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.
Pentagon: No evidence Assad used poison gas on his people added by JO on
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Sorry. My genuine apologies. I didn’t express myself very well (and I’m not anonymous, I used my real name). I didn’t mean to imply that your readers were uneducated (I do not believe this). What I meant to say was that those of your readers who do not take the time to verify your assertions, are likely to be misled by what is, frankly, a highly selective quotation of Matthis, which (I imagine, deliberately) seeks to ignore the full context of what he actually said.
I hope that expresses better what I obviously failed to express very skilfully, yesterday.
Err…little bit selective with the context of what Mathis actually said, dont you think?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa/u-s-mattis-says-concerned-about-syrias-potential-use-of-sarin-gas-idUSKBN1FM1VJ
Counter to your headline, Matthis ACTUALLY said that the Syrian government has repeatedly used chlorine, and that his concern was that they WOULD use sarin; any evidence of which, would be met with military intervention. He said there is no proof that Assad used sarin, thus far (as how could such proof be obtained, when Assad routinely denies entry and freedom of movement to U.N. observers?). You are misrepresenting the facts, and your uneducated readers are likely to swallow your perverse spin of these events, without question.
Hi Ryan (Anonymous). I’ll let your comment remain here but, by policy and principle, I do not engage with people who write the way you do and call our readers “uneducated” and this “perverse spin.”
Thank you. Still what I wrote is perverse spin. You see, while you go into a discussion of his words – which is OK and I am no expert on various types of poisonous gases, the absolutely extraordinary thing is a) Trump retaliated with cruise missiles without the slightest evidence, obviously; b) the media have talked about this as facts without any check or motive analysis because it is part of the Western pro-war, anti-Assad narrative that is simplifying and narrowminded beyond words; and c) the media (except the one you quote and Newsweek) have in no single case regretted what they brought out as truths to their audiences. The New York Times is still also the only one that has apologized for its deceptive coverage before the invasion of Iraq and the nonsense presented by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So, in this situation where everybody else has lied or not done their research and not apologized for their coverage, it seems a bit out of proportions to complain about TFF’s and my writings about the issue. But I have no problem agreeing with you that my formulation about the distinction between sarin and other gases could have been more precise – but it is certainly not “perverse spin”.
Looks like Hillary, Barak and the Donald were and are all wrong.
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This is just one example of many cases of “fake news” when countries were bombed and destroyed such as Iraq, Yemen and Libya, or subjected to unprecedented “crippling” sanctions such as Iran for the sake of her non-existent nuclear weapons. How many other assumptions that we have at the moment about various global events will prove to be false? Was there really an Iranian drone flying over the occupied Golan Heights, and were the places that were bombed by Israel in Syria in violation of international law really Iranian bases, etc?
It truly is disgusting. The media are complicit in this lie and this attempted government coup.
They are also complicit in the Millions of lives destroyed, shattered, and ended by this manufactured crisis.
To think the White Helmets won an Oscar!
But then, that says it all doesn’t it?