In an effort to manufacture the perception of public support for “regime change” and an international war on Syria, Western officials and Arab dictatorships responsible for fomenting much of the bloodshed are spewing lies about the al-Assad dictatorship almost as quickly as the propaganda can be discredited. And like in Libya, in the crossfire suffering and dying are innocent civilians: children, Christians, minorities, and women.
The latest piece of the pro-war deception to crumble surrounds a massacre of women and children in the town of Houla. Citing dubious “sources” such as anonymous opposition fighters and bogus eyewitnesses, the international media promptly blamed the savage killing spree on supporters of the Syrian regime. Western governments — with zero credible evidence — seized on the questionable claims to expel Syria’s diplomats and renew calls for another Libya-style “humanitarian” war.
All along, witnesses and much of the alternative press warned that the claims were blatant lies. Syrian officials, meanwhile, blamed foreign-backed terrorists. “What happened in Houla … and what we described as ugly and abominable massacres, or true monstrosities — even monsters do not perpetrate what we have seen,” Assad said in a speech. “The issue is terrorism. We are facing a real war waged from the outside.”
As in the run-up to the war on Libya, the Syrian despot’s remarks were quickly dismissed by the establishment press — even though it is a well-known and established fact that Western governments and a motley assortment of Gulf Arab tyrants have been supporting the “opposition” since well before the chaos erupted. And it turned out that Assad, though an extraordinarily ruthless dictator, was actually telling the truth all along.
Last week, an investigative report in Germany’s leading daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, confirmed that the Houla slaughter was indeed carried out by anti-regime Sunni rebels. The article also noted that virtually all of the 100 or more victims were members of the pro-Assad Alawi and Shia minorities, even though the overwhelming majority of the town’s residents were Sunni Muslims.
According to the FAZ report, after murdering whole families at close range with knives and guns, the Western-backed terrorists — some of whom are known to be affiliated with and supported by al-Qaeda — photographed their victims. They then claimed that Assad’s forces were responsible, implausibly suggesting that the regime had murdered its own supporters, clearly victims of gunshots and stabbings, with mortars.
Another massacre earlier this year at Homs was also blamed on the Assad regime, and was also disputed by the evidence. “Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces, the evidence and testimony are irrefutable,” explained Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery in Syria about the massacre in Homs. “It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition.” Along with countless other activists and human-rights workers on the ground, Mother de la Croix has been warning for months that terror groups were committing atrocities being falsely painted as the work of the Assad regime by the international media.
The establishment press, meanwhile, instantly parroted the “rebel” claims over and over again in what proved to be a stunning example of journalistic misconduct. The British state-funded BBC, for instance, even got caught using a years-old picture of dead Iraqi children in its quickly discredited propaganda story about the Syrian massacre. Since then, however, even the neoconservative National Review has joined in debunking the bogus Western-backed rebel narrative.
“It is important to underscore the diabolical nature of these killing operations, which are casually blamed on the Al Assad government. They constitute a central component of US-NATO war propaganda,” explained outspoken Canadian author and Professor Michel Chossudovsky in a widely cited piece, suggesting that the mass murder may have even been ordered by Western officials.
He went on to say that the massacres, falsely blamed on Assad, have a very specific purpose. “They are intended to trigger ‘a helpful wave of indignation’ against the Al Assad government, thereby harnessing public support for a military intervention on humanitarian grounds,” Prof. Chossudovsky noted. “What we are dealing with is a criminal undertaking in blatant violation of international law.”
Incredibly, as the Houla war propaganda blew up in its face, the establishment press quickly changed the subject, making new claims that the Syrian military was now using children as human shields. There are countless instances of the mainstream media’s most recent disgraceful reporting on the subject, but just one report exemplifies it well.
CNN, famous for the exposure of its bogus Iraq-war coverage, reported this: “‘The regime is escalating the use of violent forces,’ said an activist in Idlib whom CNN is identifying only as Ahmad for safety reasons. ‘We cannot believe that the world is watching us being killed…. We want military intervention.’”
Media critics point out that the “activists” cited in press reports calling for foreign interventionism are Western-backed opposition propagandists, hardly unbiased observers. Some cynics are even starting to wonder whether the “anonymous sources” actually exist at all — especially after one such “source” supposedly told the U.K. Guardian he saw faces and heard dialogue some 300 meters away, an impossible feat.
“Peace in Syria could be saved if everyone told the truth,” noted French Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos, who recently visited the nation to see for himself what was going on. “After a year of conflict, the reality on the ground is far from the picture that imposes disinformation in Western media.” He said the Syrian regime was under assault by Islamist extremists and foreign fighters.
Of course, the Houla tragedy was just the most recent example of war propaganda crumbling. From the very beginning, the Western media has consistently painted the Syrian uprising as a peaceful, spontaneous, and democratic movement being brutally quashed by an insane dictator. And while Assad is indeed a nasty tyrant, in reality, rebel violence began in the first days of the “uprising” as Western-trained terrorists began killing police, burning down government buildings, and wreaking havoc.
Since then, the atrocities have continued to grow more frequent and barbaric. Rebel forces have, for example, viciously slaughtered Christians — who support the secular regime largely because Assad provides one of the last refuges for the beleaguered Middle Eastern minority — in what analysts described as “ethnic cleansing.” While there are undoubtedly some sincere and well-meaning opponents of the regime involved in the fight, al-Qaeda, foreign mercenaries, Islamic extremists, and outside Special Forces teams have unleashed a veritable bloodbath including suicide attacks, murdered children, and more.
But if Obama and other Western and Arab leaders get their way, the worst is yet to come. And Assad, whose vicious crackdown on the armed opposition has been condemned worldwide despite his dubious offers of amnesty, discussions, and political reforms, may well face the same fate as Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi — also a former U.S. government ally. While Assad has indeed initiated some tepid reforms, governments — and especially socialist dictatorships like the barbaric Baathist regime ruling over Syria — have a long track record of lies and broken promises.
Syria, meanwhile, will probably end up like Libya as well, at least if the “international community” gets its way: run by war lords and known al-Qaeda leaders, completely ruined, and with tens of thousands of innocents having lost their lives. And Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice — whose wild statements on Libya in the run-up to that unconstitutional war proved critical to the effort despite later being proven fraudulent — is helping to lead the global campaign for another bloody and unlawful disaster.
“Susan Rice is a psychotic, bloodthirsty monster who deserves to be jailed as a war criminal. When the Syrian government denied responsibility for the Houla massacre, Rice with no evidence immediately dismissed the denial as a ‘blatant lie,’” noted analyst Daniel McAdams for the popular anti-war site LewRockwell.com. “Rice and her evil partners Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton are hell-bent on ensuring that left-wing interventionism is as bloody and destructive as its right-wing counterpart, even if they call it ‘humanitarian.’”
Like in every other Middle Eastern nation where the U.S. government has intervened over the last decade — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and more — Syrian civilians and minorities such as Christians in particular are already paying the price. And open international warfare against Syria is inching closer and closer as the war propaganda builds.
“This semi-covert assistance to rebels we don’t know much about threatens to become overt intervention,” noted Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a longtime proponent of non-intervention and adherence to the U.S. Constitution, adding that the federal government consistently uses lies to sell more war. “We are on a fast track to war against Syria. It is time to put on the brakes.”
The Obama administration has even claimed that the “international community,” not Congress, has the power to order American troops into the conflict. Top military officials and lawmakers, meanwhile, are loudly beating the war drums — mostly based on their own fabrications about what is happening. But if and when the open intervention does come, analysts say, the results will be tragic — and once again, it will all be based on lies.
Related articles:
Obama-backed Syrian Rebels “Ethnic Cleansing” Christians
Al-Qaeda & the West Back Syrian Rebels Against Assad
Possible U.S. Involvement in Covert Warfare in Syria
Syria: From Valued Ally to “Vicious Enemy”
U.S. Should Steer Clear of Syria
Christian Massacres: A Result of U.S. Foreign Policy
Potential Syria Intervention May Lead to Wider War
Photo of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling on Syrian government to stop civilian massacres: AP Images
