unwilling to
confirm such grave accusations before taking action, seemingly
content to take the words of these two groups as sound despite
significant evidence pointing to their disrepute.
Both
of the groups who have blamed Assad’s forces for the attack have
come under fire repeatedly for their ties to pro-intervention
institutions, NATO-allied governments and even al-Qaeda – all of
whom who have a stake in regime change.
The
White Helmets, for instance, were
founded by a
former British army officer turned mercenary and frequently worked
with Purpose, Inc. –
a George Soros-funded PR firm that has been pushing for Western
intervention in Syria for years. They also receive millions in
funding from Western governments, including
23 million dollars from the U.S.,
and operate almost exclusively in areas held by al-Nusra Front, a
Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, with whom they have
collaborated with on
a regular basis. They have been caught on camerafacilitating
public executions of
civilians in Aleppo and elsewhere.
The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) is equally dubious, but
for different reasons. Unlike the White Helmets, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights consists
of just one man,
an anti-Assad Syrian national by the name of Rami Abdul-Rahman who
lives in the United Kingdom. Abdul-Rahman’s “sources” in Syria,
from which he receives his information regarding the war, are
anonymous and never recorded – thus making them completely
unverifiable.
It
was these same two groups who provided much of the “intelligence”
that was used to blame the Syrian government for the 2013 attack in
Ghouta. But once the media frenzy and manufactured outrage in the
West had died down, it emerged that the Syrian army was not the
likely culprit behind the attack and that it had instead been carried
out by al-Qaeda-linked rebels in the area.
A
year later in 2014, former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and
Professor Theodore Postol of MITpublished
a report that
found that the intelligence used to blame Assad’s forces for the
attack was grossly inaccurate. A few months later, Pulitzer Prize
award-winning journalist Seymour
Hersch confirmed that the
al-Nusra rebels in Ghouta had the means, motive and opportunity to
carry out the attack themselves. On separate occasions, al-Nusra was
confirmed to have used chemical weapons against civilians.
Just
like Ghouta, Idlib is dominated by al-Nusra. Earlier this year, even
the Washington
Post admitted that
Idlib’s “moderate” rebels had all but been replaced by al-Nusra
and other terrorist factions in Syria. Aron Lund of the Century
Foundation told
the Post that
“Idlib is now basically being abandoned to the jihadis. This might
be the end of the opposition as understood by the opposition’s
backers abroad. They won’t have any reason to support it.”
If
Western governments and media outlets repeat the mistakes of 2013 by
not verifying the claims made by the White Helmets or the one-man
show at SOHR, they may very well end up offering these extremist
groups support if they prematurely choose to retaliate against Assad
before the dust can seŃtle.
Will intervention be on the table?
United
States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks to
reporters after a Security Council meeting on the situation in the
Middle East, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 at U.N. headquarters. (AP/Mary
Altaffer)
However,
the U.S.-led coalition and NATO nations seem less interested in the
veracity of the information than in the opportunity these accusations
– however baseless and dubious they may be – offer for their
long-standing goals of regime change in Syria. Immediately after news
of the attack broke, with only the White Helmets and SOHR testimony
as sources, France – a U.S. coalition member – called
for an emergency meeting of
the UN Security Council to discuss how to respond to the “disgusting”
attack, a meeting now set to take place Wednesday morning. Hours
later, EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said
that Assad bears “primary responsibility” for
the attack. If more countries choose to lay the blame on Assad for
the attack, the 2013 agreement could easily crumble – making Syria
once again vulnerable to foreign military intervention.
The
Associated Press reported that the U.S. envoy to the UN Nikki Haley
condemned the attack as “terrible” but stopped short of blaming
Assad directly. However, Haley said
just yesterday that
the Syrian people no longer wanted Assad as leader after telling ABC
News on Sunday that “Assad is always a priority” and that the
U.S. planned to bring him to justice. These comments stray far from
the rhetoric recently used by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
who said
last Thursday that
the long-term status of “President Assad will be decided by the
Syrian people.”
Haley’s
recent statements suggest that the Trump administration’s approach
is quickly shifting and will likely shift even more due to these
latest accusations targeting the Syrian government. While some in the
Trump administration, such as Tillerson, have publicly called for a
non-interventionist approach in Syria – something which Trump
himself has long promised – recent
U.S. military actions in Syria suggest that
the real strategy is something else entirely.
As MintPress
previously reported,
Trump’s recent
deployment of 2,500 troops to
the Middle East – which are to be divided between Syria and Iraq –
suggests that the U.S. is preparing for more than just a “final
assault” against Daesh, especially considering that the Army even
admitted that troops would stay in Syria long after Daesh’s defeat
to “stabilize” the region for its “allies.”
In
addition, recent moves by the administration to
create “safe zones” in
Syria would also require the U.S. to significantly increase its troop
deployments in Syria – troops that would remain in the country
indefinitely. Indeed, the Pentagon has suggested that future troop
deployments in Syria will be significant, as it is no
longer publicly announcing future
deployments or troop movements. All of this despite the fact that
Assad has stated that U.S. forces were not invited into the country
and that they are
essentially “invaders.”
Given
that this latest gas attack is already being used politically in a
similar fashion to the Ghouta attack of 2013, it seems likely that
Assad will once again become a target of this quickly-growing
standing army of foreign soldiers within its borders – one that has
amassed under the cover of offering humanitarian assistance and
“fighting terrorism.”
Reviving the ‘Chemical Weapons’ Lie: New US-UK Calls for Regime Change, Military Attack Against Syria
Patrick Henningsen
Here
it comes again. As the enemies of peace continue to pressure a new US
President into deeper war commitments overseas, and as Washington’s
Deep State works relentlessly opposing Russian moves in Syria at
every turn, the war drums have started again – beating harder
than ever now, clamouring for a new US-led attack on Syria. This
morning we saw the familiar theme emerge, and just in time to provide
a convenient backdrop to this week’s Brussels’ ‘Peace Talks’
and conference on “Syria’s Future”.
The
US-led ‘Coalition’ prepares to make its end-run into Syria to
‘Retake
Raqqa,’
and impose itsSafe
Zones in
order to partition Syria,
more media demonization of the Syrian government appears to be needed
by the West.
On
cue, the multi-billion dollar US and UK media machines sprung into
overdrive this morning over reports based primarily from their own
‘activist’ media outlets. Aleppo
Media Center and
others embedded in the Al Nusra-dominated terrorist stronghold
of Idlib,
Syria,
alongside their media counterpart the UK-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR)
funded by the UK and EU, are all now claiming that the Syrian and
Russian Airforces have launched a chemical weapons airstrike killing
civilians in Idlib.
In
their report today entitled, “Syria
conflict: ‘Chemical attack’ in Idlib kills 58”,
the BBC is also alleging in their report that Sarin gas
was used.
The
alleged “chemical airstrikes” are said to have taken place in the
town of Khan Sheikhoun, about 50km south of the city of Idlib.
Predictably,
the BBC and other similar reports by CNN, have triggered a wave of
‘consensus condemnation’ and indignation by the usual
voices, the UN’s Staffan de Mistura, Francois Hollande, and, of
course, UK Foreign Secretary Boris
Johnson,
who said that President Bashar al-Assad “would be guilty of a war
crime” if it somehow be proven that his ‘regime’ was
responsible.
“Bombing
your own civilians with chemical weapons is unquestionably a war
crime and they must be held to account,” he said (reported by
BBC).
But
is the mainstream media’s version of events what actually happened?
The
BBC claims in their article that, “Opposition
activists said Syrian government or Russian warplanes carried out the
strikes.” This
claim should be checked against any Russian air sorties scheduled for
the same period. As of this morning, Russia’s defence ministry has
stated that it had not carried out any air strikes the
area.
The
problem here is that the BBC and others are not only taking
‘opposition activists’ reports of achemical
attack at
face value, they are also elevating claims that the Syrian and
Russian airforces were then later hitting the medical clinics
who were treating the survivors:
“Later,
aircraft fired rockets at local clinics treating survivors, medics
and activists said.”
Expectedly,
as with past
claims of
“chemical attacks,” the notorious US-UK funded ‘NGO’,
the White
Helmets have
already played
a central role in scripting the narrative for
this latestchemical
attack.
As
with so many other previous reports on Syria, the BBC, CNN and AP’s
reporting relies exclusively on “opposition activists” and
“opposition media agencies,” including the ‘pro-opposition’ Step
News agency’,
the Edlib
Media Center (EMC),
and ‘opposition journalists’ like photographer Hussein
Kayal,
as well as an unnamed “AFP news agency journalist”.
The
unnamed “AFP journalist” is particularly interesting, as it seems
to be the source of a key portion of the BBC’s version of
events:
“An
AFP news agency journalist saw a young girl, a woman and two elderly
people dead at a hospital, all with foam still visible around their
mouths.”
The
journalist also reported that the same facility was hit by a rocket
on Tuesday afternoon, bringing down rubble on top of doctors treating
the injured.”
However,
as you read further down the BBC report, the story gets less certain,
as the story becomes very lose:
“The
source of the projectile was not clear,
but the EMC and the opposition Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC)
network said warplanes had targeted several clinics.”
After
their source the SOHR refused to say which “chemical” was
supposedly dropped, the BBC quickly moved in to fill in the
blanks by framing the story that the Syrian-Russian Airforces had
launched a “Sarin Attack”.
“The
SOHR said it was unable to say what exactly was dropped. However, the
EMC and LCC said it was believed to be the nerve agent Sarin, which
is highly toxic and considered 20 times as deadly as cyanide.”
At
no point in its reporting does the BBC ever express any skepticism
that maybe their ‘activist’ sources could be providing false or
misleading information. Ultimately, these reports can be used to
trigger renewed calls by Western officials for military strikes
against the ‘Syrian Regime’ – which was exactly what happened
today after these news stories were circulated. Within a few hours
after these reports circulated, Congressman Adam
Kinzinger (R,
Illinois) came on CNN with Wolf Blitzer who asked Kinzinger point
blank: What
can be done to remove this regime? Kinzinger
then replied by calling
outright for US airstrikes to “Take out the Assad Regime in Syria”,
including “cratering their airstrips so no planes can take off”
and creating a “No Fly Zone” over Syria.
These statements,
as bombastic as they may sound, are serious and should not be taken
casually. The problem is they are based on a series of lies. Of
course, Kinzinger was followed on-air by John
McCain protesting
against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent
commentsthis
week that, “The Syrian people should be able to choose their own
(political) future” – effectively holding the overwhelming
majority of Syrian in contempt for supporting their government.
CNN
Senior Middle East correspondent Arwa
Damon also
chimed in with Blitzer from New York, and without any real evidence
presented as to what has happened and who is to blame,
she swiftly concluded that the Idlib “chemical attack” was
the work of ‘the regime’ and that America cannot stand back idly
and do nothing, and how this would show a “lack
of humanity,”
The
BBC does briefly mention an alternative report, but carefully tried
to discredit it in the court of political opinion by labelling it as
from “Pro-Government journalists,” stated here:
“Pro-government
journalists later cited military sources as saying there had been an
explosion at an al-Qaeda chemical weapons factory in Khan Sheikhoun
that was caused either by an air strike or an accident.”
As
expected, the UN affiliated chemical weapons watchdog,
the OPCW, quickly
announced they were “seriously concerned” about the alleged
chemical attack, and that they were now “gathering and
analysing information from all available sources”. One hopes
that this will entail more than just looking at ‘activist’
or White
Helmets material
being circulated on the US and western media.
Incredibly,
Kinzinger also said on national TV with CNN that people should ignore
any stories which DO NOT implicate the Syrian government waged
chemical attacks against its own people in East Ghouta in 2013 –
and that these should be dismissed as “fake news” put out by
‘the Russians and the FSB.’ By this statement, Kinzinger is
essentially saying that award-winning American journalists Seymour
Hersh and Robert Parry are akin to being Russian agents.
In fact, Kinzinger is wrong and lying in his capacity as a
high-ranking House Committee member.
In 2013, the US and UK went on an all-out propaganda blitz to try and implicate the Syrian Government in advance of war votes in both Washington and London. The campaign failed.
The
following are links to a small sample of factual reports publicly
available which clearly show that the alleged “Sarin
Attack” in 2013 was
in fact the work of western and Gulf-backed ‘opposition rebels’
(terrorists) and not the
Assad government, and all of these reports have been more
or less ignored by CNN, BBC and the entirety of the western
mainstream media – because they do not fit into the western ‘regime
change’ and US-led military intervention narrative:
C.J.
Chivers
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/middleeast/new-study-refines-view-of-sarin-attack-in-syria.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/middleeast/new-study-refines-view-of-sarin-attack-in-syria.html
Carla
Del Ponte, UN
Inspector
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/uns-carla-del-ponte-says-there-is-evidence-rebels-may-have-used-sarin-in-syria-8604920.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/uns-carla-del-ponte-says-there-is-evidence-rebels-may-have-used-sarin-in-syria-8604920.html
Carmen
Russell-Sluchansky
http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-failed-pretext-for-war-seymour-hersh-eliot-higgins-mit-professors-on-sarin-gas-attack/188597/
http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-failed-pretext-for-war-seymour-hersh-eliot-higgins-mit-professors-on-sarin-gas-attack/188597/
Swedish
Doctors for Human
Rights
http://theindicter.com/swedish-doctors-for-human-rights-white-helmets-video-macabre-manipulation-of-dead-children-and-staged-chemical-weapons-attack-to-justify-a-no-fly-zone-in-syria/
http://theindicter.com/swedish-doctors-for-human-rights-white-helmets-video-macabre-manipulation-of-dead-children-and-staged-chemical-weapons-attack-to-justify-a-no-fly-zone-in-syria/
More
on the MIT
Study:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/01/20/mit-study-further-destroys-washingtons-syria-chemical-weapons-claim/
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/01/20/mit-study-further-destroys-washingtons-syria-chemical-weapons-claim/
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