By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 7, 2017
Just two days after news broke of an alleged poison-gas attack in northern Syria, President Trump brushed aside advice from some U.S. intelligence analysts doubting the Syrian regime’s guilt and launched a lethal retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian airfield.
Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.
There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.
But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.
One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.
The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus.
White House Infighting
In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed.
Though Bannon and Kushner are often presented as rivals, the source said, they shared the belief that Trump should tell the truth about Syria, revealing the Obama administration’s CIA analysis that a fatal sarin gas attack in 2013 was a “false-flag” operation intended to sucker President Obama into fully joining the Syrian war on the side of the rebels — and the intelligence analysts’ similar beliefs about Tuesday’s incident.
Instead, Trump went along with the idea of embracing the initial rush to judgment blaming Assad for the Idlib poison-gas event. The source added that Trump saw Thursday night’s missile assault as a way to change the conversation in Washington, where his administration has been under fierce attack from Democrats claiming that his election resulted from a Russian covert operation.
If changing the narrative was Trump’s goal, it achieved some initial success with several of Trump’s fiercest neocon critics, such as neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, praising the missile strike, as did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The neocons and Israel have long sought “regime change” in Damascus even if the ouster of Assad might lead to a victory by Islamic extremists associated with Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State.
Wagging the Dog
Trump employing a “wag the dog” strategy, in which he highlights his leadership on an international crisis to divert attention from domestic political problems, is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s decision to attack Serbia in 1999 as impeachment clouds were building around his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Trump’s advisers, in briefing the press on Thursday night, went to great lengths to highlight Trump’s compassion toward the victims of the poison gas and his decisiveness in bombing Assad’s military in contrast to Obama’s willingness to allow the intelligence community to conduct a serious review of the evidence surrounding the 2013 sarin-gas case.
Ultimately, Obama listened to his intelligence advisers who told him there was no “slam-dunk” evidence implicating Assad’s regime and he pulled back from a military strike at the last minute – while publicly maintaining the fiction that the U.S. government was certain of Assad’s guilt.
In both cases – 2013 and 2017 – there were strong reasons to doubt Assad’s responsibility. In 2013, he had just invited United Nations inspectors into Syria to investigate cases of alleged rebel use of chemical weapons and thus it made no sense that he would launch a sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, guaranteeing that the U.N. inspectors would be diverted to that case.
Similarly, now, Assad’s military has gained a decisive advantage over the rebels and he had just scored a major diplomatic victory with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. was no longer seeking “regime change” in Syria. The savvy Assad would know that a chemical weapon attack now would likely result in U.S. retaliation and jeopardize the gains that his military has achieved with Russian and Iranian help.
The counter-argument to this logic – made by The New York Times and other neocon-oriented news outlets – essentially maintains that Assad is a crazed barbarian who was testing out his newfound position of strength by baiting President Trump. Of course, if that were the case, it would have made sense that Assad would have boasted of his act, rather than deny it.
But logic and respect for facts no longer prevail inside Official Washington, nor inside the mainstream U.S. news media.
Intelligence Uprising
Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.
Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.”
Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.
“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”
Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public.
“People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”
One-Sided Coverage
The mainstream U.S. media has presented the current crisis with the same profound neocon bias that has infected the coverage of Syria and the larger Middle East for decades. For instance, The New York Times on Friday published a lead story by Michael R. Gordon and Michael D. Shear that treated the Syrian government’s responsibility for the poison-gas incident as flat-fact. The lengthy story did not even deign to include the denials from Syria and Russia that they were responsible for any intentional deployment of poison gas.
The article also fit with Trump’s desire that he be portrayed as a decisive and forceful leader. He is depicted as presiding over intense deliberations of war or peace and displaying a deep humanitarianism regarding the poison-gas victims, one of the rare moments when the Times, which has become a reliable neocon propaganda sheet, has written anything favorable about Trump at all.
According to Syrian reports on Friday, the U.S. attack killed 13 people, including five soldiers at the airbase.
Gordon, whose service to the neocon cause is notorious, was the lead author with Judith Miller of the Times’ bogus “aluminum tube” story in 2002 which falsely claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear-weapons program, an article that was then cited by President George W. Bush’s aides as a key argument for invading Iraq in 2003.
Regarding this week’s events, Trump’s desperation to reverse his negative media coverage and the dubious evidence blaming Assad for the Idlib incident could fit with the “Wag the Dog” movie from 1997 in which an embattled president creates a phony foreign crisis in Albania.
In the movie, the White House operation is a cynical psychological operation to convince the American people that innocent Albanian children, including an attractive girl carrying a cat, are in danger when, In reality, the girl was an actor posing before a green screen that allowed scenes of fiery ruins to be inserted as background.
Today, because Trump and his administration are now committed to convincing Americans that Assad really was responsible for Tuesday’s poison-gas tragedy, the prospects for a full and open investigation are effectively ended. We may never know if there is truth to those allegations or whether we are being manipulated by another “wag the dog” psyop.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
MEMO | April 8, 2017
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a buffer zone against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah on the borders with Syria to be part of any future deal to end the Syrian crisis, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Friday.
According to the Israeli newspaper, Netanyahu proposed this issue during meetings with American and other coalition countries.
Netanyahu wants to prevent Iran and Hezbollah from establishing a foothold and he intends to undermine future attacks against Israel, noting that he had suggested international forces to supervise his proposed buffer zone.
Last Friday, the Israeli Maariv revealed that Netanyahu sent messages to the international parties involved in the talks about Syria’s future.
These messages, according to the Egyptian news website Moheet, suggested Israel’s desire to decrease its reliance on military attacks on Syria in exchange for reaching a silent agreement that Iran and Hezbollah do not approach the Armistice Line in the occupied Golan Heights.
Maariv said that Israel would accept the return of the Syrian army to the border area connected with the occupied Palestinian territories based on a 1974 deal between the two.
Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper reported fears from the Israeli political and military leadership from reaching a deal which kept Bashar Al-Assad as president and this would give Iran the chance to deploy forces loyal to it in areas close to the Golan Heights.
Over the past year, the Israeli military has carried out several airstrikes deep inside Syria, targeting Hezbollah’s personnel and weapons.
By Kit | OffGuardian | April 7, 2017
Late Thursday night, The Pentagon stated that their attack on the Syrian Government air-base near Homs was not targeting the regime’s supposed chemical weapon stocks. Despite “all the signs” pointing to Assad’s guilt, and it being “very likely” that this base is where the gas attack originated… no efforts were made to destroy any chemical weapons. At all.
The Pentagon’s official statement says:
The strike was a proportional response to Assad’s heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4.
And that the attack…
… was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.”
But the targets were limited to:
… aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars.
So they “know” where the chemical weapons are. And they “know” Assad used them on civilians and (for all they know) may well do so again.
So why not target and destroy these weapons? Wouldn’t that be the easiest option?
Well, it is NOT because they know Assad doesn’t really have any. They want to be very clear on that point. Rather, it’s because they want to prevent possible casualties [which could be caused] by putting chemicals into the atmosphere, as the Guardian reports:
But that tenuous self-defence justification was weakened by the Pentagon’s insistence that the goal of the strike was not to destroy chemical weapons. In fact, it took great pains to avoid bombing any sites where chemical weapons may have been stored, for fear of causing civilian casualties downwind.
But, hold on, isn’t this statement in total and complete contradiction to all the media coverage of the Idlib attack so far? Why yes, yes it is!
When the Russian government suggested the chemical casualties were caused by the bombs hitting a rebel weapons stockpile, these claims were rubbished as “fanciful” by the current go-to expert on chemical weapons, Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. He told the Guardian, the BBC and others:
“No I think [the Russian explanation] is pretty fanciful, no doubt the Russians trying to protect their allies,” he said.
“Axiomatically, if you blow up sarin, you destroy it.”
“It’s very clear it’s a sarin attack,” he added. “The view that it’s an al-Qaida or rebel stockpile of sarin that’s been blown up in an explosion, I think is completely unsustainable and completely untrue.”
All the mainstream media have been very clear that releasing sarin gas into the atmosphere through bombing is impossible. Even going so far as to ignore weapons experts so say otherwise, and remove them from their articles.
So there we are, it is perfectly safe – according to our own former-NATO experts – to bomb the crap out of sarin. It poses no threat whatsoever to civilians and will be completely destroyed.
The fact the American’s didn’t destroy, or even attempt destroy, Assad’s supposed sarin gas stocks is definitive proof of one of two things:
1. They know Assad doesn’t have any sarin gas.
2. They know the Russian explanation to be, at least theoretically, correct.
Of course, it could also be both.
TASS – April 7, 2017
UNITED NATIONS – Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, on Friday urged U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley to refrain from insulting Russia and to put collective work at the Security Council on a healthy basis.
“I’d like to ask the speakers here – the U.S. representative and members of other delegations – to refrain from insulting my country,” Safronkov said at an emergency meeting of the Security Council. “No one has the moral right to do it. We never allow ourselves to do such things.”
As the U.S. Ambassador and current President of the UN Security Council, Haley “has a real chance to put collective work at the Council on a healthy footing but this will never happen if the viewpoint of just one nation is passed off for absolute truth.”
Nikki Haley alleged in her speech at the meeting Russia, which “(…) is supposed to be a guarantor of the removal of chemicals weapons from Syria”, had failed to do so, “(…) as innocent Syrians continue to be murdered in chemical attacks.”
“It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria,” she claimed. “It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons. Or, it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools, telling them that there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases.”
“The world is waiting for Russia to reconsider its misplaced alliance with Bashar Assad,” Haley said.
By Kim Petersen | American Herald Tribune | April 7, 2017
One might well expect the corporate/state media to twice be complicit for the gas attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime scenario. One would hope, however, that media independent of the state and corporate sponsors would apply a higher journalistic standard. Yet Democracy Now! has been pushing the imperialist agenda for regime change in Syria. Tendentious recent reports from DN make this abundantly clear. The so-called independent [1] DN has also lured octogenarian professor Noam Chomsky to criticize the “Assad regime.”
DN begins with the leading statement of “worldwide outrage mounts over an alleged chemical weapons attack in Idlib province, which was reportedly carried out by the Assad government…” No evidence is presented to support the accusation, and the accusers also are unnamed. What kind of journalism is this?
It would be completely nonsensical and insane for Syria to use chemical weapons while the war is turning in its favor. And, of course, there is evidence that refutes the allegation. For the record, when a Zionist and war criminal Barack Obama was bent on attacking Syria in 2013 following false accusations that the Assad government used sarin gas in Ghouta, Syria – to preempt the threatened invasion Assad agreed (UN Resolution 2118) to give up Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons (a deterrence against Israel’s nuclear weapons). Now the Syrian government stands accused of using a chemical that was disposed of under international supervision. Is the Syrian government that stupid to risk another threat of invasion by using a non-conventional attack? And why is this new gas attack in Idlib taking place just after Rex Tillerson declared that it is the Syrian people who should decide the fate of their current president?
The professor tells DN: “Syria is a horrible catastrophe. The Assad regime is a moral disgrace. They’re carrying out horrendous acts, the Russians with them.”
How about a dose of skepticism? After all, Chomsky speculated recently of a Donald Trump-orchestrated false flag. Chomsky’s opening omissions speak loudly. He goes straight at the Syrian government; he does not mention involvement by the US, Israel, and other western states. He does not mention the western, Saudi, and Qatari-backed terrorist mercenaries that seek to topple a foreign government through violence.
Indeed Chomsky, the linguist, has dipped into the imperialist lexicon. He criticizes the Assad “regime.” I am unaware of Chomsky ever referring to a Trump, Obama or other US “regime” or of an Israeli “regime.” To be sure, Chomsky has been a critic of US terrorism and imperialism and of Zionist crimes against Palestinians, but I am unaware of Chomsky referring to US, Israeli, or other western regimes as a “moral disgrace.” It might be implicit but not explicit.
Moreover, to criticize “the Assad regime” seems starkly at odds with a fundamental tenet of Chomsky’s philosophy: that his concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by his own state, the USA.[2]
Chomsky is even on record as denying American-Israeli intent at regime change in Syria. If Chomsky is correct, then that would signal a profound change in American imperialist direction. In 2007, former US general Wesley Clark, told of a classified memo describing the US “tak[ing] out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”
DN asks Chomsky: “Why the Russians with them [the ‘Assad regime’]?”
Replied Chomsky: “Well, pretty simple reason: Syria is their one ally in the whole region. Not a close ally, but they do have—their one Mediterranean base is in Syria. It’s the one country that’s more or less cooperated with them. And they don’t want to lose their one ally. It’s very ugly, but that’s what’s happening.”
That is Chomsky’s assessment, but it is factually inaccurate. Iran and Hezbollah are helping fight the terrorists in Syria. Also Chomsky does not discuss an important point: that Russia was invited to aid the Syrian government, as were Iran and Hezbollah.[3] The US is uninvited and Syrian president Assad calls US forces in Syria “invaders.” Chomsky is well versed as to what happens when uninvited US forces show up in foreign lands – among them Korea, Viet Nam, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, etc: genocide, millions killed, millions displaced, economic infrastructure destroyed, and vassalage.
Later in the interview, Chomsky almost exculpates the Russians when he mentions “an initiative from the Russians … for a negotiated settlement, in which Assad would be phased out, not immediately…. The West would not accept it, not just the United States. France, England, the United States simply refused to even consider it. At the time, they believed they could overthrow Assad, so they didn’t want to do this, so the war went on.”
Is the West’s refusal of a negotiated settlement not a “moral disgrace”?
Says Chomsky, “Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting jihadi groups, [Italics added. Again Chomsky borrows from the imperialist lexicon. Why not characterize, then, western groups as “crusaders”?] which are not all that different from ISIS. So you have a horror story on all sides. The Syrian people are being decimated…. the country is simply being destroyed. It’s descending to suicide.”
Suicide? When US invaders are in Syria, when western governments and operatives are arrayed against the Syrian government, when Saudi and Qatari governments are supporting terrorists, and when Syrian people are being killed and made into refugees, then why describe this as a “suicide”? Does Chomsky want to imply that the Syrian people bear responsibility for the horror and decimation imposed upon them from outside? It sounds absurd.
Moral Imperatives
As a first imperative, all uninvited outsiders should vacate Syria immediately. As a second imperative, all parties responsible for aggression against Syria and its peoples must be charged and prosecuted. Third, any crimes committed by the Assad government in allegedly putting down peaceful protests must be investigated and where such charges are valid, then prosecution must be carried out.
Noam Chomsky has garnered enormous respect for his opposition to US crimes, support for social justice, and anarchist leanings. Yet, Chomsky also stakes out positions that appear flawed (his statement that the truth doesn’t matter as to 9-11), even morally questionable (his opposition to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement).
It is imperative is that people become informed. We should all listen to the words of intellectuals and persons who have demonstrated great integrity, but we must also pay heed to our internal dissonance to seemingly incongruous information; we must question and apply rigorous challenge to that information; and based on our assessment of the factual accuracy, logic, and morality of the information we must reach our own conclusions. Avoid the allure of unquestioningly accepting the words of authority! Regardless of personage, open-minded skepticism is the key to developing our own ability to cut through disinformation and thwart the insidious acts propaganda is intended to disguise.
Critical and moral thinking is crucial to the revolution for a free and socially just world.
ENDNOTES
By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | April 7, 2017
My days of hoping for the best from Donald Trump – and at least appreciating the fact that he was not the neocon/liberal hawk that Hillary Clinton is – are over along with my hopes that he might implement his campaign promise and take U.S. foreign policy in a more positive, less warlike, direction.
From being possibly part of the solution, President Trump has become an integral part of the problem. And with his bigger-than-life ego, petulance and stubbornness, Commander-in-Chief Trump is potentially a greater threat to world peace than his weak-willed predecessor Barack Obama.
This week, Trump ignored Russian calls for an investigation into Tuesday’s alleged chemical gas attack in Idlib province before issuing hasty conclusions on culpability. Instead he accepted a narrative of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s guilt despite indications that the incident may have been either an accident (the release of poison gas at a damaged rebel warehouse) or a false-flag operation designed by Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels in Syria.
The Assad-did-it storyline was disseminated by the White Helmets and other phony NGOs that are financed by Washington and London, and that narrative was accepted by the White House. Without waiting for any comprehensive review, Trump ordered the firing of 50 or more Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian military air base in Homs province, thereby crossing all Russian “red lines” in Syria.
Until this point, the Kremlin had chosen not to react to signs coming from Washington that Trump’s determination to change course on Russia and U.S. global hegemony was failing. The wait-and-see posture antedated Trump’s accession to power when Russian President Vladimir Putin overruled the dictates of protocol and did not respond to Obama’s final salvo, the seizure of Russian diplomatic property in the U.S. and the eviction of Russian diplomats.
The Russians also looked the other way when the new administration continued the same neocon rhetoric from the tribune of the United Nations Security Council and during trips to Europe by Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson.
But the missile attack in Syria is a game-changer. The pressure on Putin to respond in some serious way will be immense. Putin has a cool mind and we may anticipate that the Russian response will come at a time of his choosing and in a manner that is appropriate to the seriousness of the U.S. offense. Look for a response by the end of the month.
In the meantime, we who have been hoping for a change of direction — for the rooting out of the neocons and liberal hawks at the heart of the Deep State — should recognize the dangers and the challenges ahead. One way or another, the White House must be told that arranging foreign policy moves out of purely domestic calculations, such as likely happened on Thursday, puts the nation’s very existence at risk.
Acting tough by striking out at Russia and its allies is not the way to form a coalition to pass a Republican tax bill or revive the repeal plans on Obamacare or divert attention from the Democrats’ obsessive investigations into Russia-gate. The same may be said of an alternative reading of the missile attack: that it was intended as a message to visiting Chinese President Xi that should there be no joint action to restrain North Korea, the United States will act alone and with total disregard for international law.
Either logic in the end is a formula for global suicide.
Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015. © Gilbert Doctorow, 2017
OffGuardian | April 7, 2017
Q1: What happened?
Last night, and much to chagrin of people who thought Trump would not escalate matters in Syria, the US military launched 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria, allegedly attempting to destroy a government airbase. They warned the Russian government before-hand, who will have passed on that warning to the Syrians, meaning the area was probably on alert, with any important equipment or personnel removed. The Pentagon have also stated that, at this time, there are no plans for any other strikes or any campaign in Syria.
Q2: Supposing the attack definitely happened as most are reporting – and that is a dangerous assumption to make these days – what have the results been?
At last count the number of Syrian casualties stood at 6 dead servicemen, and 9 dead civilians (including four children) and several more wounded, together with the loss of six aircraft. The airbase they attacked looks far from destroyed in footage from Russia 24 (see here). And chemical weapons? Well, they didn’t destroy any…and say they weren’t trying to do so (see our brief story on that contradiction here). So in terms of military targets, this strike has achieved very little.
The attack was pitifully inefficient, of the 50-70 missiles launched, only 23 struck anywhere near their targets. The other 30+ are currently unaccounted for. Tomahawk missiles cost between $500,000 and $1,500,000 dollar each, which means the US just spent between 25 and 105 MILLION dollars on dinging up a couple of aircraft hangars and murdering less than 20 people.
Q3: …then why do it?
There must be some political wins in this situation to justify the price tag, because the damage done to the “enemy” is practically zero. Indeed, when you take into account that the Pentagon informed the Russians, who will have informed the Syrians, and the reports of Syria evacuating personnel before the attack… the entire event appears somewhat theatrical. Meaning it was an entirely political act, possibly intended more for a domestic audience than anything else.
It had no bearing on the civil war at all, the airstrikes on rebel positions weren’t even halted for a day.
Q4: Was it legal?
No.
Whether it was the product of an impotent emotional tantrum, or a cynical public relations gambit, there is no question the attack was completely illegal under international law. But the American press have never cared much about that. Given that America’s reputation was already in tatters, among those who consider such trifles important, this won’t do much damage. They will take a hit on that front, it probably won’t matter in the long-run.
The list of unpunished American international crimes is hugely long. This small addition barely qualifies.
Q5: cui bono?
Always the most important question.
Trump can definitely get some short-term political gains domestically here. Having “defied” the Russians and “stood-up to” Assad, Trump can now enjoy a period of respite from the “Trump is in Russia’s pocket” talk. Plus, the wider establishment – so fond of calling for “action on Syria” – will be forced to either agree with (and consequently legitimize) the administration, or criticise an attack on Syria and dial back their own calls for war.
What Trump gains in terms of favour within the deep-state and political establishment he will lose in terms of approval with his voting base. One of the biggest issues contributing to Trumps electoral victory was his non-interventionist stance on the ME. This may only be a superficial event, but the list of people approving of and/or celebrating it is enough to alienate a lot of Trump voters for good. But he doesn’t have to worry about that for the next four years.
One definite winner in all of this is Turkey, so long illegally picking at land along the Syrian border. They now have a precedent for a NATO ally taking unilateral action against the Syrian government on very flimsy evidence. They will take that and run with it. Israel, similarly, will see this as permission to be even more active in Syria. Both are key suppliers to the rebels, both are carving out chunks of Syria for themselves.
A danger does still lurk, of course. Whether Trump took this action to make a point, or was talked into it by generals and the like, the first official American attack on Syria has now taken place. Mission creep, intended from the outset or no, is an important thing to keep an eye on at this point.
Press TV – April 7, 2017
British politician Nigel Farage, who Donald Trump has once said would be great as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, has criticized the US president for ordering a military strike against government targets in Syria, and called on London not to follow Americans into another military intervention in the Middle East.
In an interview on Friday, Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit campaigner, said he was very surprised by the attack. “I am very surprised by this.”
“I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying ‘where will it all end?’” he said.
“As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I’m surprised. Whatever Assad’s sins, he is secular,” added Farage, member of the European Parliament.
The US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat airbase in Homs province in western Syrian early Friday.
The missiles were launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike killed nine civilians, including four children on Friday, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.
Farage warned Prime Minister Theresa May against following Washington into another war in the Middle East.
“Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better,” the anti-interventionist politician stated.
British Prime Minister Theresa May
In a statement issued earlier in the day, the British government said it “fully supports” the US missile strike against a Syrian army airbase.
The show of support was a departure from a warning the day before by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson after Trump raised the specter of unilateral action.
Johnson warned against rushing into a war with the Syrian government, and said the top priority should be peace talks and passing a United Nations resolution to investigate the April 4 chemical attack.
“It is very important to try first to get out a UN resolution,” the foreign secretary insisted.
Sputnik– April 7, 2017
HOMS – The US missile strike on Syria’s Sha’irat airbase killed four children, an informed source in Homs told Sputnik Friday.
On Thursday night, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha’irat, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city of Homs. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the alleged chemical weapon use in Syria’s Idlib on Tuesday, which Washington blames on the Syrian government.
“According to our information, among the killed civilians there are four children. They are from ordinary families living near the airbase. There is nothing more to say,” the source said.
Earlier, conflicting reports on the number of casualties as a result of the attack emerged. The Homs governor said five were killed and seven injured.The Russian Defense Ministry said Syria is currently investigating the number of casualties.
The Russian Foreign Minister said no Russian servicemen died as a result of the attack.
Russia described the attack as an aggression against a sovereign state.
Following the US military action, Russia decided to suspend its memorandum of understanding on air safety over Syria with the United States, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
OffGuardian | April 7, 2017
The push for “action” following the alleged chemical attack in Idlib, Syria is reaching fever pitch. Indeed, it may already have had disastrous consequences. The spokespeople for power that are the Western press consider the case against the Assad regime air-tight. Absent any forensic, or even circumstantial, evidence the mainstream media have resorted to simple arguments from authority looks of bewilderment.
The trouble is “authority” doesn’t seem have any cohesion in this matter – so the press have carefully chosen who they will listen to… and who they will remove from their websites.
Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is the favored voice of “reason” on these matters, he has dismissed any idea other than a deliberate attack by the Syrian government as “fanciful”. And has been cited everywhere from Channel 4, to the Daily Mail to the Guardian, to the BBC. He is universally credited as a “chemical weapons expert” who works as the director of “Medics Under Fire”…. but that’s not his only job, just his most recent.
He was originally in the British army, filling an important role at NATO:
Previously Commanding Officer of the UK CBRN Regiment and NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, Hamish is one of the most operationally experienced CBRN practitioners in the World and is regarded as one of the leading experts in Chemical and Biological Counter Terrorism and warfare.
With other hints from his biography suggesting some work in espionage or military intelligence:
He has also worked with US networks and British newspapers to smuggle chemical samples out of Syria for verification in UK and France.
… so he’s hardly an objective source.
Of course, “Medics Under Fire” is nothing like what it appears to be, either. Its name conjures up imagery of global charities, along the lines of Medecins sans Frontieres. It is nothing like that, in truth it is a Western-backed NGO working out of Syria, very much like the White Helmets. In fact, their websites are almost completely identical.
On the other side of this narrow divide is Jerry Smith, a chemical weapons expert who took part in the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks in 2013. He is hardly a frothing pro-Assad alternative voice, but he takes a measured approach. He wrote in the Guardian :
Russia’s claim that the latest poisoning is a result of a conventional attack on an opposition arms storage facility should not be dismissed out of hand. While it is true that nerve agent can be destroyed by explosion, it is perfectly possible that some agent could survive and be ejected out as a result of an explosion.
… but obviously nobody there was listening, because “dismissing it out of hand” is exactly what they have done.
Mr Smith was also interviewed on Channel 4 news (curiously absent from their online archive), and ABC news in Australia, both times saying very similar things.
The BBC referenced and quoted his Channel 4 interview in their article on the attack, this quote was included in an article headlined Syria chemical ‘attack’: Trump condemns ‘affront to humanity’:
… the official who led the UN-backed operation to remove Syria’s chemical weapons told the UK’s Channel 4 News that the Russian version of events could not be discounted.
“If it is Sarin that was stored there and conventional munitions were used, there is every possibility that some of those [chemical] munitions were not consumed and that the Sarin liquid was ejected and could well have affected the population,” Jerry Smith said.
This paragraph was completely removed just 35 minutes later. The current version of this article makes no mention of Mr Smith at all. No reason is given, and there is no note referencing that the article had been amended.
A reminder that these are standards deemed acceptable by the “news service” for which we are all forced, by law, to pay.
Our thanks to the media lens twitter for bringing this issue to our attention, and to newssniffer for the very important work they do.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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