By Peter Ford
Source: 21st Century Wire
Syria in Perspective: 38th Human Rights Council : side event organised by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Geneva 27 June 2018

Statement by Peter Ford, British Ambassador to Syria, 2003-6, Representative of the Commissioner General of UNRWA, 2006-14

The objective of this meeting is to show Syria in perspective. That is, Syria as she really is after eight years of war, not as she is almost universally portrayed in the West.

A brave stand by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria over alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma

I shall look at the broad picture, but I want to zero in by dealing with the report presented yesterday by the Commission on Syria.

I am not going to endorse that report but I want to begin by congratulating the Commission for standing firm and refusing to make premature pronouncements about the alleged use of prohibited weapons in Douma.

In doing so the Commission obviously angered those in the US administration and elsewhere who are impatient to see the West bombing its way to regime change in Syria. Hence the petulant leaks to the New York Times of a rejected earlier draft of the Commission report, and hysterical accusations against the Commission.

The body which actually has prime responsibility for determining what occurred or did not occur in Douma is the OPCW. Its investigations are not yet complete. Perhaps worried that the outcome might not be what Washington wants, the US administration had clearly been pinning high hopes on the Commission for producing a report which would suit the administration’s purpose of retrospectively justifying the illegal US/UK/French bombing of Syria in April – and more importantly, of conditioning opinion for the next, bigger aggression.

Conditioning Western opinion for the next aggression

Make no mistake, conditioning opinion for the next Western air strikes is crucial for the coming phase of the Syria conflict.

Imagine that today you are a leader of one of the armed groups, in Deraa, say. You have seen how gullible Western governments and media are.

You have seen how easy it is to fabricate incidents to incriminate the Syrian government. You don’t even need to stage a false flag operation, that is one where you yourself use chemical weapons in order to pin the blame on Assad. You did that in 2013 only the former Commissioner, Carla Del Ponte, to veer off message by stating that there was strong and concrete evidence that the rebels had stocks of sarin and had used it.

The UN hierarchy intervened quickly to row back on what Carla Del Ponte had blurted out. So you, the jihadi leader, felt confident in staging more false flag incidents, as with the Khan Sheykhoun incident in April 2017. You knew that the OPCW inspectors would not actually visit the site, because your jihadi forces made sure it was unsafe. You knew that that – incredible as it may seem – would not stand in the way of the inspectors, in violation of their own protocols, accepting as genuine ground samples, photographs and other evidence provided by your auxiliaries, the White Helmets. You knew the inspectors would not demand biological samples.

You were worried when some of your coached witnesses in an excess of zeal presented themselves to hospitals too early and were logged as being treated even before Asad’s planes had left Sheyrat air base. The inspectors, however, relegated this killer fact to an appendix to their report. It was of course ignored.

Douma was a bigger challenge because you, the jihadi leader, left it so late that the inspectors were actually able to visit the site. But you were confident that your Western paymasters would bomb Asad without waiting for the investigation. And then when the investigation, delayed by the bombing, was finally about to get under way it was a simple matter to engineer more delay and deterioration of evidence by having your sleeper cells left behind fire a few shots. You knew the West would blame Russia and Asad. You knew also that even though the Russians found the people seen in the key video of the incident and had them recount here in Europe the true story of what happened, the Western media would prefer to believe you, the accomplice of Al Qaida.

Pentagon acting as Al Qaida air wing

You really cannot believe your luck. You have lost the war but here is the Pentagon willing to act as Al Qaida’s air wing as long as you just provide them with a credible staged incident.

To get the US, UK and France to go to war, a lower standard of evidence is needed than it takes to get a conviction for a parking ticket.

After Douma Western leaders swore that next time the gloves would be off, and reports emerged that Plan A for Douma had been to target Asad himself and his command centres, though the Russians nixed that. So what do you, the jihadi commander, do now? Well obviously you start planning the next fake attack. You would be a fool not to.

Thus , my friends, a repeat of Douma is fated to occur. Unless, that is, sufficient doubt emerges about the Douma charade, the Douma hoax, to give Western governments pause in assuming that their public opinions will swallow a repeat dose and allow them to risk a much more serious confrontation with Russia and Iran.

Against the background of that likely scenario, we see what a crucial service the Commission has performed by refusing to join in the conditioning of opinion by pronouncing on Douma.

Siege warfare is not the unique vice of the Syrian government

Enough praise for the Commission. Now for some caveats

I quote:

‘we visited 44 sites and interviewed 112 civilian residents’

‘[they] launched air strikes on buildings full of civilians using wide area effect munitions…’

‘we found no information indicating that fighters were present’

‘they used unguided mortars and unguided artillery’

‘there is strong evidence that the attacks violated international law’

‘they fired projectiles above houses… photos showed burning elements coming into contact with civilian buildings’.

‘people hiding in basements were terrified’ ‘hundreds were killed and thousands injured’

Horrendous, yes? Shocking, yes?

These are quotes not from the Commission report but from the Amnesty International reporton the siege of Raqqa by the Coalition. They put into its right context the Commission’s report on the siege of Douma.

But while the Commission apparently want to indict Syrian leaders for war crimes, those who conducted the siege of Raqqa, reported on by the Commission in an earlier report, are just gently admonished for not taking enough precautions.

It is remarkable that the Commission have ignored the Amnesty International report in their latest offering, even though Amnesty International called for international investigation and action.

Crimes of aggression

Other issues are also ignored.

The Commission is mandated to investigate not only human rights law but also ‘abuses and violations of international law (HRC 21/26)’. The crime of aggression is such a violation, indictable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Commission cannot trespass on the territory of the OPCW, as it has done, damagingly, in earlier reports, producing the endlessly cited factoid that there have been 34 chemical weapons attacks since 2013, while on the other hand timidly ignoring issues arising under the purview of the Rome Statute.

The unprovoked attacks by the US, UK and France on Syria following the liberation of Douma are barely given a mention in the latest report.

Other acts of illegality are ignored.

Is it not a violation of international law to give immense military, financial and propaganda support to armed groups operating in the territory of a member state of the UN?

Is it not a violation to establish without permission military bases on the territory of a member state? The US has several thousand troops in Syria, and does not even attempt to justify their presence in terms of international law. British forces are present too, and the British government ludicrously tries to justify their presence on the far fetched grounds that they are protecting Iraq against ISIS.

Is it not a violation to use military force to prevent the forces or allied forces of a member state from taking control of state oil assets, and to kill scores if not hundreds in the process, as occurred in the vicinity of Deir Ez Zor?

Is it not a violation of international law to occupy a pocket of a state’s territory, 55 kilometres deep, as at Al Tanf on Syria’s border with Iraq, and shamelessly proclaim a readiness to use military force to prevent that state’s forces’ from entering in order to root out jihadis being rebadged, equipped and trained behind American shields?

Is it not a violation of international law to invade Syrian territory as Turkey has done, and to establish a de facto occupation authority?

Is it not a violation of international law to dispose of part of a state’s territory as Turkey and the US have purported to do over the district of Manbij, and to connive at keeping out the forces of the lawful government?

Is it not a violation to bomb alleged sites of chemical weapons which had been recently inspected by OPCW inspectors and found to give no grounds for concern?

Is it not a violation to direct unilateral coercive measures against a state without any international mandate to do so?

And finally, is it not a breach of international law for Israel to launch more than a hundred unprovoked bombing raids on Syria, some hundreds of kilometres away from Israel?

The Commission pass over in embarrassed silence all these very serious violations.

Forced displacement

The Commission’s report makes much of alleged forced displacement. This is a classic example of misleading framing.

What the Syrian government has done in terms of negotiating terms for local surrenders could equally be framed as humane treatment of a vanquished foe, offering them a choice between staying in the locality and accepting government jurisdiction, or leaving with their families for another destination controlled by their fellow insurgents. So excellent was this choice that the Coalition used the same procedure at the end of the siege of Raqqa, allowing thousands of ISIS fighters to escape.

I am afraid that on this count the Commission have been dupes of opposition propaganda.

Two possible futures for Syria

I shall conclude by taking a forward look at where Syria is heading.

There are basically two possible futures for Syria.

Spoiler strategy of the West

First there is the future as the Western powers are trying to shape it.

At the moment the US and its satellites realise that Asad has the military upper hand and will be hard to dislodge just by military means. They have therefore a multi-pronged spoiler strategy:

Prevent Asad regaining control of the North East, with its important oil and gas assets.

Try to hamper trade and communications across the border with Iraq, by actions which include refraining from crushing ISIS in its remaining redoubts, from where it can remain a thorn in the Syrian government’s side

Use sanctions to keep the Syrian economy weak

Prevent international aid for reconstruction from reaching Syria

Keep Syria depopulated by discouraging return of refugees to Syria

Use the Geneva negotiations and the fiction of ‘transition’ to claw back in the negotiating chamber what has been lost on the battlefield

Weaken Syria militarily by securing with Israeli assistance withdrawal of Iran and its allies

Stand by ready to cripple government forces using the pretext of a chemical weapon attack

This future has no vision for what might occur if the strategy succeeds. No conception of what would fill the void if Asad was toppled. As with Iraq, the West wreaks destruction and hopes for the best.

A military solution

The second future is this:

The gradual recovery of the entirety of Syrian territory under the present government. A major step forward is being made currently in the South. That will leave just the North and North East. Talks are already under way with the Kurds. The status quo in these areas is unsustainable and the Kurds know it. The Kurds need Syrian government protection against Turkey. Some changes in the constitution will bring the Kurds on board.

The Idlib campaign to bring that area under the government control may be brutal but can only have one outcome.

Essentially what we shall see is a military solution. With the recovery of the South the Syrian government will control areas where 80% of Syrians live. All the pious talk about there only possibly being a political solution is just that, pious talk . Essentially what we shall see is a return to the status quo ante, with some modification for the Kurds.

This is the perspective I think is the most likely to prevail for Syria, and the one desired by most, war weary Syrians. The war will have been waged on Syria, primarily from outside, for nothing.

Western powers, get used to it.

Stop trying to delay the inevitable and prolonging the agony.

***

Peter Ford is a retired British Diplomat who was Ambassador to Bahrain from 1999-2003 and Syria from 2003-2006.

By Hazem Sabbagh
Source: SANA
Moscow – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that President Bashar al-Assad isn’t just defending Syria; he is defending the entire region against terrorism.

In an interview given to Britain’s Channel 4 on Friday, Lavrov said that President al-Assad is defending Syria’s sovereignty and unity, and on a wider scale he is defending the entire region against terrorism.

He reiterated that the Syrians alone will decide Syria’s future, stressing that the actions of Daesh (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists are obstructing the implementation of the de-escalation agreement in the southern area in Syria.

Lavrov asserted that Russia will not withdraw its forces from Syria until the end of 2018, and that such withdrawal would depend on developments on the ground.

The Russian Minister said the decision to expand the mandate of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) violates the chemical weapons convention, and that Russia is working to remedy this situation, but if this doesn’t happen he said the OPCW’s days are numbered.

He said that Russia had trusted the OPCW until recently, but the Organization was subjected to serious manipulation two days ago.

Source: RT
Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.

“We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” the boy told the press conference, gathered by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.

Hassan was among the “victims” seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the controversial White Helmets group on April 7. The boy and his family later spoke to the media and revealed that Hassan was hurried to the scene by men who claimed that a chemical attack had taken place. They started pouring cold water on the boy and others, filming the frightened children.

“There were people unknown to us who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were originally used to clean the floors actually,” Ahmad Kashoi, an administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. “That happened for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.”

Halil al-Jaish, a resuscitator who tended to people at the Douma hospital that day, told the press conference that some of the patients had indeed experienced respiratory problems. The symptoms, however, were caused by heavy dust, which engulfed the area due to recent airstrikes, and no one showed any signs of chemical warfare poisoning, al-Jaish said.

The hospital received people who suffered from smoke and dust asphyxiation on the day of the alleged attack, Muwaffak Nasrim, a paramedic who was working in emergency care, said. The panic seen in footage provided by the White Helmets was caused mainly by people shouting about the alleged use of chemical weapons, Nasrim, who witnessed the chaotic scenes, added. No patients, however, displayed symptoms of chemical weapons exposure, he said.

Ahmad Saur, an emergency paramedic with the Syrian Red Crescent, said that the ward he was working at did not receive any patients exposed to chemical weapons on the day of the alleged incident or after it. All the patients needed either general medical care or help with injuries, he said. Saur told journalists he came to speak at The Hague independently of the Red Crescent, and that he was testifying freely and without any pressure.

One reporter asked what would happen to the eyewitnesses and whether they would “stay in Europe to testify.”

“We’re going back home, and see no problem with that. The situation is a lot better now. We’re Douma residents, like many others,” Hassan Ayoun, a doctor with the emergency department, said.

Six of the Douma witnesses brought to The Hague have already been interviewed by the OPCW technical experts, Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, said.

“The others were ready too, but the experts are sticking to their own guidelines. They’ve picked six people, talked to them, and said they were ‘completely satisfied’ with their account and did not have any further questions,” Shulgin revealed. He added that the allegations by “certain Western countries” ahead of the briefing that Moscow and Damascus were seeking to “hide” the witnesses from the OPCW experts did not hold water.

The alleged chemical incident was only supported by the White Helmets’ video and social media reports from militant-linked groups, but the US, the UK and France judged they had enough evidence that it actually took place and launched a series of punitive strikes against Syria on April 14. The US and its allies accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of carrying out the “attack,” without providing any proof of their claim. Notably, the strike came hours before the OPCW fact-finding team was set to arrive in Douma to determine whether chemical weapons had been used there.

Hands Off Syria, Sydney, strongly condemns the US/UK/France Coalition bombing against Syria.

This war of aggression against Damascus occurred in the early hours of Saturday 14.04.2018 morning, Syrian time, and lasted almost two hours to punish the Syrian people for refusing to submit to regime change.

Hundreds of US missiles rained in the densely populated ancient city, many of its residents internally displaced civilians who sought refuge following the destruction of their homes by Western backed terrorists.

The people of Syria have endured seven years of a proxy war, a dirty war perpetrated by mercenary terrorists from all around the world funded, trained and armed by the US/NATO/Israel & Gulf monarchies.

Among those terrorists groups are Daesh/ISIS, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda in Syria, FSA, Jaish al-Islam and many more which have perpetrated grand scale destruction, torture and vile acts against the people of Syria.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and allies have been liberating towns and cities which had been held hostage to Daesh and other terrorist groups.

In the last couple of weeks the SAA liberated all of East Ghouta, a town near Damascus, which saw the freedom of 400,000 civilians who had been kept hostage by terrorists for six years.

The US/UK/France bombing of Syria was unilateral, illegal under international law and a war crime.

The OPCW was given no time to investigate an alleged chemical attack which took place in Douma, and was blamed on the Syrian Government and used as an excuse to carry out the criminal bombing. This is a clear indication that these US/UK/France had no interest in the investigation and its outcome.

This criminal attack is a blatant Imperial aggression, a cowardly act which only demonstrates how vile these Western powers are, attacking a small nation which has suffered seven years a proxy dirty war and has endured many more years of sanctions.

Hands Off Syria joins the call by the Syrian-Australian Community for a protest/Vigil commencing at 6pm this coming Thursday 19 April 2018 in Martin Place, Sydney, outside the US Consulate.

by Robert PARRY 11 November 2017
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
A new United Nations-sponsored report on the April 4 sarin incident in an Al Qaeda-controlled town in Syria blames Bashar al-Assad’s government for the atrocity, but the report contains evidence deep inside its “Annex II” that would prove Assad’s innocence.

If you read that far, you would find that more than 100 victims of sarin exposure were taken to several area hospitals before the alleged Syrian warplane could have struck the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Still, the Joint Investigative Mechanism [JIM], a joint project of the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW], brushed aside this startling evidence and delivered the Assad guilty verdict that the United States and its allies wanted.

The JIM consigned the evidence of a staged atrocity, in which Al Qaeda operatives would have used sarin to kill innocent civilians and pin the blame on Assad, to a spot 14 pages into the report’s Annex II. The sensitivity of this evidence of a staged “attack” is heightened by the fact that President Trump rushed to judgment and ordered a “retaliatory” strike with 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airbase on the night of April 6-7. That U.S. attack reportedly killed several soldiers at the base and nine civilians, including four children, in nearby neighborhoods.

So, if it becomes clear that Al Qaeda tricked President Trump not only would he be responsible for violating international law and killing innocent people, but he and virtually the entire Western political establishment along with the major news media would look like Al Qaeda’s “useful idiots.”

Currently, the West and its mainstream media are lambasting the Russians for not accepting the JIM’s “assessment,” which blames Assad for the sarin attack. Russia is also taking flak for questioning continuation of the JIM’s mandate. There has been virtually no mainstream skepticism about the JIM’s report and almost no mention in the mainstream of the hospital-timing discrepancy.

Timing Troubles
To establish when the supposed sarin attack occurred on April 4, the JIM report relied on witnesses in the Al Qaeda-controlled town and a curious video showing three plumes of smoke but no airplanes. Based on the video’s metadata, the JIM said the scene was recorded between 0642 and 0652 hours. The JIM thus puts the timing of the sarin release at between 0630 and 0700 hours.

But the first admissions of victims to area hospitals began as early as 0600 hours, the JIM found, meaning that these victims could not have been poisoned by the alleged aerial bombing (even if the airstrike really did occur).

According to the report’s Annex II, “The admission times of the records range between 0600 and 1600 hours.” And these early cases – arriving before the alleged airstrike – were not isolated ones.

“Analysis of the … medical records revealed that in 57 cases, patients were admitted in five hospitals before the incident in Khan Shaykhun,” Annex II said.

Plus, this timing discrepancy was not limited to a few hospitals in and around Khan Sheikhoun, but was recorded as well at hospitals that were scattered across the area and included one hospital that would have taken an hour or so to reach.

Annex II stated: “In 10 such cases, patients appear to have been admitted to a hospital 125 km away from Khan Shaykhun at 0700 hours while another 42 patients appear to have been admitted to a hospital 30 km away at 0700 hours.”

In other words, more than 100 patients would appear to have been exposed to sarin before the alleged Syrian warplane could have dropped the alleged bomb and the victims could be evacuated, a finding that alone would have destroyed the JIM’s case against the Syrian government.

But the JIM seemed more interested in burying this evidence of Al Qaeda staging the incident — and killing some expendable civilians — than in following up this timing problem.

“The [JIM] did not investigate these discrepancies and cannot determine whether they are linked to any possible staging scenario, or to poor record-keeping in chaotic conditions,” the report said. But the proffered excuse about poor record-keeping would have to apply to multiple hospitals over a wide area all falsely recording the arrival time of more than 100 patients.

The video of the plumes of smoke also has come under skepticism from Theodore Postol, a weapons expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who noted that none of the three plumes matched up with damage to buildings (as viewed from satellite images) that would have resulted from aerial bombs of that power.

Postol’s finding suggests that the smoke could have been another part of a staging event rather than debris kicked up by aerial bombs.

The JIM also could find no conclusive evidence that a Syrian warplane was over Khan Sheikhoun at the time of the video although the report claims that a plane could have come within about 5 kilometers of the town.

A History of Deception
Perhaps even more significantly, the JIM report ignored the context of the April 4 case and the past history of Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front staging chemical weapons attacks with the goal of foisting blame on the Syrian government and tricking the U.S. military into an intervention on the side of Nusra and its Islamic-militant allies.

On April 4, there was a strong motive for Al Qaeda and its regional allies to mount a staged event. Just days earlier, President Trump’s administration had shocked the Syrian rebels and their backers by declaring “regime change” was no longer the U.S. goal in Syria.

So, Al Qaeda and its regional enablers were frantic to reverse Trump’s decision, which was accomplished by his emotional reaction to videos on cable news showing children and other civilians suffering and dying in Khan Sheikhoun.

On the night of April 6-7, before any thorough investigation could be conducted, Trump ordered 59 Tomahawk missiles fired at the Syrian air base that supposedly had launched the sarin attack.

At the time, I was told by an intelligence source that at least some CIA analysts believed that the sarin incident indeed had been staged with sarin possibly flown in by drone from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base in Jordan.

This source said the on-the-ground staging for the incident had been hasty because of the surprise announcement that the Trump administration was no longer seeking regime change in Damascus. The haste led to some sloppiness in tying down all the necessary details to pin the atrocity on Assad, the source said.

But the few slip-ups, such as the apparent failure to coordinate the timing of the hospital admissions to after the purported airstrike, didn’t deter the JIM investigators from backing the West’s desire to blame Assad and also create another attack line against the Russians.

Similarly, other U.N.-connected investigators downplayed earlier evidence that Al Qaeda’s Nusra was staging chemical weapons incidents after President Obama laid down his “red line” on chemical weapons. The militants apparently hoped that the U.S. military would take out the Syrian military and pave the way for an Al Qaeda victory.

For instance, U.N. investigators learned from a number of townspeople of Al-Tamanah about how the rebels and allied “activists” staged a chlorine gas attack on the night of April 29-30, 2014, and then sold the false story to a credulous Western media and, initially, to a U.N. investigative team.

“Seven witnesses stated that frequent alerts [about an imminent chlorine weapons attack by the government] had been issued, but in fact no incidents with chemicals took place,” the U.N. report said. “While people sought safety after the warnings, their homes were looted and rumours spread that the events were being staged. … [T]hey [these witnesses] had come forward to contest the wide-spread false media reports.”

Dubious Evidence
Other people, who did allege that there had been a government chemical attack on Al-Tamanah, provided suspect evidence, including data from questionable sources, according to the report.

The report said, “Three witnesses, who did not give any description of the incident on 29-30 April 2014, provided material of unknown source. One witness had second-hand knowledge of two of the five incidents in Al-Tamanah, but did not remember the exact dates. Later that witness provided a USB-stick with information of unknown origin, which was saved in separate folders according to the dates of all the five incidents mentioned by the FFM [the U.N.’s Fact-Finding Mission].

“Another witness provided the dates of all five incidents reading it from a piece of paper, but did not provide any testimony on the incident on 29-30 April 2014. The latter also provided a video titled ‘site where second barrel containing toxic chlorine gas was dropped tamanaa 30 April 14’”

Some other witnesses alleging a Syrian government attack offered curious claims about detecting the chlorine-infused “barrel bombs” based on how the device sounded in its descent.

The U.N. report said, “The eyewitness, who stated to have been on the roof, said to have heard a helicopter and the ‘very loud’ sound of a falling barrel. Some interviewees had referred to a distinct whistling sound of barrels that contain chlorine as they fall. The witness statement could not be corroborated with any further information.”

However, the claim itself is absurd since it is inconceivable that anyone could detect a chlorine canister inside a “barrel bomb” by “a distinct whistling sound.”

The larger point, however, is that the jihadist rebels in Al-Tamanah and their propaganda teams, including relief workers and activists, appear to have organized a coordinated effort at deception complete with a fake video supplied to U.N. investigators and Western media outlets.

For instance, the Telegraph in London reported that “Videos allegedly taken in Al-Tamanah … purport to show the impact sites of two chemical bombs. Activists said that one person had been killed and another 70 injured.”

The Telegraph quoted supposed weapons expert Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat and a senior fellow at the fiercely anti-Russian Atlantic Council, as endorsing the Al-Tamanah claims.

“Witnesses have consistently reported the use of helicopters to drop the chemical barrel bombs used,” said Higgins. “As it stands, around a dozen chemical barrel bomb attacks have been alleged in that region in the last three weeks.”

The Al-Tamanah debunking in the U.N. report received no mainstream media attention when the U.N. findings were issued in September 2016 because the U.N. report relied on rebel information to blame two other alleged chlorine attacks on the government and that got all the coverage. But the case should have raised red flags given the extent of the apparent deception.

If the seven townspeople were telling the truth, that would mean that the rebels and their allies issued fake attack warnings, produced propaganda videos to fool the West, and prepped “witnesses” with “evidence” to deceive investigators. Yet, no alarms went off about other rebel claims.

The Ghouta Incident
A more famous attack – with sarin gas on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013, killing hundreds – was also eagerly blamed on the Assad regime, as The New York Times, Human Rights Watch, Higgins’s Bellingcat and many other Western outlets jumped to that conclusion despite the unlikely circumstances. Assad had just welcomed U.N. investigators to Damascus to examine chemical attacks that he was blaming on the rebels.

Assad also was facing the “red line” threat from President Obama warning him of possible U.S. military intervention if the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons. Why Assad and his military would choose such a moment to launch a deadly sarin attack outside Damascus, killing mostly civilians, made little sense.

But this became another rush to judgment in the West that brought the Obama administration to the verge of launching a devastating air attack on the Syrian military that might have helped Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and/or the Islamic State win the war.

Eventually, however, the case blaming Assad for the 2013 sarin attack collapsed.

An analysis by genuine weapons experts – such as Theodore Postol, an MIT professor of science, technology and national security policy, and Richard M. Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories – found that the missile that delivered the sarin had a very short range placing its likely firing position in rebel territory.

Later, reporting by journalist Seymour Hersh implicated Turkish intelligence working with jihadist rebels as the likely source of the sarin.

We also learned in 2016 that a message from the U.S. intelligence community had warned Obama how weak the evidence against Assad was. There was no “slam-dunk” proof, said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. And Obama cited his rejection of the Washington militaristic “playbook” to bomb Syria as one of his proudest moments as President.

With this background, there should have been extreme skepticism when jihadists and their allies made new claims about the Syrian government engaging in chemical weapons attacks. But there wasn’t.

The broader context for these biased investigations is that U.N. and OPCW investigators have been under intense pressure to confirm accusations against Syria and other targeted states.

Right now, the West is blaming Russia for the collapsing consensus behind U.N. investigations, but the problem really comes from Washington’s longtime strategy of coercing U.N. organizations into becoming propaganda arms for U.S. geopolitical strategies.

The U.N.’s relative independence in its investigative efforts was decisively broken early this century when President George W. Bush’s administration purged U.N. agencies that were not onboard with U.S. hegemony, especially on interventions in the Middle East.

Through manipulation of funding and selection of key staff members, the Bush administration engineered the takeover or at least the neutralizing of one U.N.-affiliated organization after another.

For instance, in 2002, Bush’s Deputy Under-Secretary of State John Bolton spearheaded the takeover of the OPCW as Bush planned to cite chemical weapons as a principal excuse for invading Iraq.

OPCW Director General Jose Mauricio Bustani was viewed as an obstacle because he was pressing Iraq to accept OPCW’s conventions for eliminating chemical weapons, which could have undermined Bush’s WMD rationale for war.

Though Bustani was just reelected to a new term, the Brazilian diplomat was forced out, to be followed in that job by more pliable bureaucrats, including the current Director General Ahmet Uzumcu of Turkey, who not only comes from a NATO country but served as Turkey’s ambassador to NATO and to Israel. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “U.N. Enablers of ‘Aggressive War.’”]

Since those days of the Iraq invasion, the game hasn’t changed. U.S. and other Western officials expect the U.N. and related agencies to accept or at least not object to Washington’s geopolitical interventions.

The only difference now is that Russia, one of the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council, is saying enough is enough – and Russia’s opposition to these biased inquiries is emerging as one more dangerous hot spot in the New Cold War.

Source: RT
The US cruise missile attack on Syria was an act of international aggression, Russia, Syria and Iran have stated after a meeting of their foreign ministers in Moscow.

“We have reiterated our position and were united in stating that the attack was an act of aggression, which blatantly violated the principles of international law and the UN Charter,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

“We call on the US and its allies to respect Syria’s sovereignty and refrain from actions similar to what happened on April 7, and which have serious ramification not only for regional, but also global security,” he added.

Lavrov was referring to the Tomahawk missile barrage fired by the US Navy at a Syrian airbase in Homs province. Washington ordered the attack after accusing Damascus of launching a chemical weapons attack at a rebel-held town in Idlib province from that airbase. Russia condemned the move, saying the US hadn’t offered any proof to pin the alleged chemical weapons incident on the Syrian Army.

Meeting with his Iranian and Syrian counterparts, Javad Zarif and Walid Muallem, on Friday, Lavrov pledged to continue Russia’s support of Damascus in fighting terrorism and restoring peace in Syria.

He added that Moscow suspects that the Idlib incident was a provocative act aimed at derailing negotiations between the Syrian government and so-called moderate rebel groups on a political transition in the country. Lavrov said the perpetrators of the deadly release of toxins must be found.

“We insist on a thorough, objective and unbiased investigation of the circumstance of the use of chemical substances in Khan Shaykhun on April 4,” he said, adding that the investigating team must include inspectors chosen from nations from different parts of the world to ensure its objectivity.

Muallem pledged full cooperation of Damascus in carrying out such a probe.

The Russian minister added that Moscow doubts the objectivity of the current mechanisms for investigating alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, considering the difference in how the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) handles reports by Damascus and by other parties.

“When accusations come against the Syrian government, the OPCW reacts in a matter of days and voices its concern. But they never go on the sites of incidents located in the regions controlled by the armed opposition, citing security issues,” he said. “We consider such analysis from a distance unacceptable.”

Lavrov also accused the US of reviving the Obama administration goal of toppling the Syrian government instead of seeking a political solution, citing the Tomahawk missile attack.

“Such acts of aggression are obviously meant to derail the peace process, which was endorsed in a unanimously adopted resolution of the UN Security Council and implies that the fate of Syria would be decided only by the Syrian people,” he said. “The action was obviously deviating from this basic concept and find new protects to aim for regime change.”

Lavrov said there is an increasing amount of evidence pointing to the conclusion that the chemical incident in Idlib province was staged to set up the Syrian government.

“Publications by professional experts, including some in the US and Britain, say there are too many inconsistencies and gaps in the version of events presented to justify the [US] aggression,” he said.
Zarif accused “certain countries” of hypocrisy, citing Iran’s history of suffering from chemical weapons attack by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1980s war. Declassified CIA files showed that the US was well aware that Saddam was using CWs against Iranians, but didn’t oppose it and even provided intelligence for such attacks.