A series WMD-related accusations leveled against Damascus was the primary driving behind Washington’s agenda in the Middle East as a whole, and Syria in particular. Instead of assisting the peace process that encompasses all the parties locked in a bitter feud in an attempt to stabilize the region, the West prefers to undermine it by throwing around allegations of chemical weapons use by promoting the infamous White Helmets and other fake narratives in the media.
Nowhere the decay of modern journalism can be seen clearer than in those misleading reports coming from Syria, where claims of chemical weapons use were both unsubstantiated and deliberately misleading. Every time a conflict errupts in some corner of the world, Washington will first choose a side in it, one that it can safely manipulate, and then it will subject the opposing one to a constant barrage of accusations, painting it as the most oppressive regime in history that must be dismantled before any other course of action can be allowed. After all, the initial media rampage is only there to provide a smoke screen to those perpetrators that would launch yet another US invasion against yet another sovereign state. As it’s been noted by Max Blumenthal:
In 2007, journalist James Bamford recalled how Americans had been subjected to “a long line of hyped and fraudulent stories that would eventually propel the U.S. into a war with Iraq—the first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.” The dirty war on Syria represents an extension of that strategy, with the mainstream media operating hand in glove with insurgent-allied influence operations like the White Helmets to cultivate public support for another war of regime change.
Indeed, the manipulative narrative designed to undermine the Syrian government is historically unprecedented in its depth and scale. We’ve seen it all, starting with CNN presenting its viewers a scripted interview featuring a Syrian girl blaming Assad for chemical weapons attacks, to the BBC’s tear-inducing fake documentary – Saving Syria’s Children.
However, a number of whistleblowers from within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have come forward to reveal that this organization suppressed their findings that showed that Damascus hasn’t launched a single chemical attack over the course of the Syrian war, while its opponents fabricated evidence to excuse their attacks on Syria and its people.
One of the whistleblowers leaked the withheld Engineering Assessment document contradicting the OPCW’s official ballistics report that was presented to the general public. This document was evaluated by MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol that came to the conclusion that the so-called 2018 gas attack in Douma was a staged event. In his interview to The Grayzone, Postol stated that “the evidence is overwhelming.”
In spite of OPCW claiming that the Syrian Air Force bombed the city of Douma with chlorine-filled cylinders, independent experts were quick to point out that containers of the size that were listed in the report couldn’t breach massive holes in rooftops that were visible on the pictures that OPCW provided. It’s most likely that those containers were put there to fabricate the event in the aftermath of the area getting shelled with conventional munitions. Moreover, once Jan Henderson presented his findings last May, nobody in his right mind would have second thoughts about the fabricated nature of the event.
Of course, nobody is willing to speak these days about the fact that a great many of actual eye-witnesses of this so-called “attack” were claiming that the White Helmets were fabricating evidence in an attempt to incriminate Damascus in a non-existent chemical attack, in anticipation of the arrival of a OPCW investigation team.
Earlier, a renowned BBC Syria producer announced to his followers on Twitter that after “six-month investigation” he was in position to safely claim that so-called Douma Hospital scene filmed by the White Helmets crew was a fake. According to his posts, the attack did happen, Sarin wasn’t used, no fatalities occurred in the hospital, as everything around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect. He then added that among the people who were filming the scene was a “brute and shifty” Doctor Abu Bakr Hanan, affiliated with the radical group known as Jaysh Al-Islam.
Those facts become particularly worrisome if you take into consideration a series of reports claiming that the besieged terrorists in Idlib are working together with the White Helmets to stage new gas attacks in Syria. They have already created a “chemical” unit tasked with preparing such operations, headed by a London-born terrorist Abu Basir al-Britani, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
With all of the above mentioned reports taken together, there could be no doubt that the OPCW report on the so-called 2018 Douma chemical attack was deliberately omitting facts in a bid to aid and facilitate Washington’s anti-Syria narrative, while actual findings were suppressed.
This fact illustrate how the so-called humanitarian organizations are working hand-in-hand with Western journalists to create a fake narrative that has nothing in common with reporting facts, promoting human rights, or upholding international law. It’s hardly surprising that Sky News has recently got itself entangled in a controversy, as its news crew decided to venture deep inside the territory controlled by radical militants in Syria. They’ve even managed to find a guide, a well-known Al-Qaeda affiliated militant that goes by the name of Bilal Abdul Kareem. However, the news crew presented this individual to their viewers as “an independent journalist that cares a lot about the future of his country.”
Is it of any wonder that Western journalism undergoes a prolonged credibility crisis these days? And OPCW, with its deliberate manipulation of facts, is now going to suffer the same sorry fate.
Ron Henry is a freelance political observer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”