Staged chemical weapons attack being prepped in Syria to frame Damascus – Russian MoD
RT,
24
August, 2018
The
US and its allies are preparing new airstrikes on Syria, the Russian
Defense Ministry said, adding that militants are poised to stage a
chemical weapons attack in order to frame Damascus and provide a
pretext for the strikes.
The
attack would be used as a pretext for US, UK and French airstrikes on
Syrian targets, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General
Igor Konashenkov said. USS ‘The Sullivans,’ an Arleigh
Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was already deployed to
the Persian Gulf a couple of days ago, he added.
The
destroyer has 56 cruise missiles on board, according to data from the
Russian Defence Ministry. A US Rockwell B-1 Lancer, a supersonic
bomber equipped with 24 cruise missiles, has also been deployed at
the Qatari Al Udeid Airbase.
The
provocations are being prepared by militants from Al-Nusra Front (now
known as Tahrir al-Sham) in Idlib province, northwestern Syria,
In
order to stage the attack, some eight canisters of chlorine were
delivered in to village near Jisr al-Shughur city for the terrorists’
use, he added. A separate group of militants, prepped by private
British security company Olive, have also arrived in the area. The
group will be disguised as volunteers from the White Helmets group
and will simulate a rescue operation involving locals purportedly
injured in the attack, according to the military official.
According
to the Defense Ministry spokesman, recent
statements by
US National Security Advisor John Bolton – in which he threatened
to bomb Syria – could be interpreted as an implicit confirmation of
such airstrikes. On August 22, Bolton stated that “...
if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very
strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”
In
April, the US, UK and France unleashed a bombing campaign on Syria.
The airstrikes were carried out in response to an alleged gas attack
in Douma on April 7, which the West blamed on Bashar Assad’s
government. The operation started hours before a team from the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was due
to reach the city.
Back
then, Syrian defenses were scrambled to repel some 103 cruise
missiles and air-to-surface missiles launched at civilian and
military targets by the Western trio. It managed to intercept at
least 71 of them, the Russian Defense Ministry said at the time.
DETAILS
TO FOLLOW
Bolton
calls on Al-Qaeda to stage more chemical attacks in Syria
Eva
Bartlett
RT,
24
August, 2018
In
a move that was entirely predictable, the US administration is once
again threatening to bomb Syria if there is a “chemical weapons
attack”.
This
was entirely predictable because that chemical attack script has been
read out, with salty crocodile tears, fake concern, and mocked
indignation by US talking heads over the years - since 2012, in fact,
when former US President Obama himself drew his red line on Syria.
The
latest script-reader to toe the chemical hoax line is President
Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, who on August
22, stated:
“...if
the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly
and they really ought to think about this a long time.”
Beyond
the tattered veil of moral superiority that is US war propaganda,
Bolton's words were clearly a very publiccommand
to Al-Qaeda and
co-extremists to stage yet another fake chemical attack.
#BREAKING Bolton: US to act 'very strongly' if Syria uses chemical weapons in Idlib pic.twitter.com/13zkzDQwYr
John Bolton just ordered al-Qaeda to use chemical weapons against our civilians. Nothing is clearer than that.
Bolton's
statement was preceded by an August 21 France-UK-US (FUKUS) joint
statement,
likewise threatening further illegal bombing of Syria if a chemical
attack in Syria occurred (based on evidence the US never has nor
needs to reveal).
Recall
that the last time they acted on such a threat, in April 2018, the US
and its interventionist allies didn't
even wait for
the Douma lie to be exposed, let alone for any mythical evidence to
materialize, before they illegally bombed Syria with 103 missiles.
The bombings occurred before the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had a chance to visit the Douma sites in
question.
It
seems that FUKUS' appetite for destroying Syria wasn't satiated in
April 2018, nor in the April 2017 bombings of Syria following
unsubstantiated allegations around Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib.
Bolton's
assertions are backed by the usual suspects of the corporate media,
fake human rights groups, “media
activists”,
and individuals linked to NATO's Atlantic Council war
propaganda think
tank.
The
over two decades-long dictator of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ken Roth
- who couldn't
even discern whether
a video was Gaza's Israeli-flattened Shuja'iyya or Syria when
he tweeted about
it being Aleppo in 2015 - is re-beating the
Ghouta 2013 dead horse to scare would-be humanitarians around the
world. The Western narrative of events in Ghouta
beenwidely-discredited by
journalists, and by
the so-called “rebels” themselves.
I stand corrected: this is video of Gaza destruction after last summer, not Aleppo. Telling. trib.al/8mKXm1R
However,
many people are rightly skeptical and disbelieving of the alarm
cries, having seen this sort of song and dance before. The war
propaganda heightened dramatically just prior to and during the
liberation of eastern Aleppo and of
eastern Ghouta,
to name but two examples.
Indeed,
the AFP's Twitter
thread on
Bolton's threat is filled with almost-exclusively mocking comments
about replaying the false flag chemical attack scenario, and other
overused, unbelievable war propaganda. Likewise on NBCNews'
video of
Bolton making the threats.
Doing
the job of corporate media, others continue
to pose valuable questions about this latest outbreak of propaganda
on chemical weapons attacks.
NATO war propagandists, not even slightly original
Chemical
weapons accusations are among the most overused war propaganda
tactics during the war on Syria. From late 2012 to April 2018, NATO's
mouthpieces have screamed bloody chlorine or sarin. But time and
again, they've been revealed as intellectually-challenged,
supremely-unoriginal liars, to put it politely. Less shrill voices
have pointed out the many occasions where so-called “rebels”
had access to sarin, control over a chlorine factory, and motives for
an attack to occur, among other prudent points.
Some
of the more loudly blasted claims were: March 2013, in Khan al-Assal,
Aleppo; August 2013, in eastern Ghouta areas; April 2017, in Khan
Sheikhoun, Idlib; and April 2018, in Douma, eastern Ghouta.
Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive (Op-Ed by @EvaKBartlett) on.rt.com/93ay
Of
the Khan al-Assal allegations, Carla Del Ponte, a lead member of the
UNHRC commission of Inquiry, stated that it was “rebels” which
used sarin, saying:
“I
was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got... they
were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition.”
A
Mint Press News journalist who went to the areas in question wrote
of speaking
to “rebels”
and their family members who blamed Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar for
sending them weapons they didn't know were chemical weapons and
didn’t know how to use.
Investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh wrote and
spoke on the sarin allegations, noting (among
many things) that, “the
sarin that the Syria army has, has a different chemical component
than the sarin that would be made by al-Nusra.”
Among
the many questions journalists should have posed around the April
2017 Khan Sheikhoun allegations is the question of how we can trust
any of the samples by the OPCW when clearly there was no
chain of custody:
the area is controlled by Al-Qaeda or groups affiliated, groups which
have a vested interest in fudging results.
As
noted in an
article by
Moon of Alabama, there is also a distinct lack of certainty around
the Khan Sheikhoun accusations. The article further notes that in the
OPCW report on Khan Sheikhoun, there are what they mildly dub as
irregularities: the 57 cases of patients being admitted to hospitals
before the alleged incident occurred, and the contradictory results
of blood vs urine samples in “sarin
victims”.
Following
the April 2018 White House accusation that
the Syrian government used sarin in Douma, and in spite ofDamascus'
insistence on an
OPCW investigation, FUKUS
bombed Syria,
including Damascus' densely-inhabited Barzeh district, destroying a
site which was involved in production of cancer treatment components,
but not chemical weapons.
In
Douma, medical staff said that
patients had not shown symptoms of a chemical attack. Douma citizens
likewise said there hadn't been a chemical attack. Seventeen Douma
civilians and medical staff testified this at the Hague. Corporate
media snidely dismissed these testimonies.
The
OPCW's July 2018 interim
report on
Douma noted that in samples taken from alleged sites, no chemicals
that are prohibited in the Chemical Weapons Convention were detected.
The OPCW found traces of “chlorinated
organic chemicals”,
but not Sarin, as alleged bysupposed
expert Eliot
Higgins and the White House, among others.
Who
benefits from these repeated allegations? Would the Syrian government
truly have benefited had it perpetrated any of these alleged attacks?
No. Would it have been logical for the Syrian president to have
ordered such a chemical attack, knowing it would bring forward the
wrath of Obama, Trump, and their allies? Do these allegations benefit
the regime-change coalition? Yes.
In
their recent briefing
report on
the Douma allegations, the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and
Media analyzed the facts around the Douma allegations (and previous
ones), the discrepancies around the official narratives, and the
murky details behind experts bringing us “evidence”,
including one expert with potential ties to the UK's Secret
Intelligence Service, MI6.
Factors
which just might influence the official outcome of investigations.
Regarding
the latest concerns by FUKUS about a chemical attack, I agree on one
point: we should be concerned that there will be a new attack or
staging thereof, but not by the Syrian government. As has happened so
many times prior, a staged attack would be done by NATO's tools in
Syria.
In
fact, Syrian
media recently
noted the likelihood that members of the White Helmets and Al-Qaeda
in Syria recently transported shipments of barrels from a chlorine
recycling factory near the Turkish border to terrorist-occupied areas
of Idlib.
If
true, indeed strange activities for a “neutral
rescue”
group, and a worrisome setting of the stage for a new round of
accusations.
Obfuscating the legitimate fight against Al-Qaeda in Idlib
What
Bolton, CNN, or any other mouthpieces of illegal intervention
attempts in Syria are avoiding mentioning is the Al-Qaeda elephant in
the room: the designated terrorist group, which now goes by Hay'at
Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), dominates Idlib. HTS supposedly “cut”
ties with Al-Qaeda but still maintains the same ideology.
Envoy
for the US-led coalition (pretending to defeat ISIS), Brett McGurk,
even deemed
Idlib “the
largest Al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11, tied directly to Ayman
al-Zawahiri (current #Al-Qaeda leader)
& this is a HUGE problem.”
Yet,
CNN was just back in Idlib (having illegally entered,
again), glossing
over the
Al-Qaeda factor, as
predicted,
and beginning, what will become, a nonstop stream of war propaganda
focused on the city.
Eyes on Idlib: Syrian children robbed of innocence to act as mouthpieces for US coalition proxies (Op-Ed by @VanessaBeeley) on.rt.com/9cis
In
fact, many on social media are predicting the recycled war propaganda
memes we'll be
seeing more
of soon from the regime-change coalition, including “last
hospitals”,
Bana al-Abed 3.0 child twitter accounts (Bana 2.0 accounts were
created during the liberation of eastern Ghouta), and the latest
emotive hashtag #EyesOnIdlib.
Days
ago, HTS' Abu Mohammed al-Golani spoke
against the
surrender of armed groups in Idlib. Another “Syrian
rebel”
in Idlib, an Egyptian Al-Qaeda commander, threatened
Syrians,
who might be considering reconciliation, with crucifixion.
It's
not only terrorists who oppose reconciliation. Western governments
find that concept a thorn in the side of their intervention project.
Reconciliation has brought peace and stability to areas across Syria,
most recently Daraa governorate. When I went to Daraa in May 2018,
terrorist shells rained down. Now, after a combination of military
operations and reconciliations throughout Daraa, calm reigns, as in
eastern Ghouta and Aleppo prior.
Yet,
every time the process is beginning in a new area, terrorists shell
humanitarian corridors, and Western talking heads squeal about
unverified “atrocities”, turning wilfully blind eyes to Al-Qaeda
and affiliates in Syria, and demonizing the Syrian and Russian
governments for fighting terrorism in Syria.
The
FUKUS August 21 statement also
read: “We
implore those countries to recognize that the unchecked use of
chemical weapons by any state presents an unacceptable security
threat to all states.”
I'm
fairly certain I'm not alone in demanding the US and its allies be
held accountable for their documented, unchecked and criminal use of
chemical weapons on civilians around the world.
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