21st Century Wire says…
Judging by the western mainstream media push this week regarding more sensational alleged ‘chemical weapons’ attacks in Syria, and also by the west’s hand-picked puppet ‘opposition government’ currently being wined and dined in a London five star hotel and meeting with UK mandarins like Boris Johnson – the US-led NATO All Stars are doubling down and recycling 2013 pro-war propaganda talking points in a desperate bid to make the case for yet another “humanitarian intervention.”
Up until recently, the western-led effort to collapse, divide and takeover the nation of Syria has relied on a series of crudely-spun lies and media-generated talking points – all designed to fool the western public into backing another failed ‘nation-building’ (or nation-wrecking, to be more specific) project. On cue it seems, western-based Pro-War apologists (‘progressive liberal’ and Neocon alike) are feverishly crying, “This time it will be different, we swear. We need to save the children from the brutal dictator…” And so it goes.
NOTE: There are about 20 major lies that the western media are trading in. Below, you will find ten of them.
Understand these lies, and know how they are constructed by agents of influence in the US and UK establishment media and political circles…
By Neil Clark
RT Op-Edge
Here are 10 of the worst lies that have been peddled by the West regarding Syria, with the aim of giving people living in Western countries an entirely false view of the conflict that has been raging in the Middle East country since 2011.
As in the case of previous US-led wars against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya the lies told in relation to the ongoing conflict in Syria have been quite outrageous.
1. The West has failed to intervene in Syria – and that’s been the problem
This oft-repeated claim (only last week the Washington Post was lamenting ‘the disastrous non-intervention in Syria’) is a complete inversion of the truth.
In which hundreds of millions of dollars by the CIA and Pentagon and US weapons to Syria is not an intervention. https://t.co/dE2qR6lf4r
— Arash Karami (@thekarami) July 6, 2016
Even without directly bombing the Syrian government in 2013 (as the uber-hawks wanted), the west has intervened massively in Syria, by funding, supporting and training violent anti-government ‘rebels’ [including terrorist organisations like Al Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda in Syria], many of whose weapons just happened to end up in the hands of ISIS. The west not only did (sic) ignite this conflict (see here), they’ve also helped to keep it stoked for over five years.
Brendan O’Neill had the perfect riposte to the neocon/faux-left ‘If only we’d intervened in Syria’ brigade:
“Western intervention is the ultimate author of the nightmare in northern Iraq and Syria. Do something? You already did something; you did this, you made this horror.”
2. The conflict is the fault of wicked Assad (and Russia for supporting him)
The dominant western narrative says that the conflict was started by Assad after the ‘evil dictator’ clamped down on peaceful protests against his rule in March 2011. The reality is that peaceful pro-democracy protests were hijacked at a very early stage by those determined to provoke a violent response from the Syrian authorities. In the border city of Daraa, where the conflict effectively began, seven police officers were killed and the Ba’ath Party headquarters and a courthouse were torched.
Baath Party headquarters torched in Syrian city of Daraa. #Syria
— Iyad el-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) March 20, 2011
In the first month of hostilities, no fewer than eighty-eight soldiers were killed.
Assad was faced with a violent insurrection against the Syrian state – by terrorists – many of whom came from outside the country. Was he expected simply to allow these ’rebels’ take power (as the West was demanding) – even there was no evidence they had widespread popular support? The question we need to ask is what would the US government do if faced by a violent insurrection by foreign-backed ‘rebels’ who were killing officials of the US State and blowing up government buildings. Its response would, I’m sure, be even more ruthless than the Syrian government’s has been.
3.President Assad enjoys little support in Syria
Whenever a country is targeted for regime change by the US Empire, its leader is de-legitimised. We’re told that said leader has no popular support and only remains in power because he’s a ‘brutal dictator.’ But there’s plenty of evidence that Assad, whatever western elites may think of him, has considerable support in his country. In early 2012, a poll showed 55 percent of Syrians wanted their President to stay. When the Guardian’s veteran foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele – a man who knows Syria very well – wrote a piece about this entitled ’Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know this from western media’, he was attacked by Imperial Truth Enforcers.
In 2014, Assad won a landslide victory in the country’s first multi-party Presidential election for fifty years.
CIA-backed "moderate rebels" (Arabs) are fighting Pentagon-backed "moderate rebels" (Kurds) in northern #Syria. pic.twitter.com/OeayF5PZho
— Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) August 28, 2016
6. It’s an established fact that Assad/the Syrian government used chemical weapons at Ghouta
@JohnWight1 Surprise surprise. Read reports when it happened that it was not Assad. But main stream media were in hysterics it was
— Steffan Mac McKnight (@karmolz) December 14, 2015
If I received ten pounds for every time I’ve read ’Assad gassed his own people at Ghouta’ or words to that effect, I’d be a very rich man. But what is asserted as an incontrovertible fact by western war propagandists, is anything but. Three years on ,we still don’t know for sure who carried out the chemical weapons attack. Yes, it could have been the Syrian authorities, but it could also have been a false flag operation carried out by anti-government ‘rebels’.
Common sense tells us that Assad would have been mad to order such an attack knowing that UN inspectors were in Damascus at the time, and western hawks were itching for a reason to bomb him. Next time you see a hawk claim as an established fact that ‘Assad gassed his own people’ at Ghouta ask for the proof. It’s long odds on you won’t receive a reply.
7. Russia and the Syrian government have been helping ISIS
This is a good example of an acceptable ‘conspiracy theory’. After Russia had started bombing ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria in September 2015, we were told that Russia was giving ISIS an air force.
However, when a Russian passenger plane was shot down a few weeks later, the line changed – the attack was a ‘warning shot’ for Russia from ISIS.
But why, if Russia was providing ISIS with an air-force, would the group want to down a Russian plane?
So weird that ISIS is spewing hatred & threats at Russia because @thedailybeast told us Russia was ISIS's Air Force https://t.co/WT1hY8yRsf
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 4, 2015
In fact, Russia and the Syrian army has inflicted far more damage on ISIS in Syria over the past year than the US and its allies have. In March, the ancient city of Palmyra was liberated from ISIS by the Syrian army, supported by Russian air strikes.
As Danielle Ryan wrote at the time, it was “the single biggest defeat for ISIS since it declared its caliphate, but the West does not seem interested. Why? Because then they’d have to give some credit to Russia”.
8. The West is on the side of the ‘good guys’ in Syria
The truth is the West hasn’t been fighting ‘terror’ in Syria but aiding it. By any objective standard, ’ moderate rebels’ supported by the US, the UK and their allies, have been guilty of appalling crimes which would definitely be classed as ‘terrorism’ if they were committed in a western country or in a country which was an ally of the West. As for being horrified by the rise of ISIS, we know from declassified secret US intelligence documents from 2012 that the prospect of a ‘Salafist’ principality being established in eastern Syria was “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want” as it would“isolate the Syrian regime.”
US aids Turkey invasion of Syria. US also backs Kurds fighting Turkey, alNusra against ISIS, ISIS against Syria & Iraq, & Israel against all
— Sami Ramadani سامي (@SamiRamadani1) August 25, 2016
9. There are 70,000 moderate rebels in Syria
This outlandish and uncorroborated claim was made by British Prime Minister David Cameron when he was trying to get British Parliamentary approval for airstrikes in Syria last November. Cameron‘s exact words were: “We believe there are around 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters – principally the Free Syrian Army – who do not belong to extremist groups… and with whom we can co-ordinate attacks on ISIL.” But in January, the former British Prime Minister (having won his vote) was already back-tracking by admitting that some of the “70,000” were “relatively hardline Islamists”.
When Cameron was asked by RT’s Eisa Ali: “Why won’t you or the Defense Secretary name the supposedly moderate groups in whose name these fighters are in the field?” his reply was, “We’ll be effectively giving President Assad a list of the groups and the people and potentially the areas he should be targeting.”
The “70,000 moderate rebels” claim is likely to go down in history as Cameron’s version of Tony Blair’s 2002 claim that Iraq had WMDs, which could (in 2003) “be activated within 45 minutes.”
10. Western intentions in Syria are humanitarian, whereas Russia is acting out of self-interest
Look at this disgusting arrogance , the US warns the Syrian airforce not to fly over their own airspace? #Syria https://t.co/I6XnVqTvF5
— Partisangirl (@Partisangirl) August 21, 2016
Repeat after me (by order of the NeoCons): ‘The West only wants to help the Syrian people be free, while the Russians are ‘propping up the evil Assad’ for their own selfish reasons’. In fact, ‘regime change’ in Syria was on the West’s agenda long before anti-government protests began in 2011, and dates back to at least 2006 when Syria’s support for Hezbollah was blamed for Israel’s failure to defeat the Lebanese group in the 33-day war in that year.
Just imagine what the US response would be if Russia set out to bring about a violent regime change in a country that was a long-standing ally of the US. We can be sure the Russian actions would not be portrayed as ‘selfless’ and ‘humanitarian’!
Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66
READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files
