By Jan Oberg
WASHINGTON (Associated Press) — The U.S. has no evidence to confirm reports from aid groups and others that the Syrian government has used the deadly chemical sarin on its citizens, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday.
“We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “We do not have evidence of it.”
Yes, you read it correctly. This is Associated Press – right out of the Secretary of Defence’s own mouth.
Newsweek picked up this – breaking – story but virtually no one else.
Compare that with thousands upon thousands of articles throughout the Western press just parroting American officials’ statements, including President Trump’s when he found it appropriate in April 2017 to attack Syria with cruise missiles to teach “the regime” and its “dictator” a lesson for its alleged attack on Khan Seykhoun, stating that “there can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons.”
Some of us thought it was a bit too early because there could be no dispute either about another, much more important, thing – namely that, at the time, there could not have been any evidence collected or analysed.
TFF and its Associates has stated a few things about the media coverage of Syria in general and the chemical attacks in particular – among others, here, here, and here.
From Newsweek
Serious, experienced chemical weapons experts and investigators such as Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Gareth Porter (author, TFF Associate) and Theodore Postol have all cast doubt on “official” American narratives regarding President Assad employing Sarin.
These analysts have all focused on the technical aspects of the two attacks and found them not to be consistent with the use of nation-state quality Sarin munitions.
The 2013 Ghouta event, for example, employed home-made rockets of the type favored by insurgents. The White House Memorandum on Khan Sheikhoun seemed to rely heavily on testimony from the Syrian White Helmets who were filmed at the scene having contact with supposed Sarin-tainted casualties and not suffering any ill effects.
Those who were around and used to “document” the event was – of course – The White Helmets: Supported with million of dollars by NATO governments, awarded one ‘peace’ prize after the other, on a Netflix propaganda documentary, received by governments and arguing themselves that they ought to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (and nominared for it against the letter and spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will.)
In November 2016, I documented the WH as a false and fake media and marketing constructed entity fitting the overall Syria war narrative by the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-MEDIA-ACADEMIC Complex – of the US/NATO countries in this war who also financed them generously.
An intelligent and diligent student of journalism could have done the same type of analyses with a computer and access to the Internet. Many probably did – but people “higher up” prevented them from publishing such investigative analysis that would reveal the Western Syria policy and media coverage as the fraud it’s been.
In every violent conflict there are two parallel wars: the one one the ground with military weapons, the other in the media with computers, videos, images and the liberal use of fake information, perspectives and analyses over biased and omitted etc – to outright propaganda, psychological operations, and lies. And the media still focus on the individual – the leader as the reason for all troubles, never on the conflict and never on their own countries’ complicity in mass murder.
Just much more subtle and effective than the Pravda (Truth) toward the end of the Soviet Union.
The task of every media on earth is to find out what is truthful in its intention and what is not. And then choose where they want to be.
Shockingly, Western mainstream media have chosen the constructed narrative and repeated it ad absurdum, parroting each other and the interventionists’ and terrorism supporters’ goals and policies.
Which media will now come forward and state clearly:
“On this point too, we did not do the necessary research and we apologise for having contributed to war propaganda by reporting who did what before we had any evidence beyond mere statements from the parties.
Since it has happened again and again – like with the constructed stories about the babies that Saddam Hussein’s soldiers threw out of the incubators in Kuwait City, his alleged possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Milosevic’ Hitlerist (Clinton) planned genocide on Kosovo-Albanians to mention a few – we must really learn the lessons and become more professional in the future to serve truthfully our readers, listeners and viewers.”
We’re waiting the free media to apologize. But I’m afraid we will wait for a very long time. And the United States will, of course, never apologize for anything. Might makes right. Until death does us part from the Empire.
But we should thank Associated Press and Newsweek for their pioneering decency in this specific case.
PS
I now understand much better why my repeated investigative e-mails of September-October 2017 to The Independent International Commission Of Inquiry on The Syrian Arab Republic, established by the Human Rights Council, are still without an answer.