Will there be another fake chemical attack soon, staged by the forces of ISIS or Al Qaeda still controlling Syrian territory in Idlib province? There have been at least three so far, the last one in Douma, outside Damascus last April. The OPCW inspectors who visited that site finally released their report (see below), which found neither evidence nor victims of any chemical attack. 100+ missiles were lobbed into Syria by the US, UK and France, as punishment, a day before they even arrived.
Whenever the jihadists are up against the wall, with the Syrian Army winning by conventional means, they fake a chemical weapons attack in the hope of giving Western powers an excuse to intervene. And they are all too willing for any excuse to play with their deadly toys.
The Syrian Army now needs to end this war, and cannot leave an important province in the hands of armed and murderous foreign fighters. The weakened terrorist forces have only two options – to surrender or play the chemical weapon card. This time they could create real casualties, from the ranks of captive young women and children taken during ISIS’s murderous assault on the Yazidi population of Iraq (older women and men were killed).
Here is the tell-tale timeline for that last so-called chemical gas attack, the one that launched a thousand missiles:
April 7 – alleged gas event in Douma, last outpost of insurgents around Damascus. Our media’s information on this was unverified, coming from anti-government sources. The jihadist White Helmets made a short film, widely broadcast.
April 13 – America and its allies launch 100+ missile attack upon Syria as punishment, also making millions for the US arms industry.
April 14 OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) inspectors arrive at Douma to examine the scene. Their report was expected in “the usual” 3-4 weeks.
July 6 (12 weeks later) the OPCW issues its report, to a whisper of publicity, reporting that no evidence was found of a chemical weapons attack. Traces of chlorine were found at two locations. It’s a household chemical. They found no evidence on the ground, or residues in people, of chemical weapons, saying only that “the persons affected in the reported incidents may, in some instances, have been exposed to some type of non-persistent, irritating substance.”
The OPCW report is somewhat less than conclusive. Note the vagueness of “may in some instances,” which indicates a possibility not based on evidence, and limited to a few. In other words, some of “the persons” may have been exposed to a temporary irritant before the event, which was filmed on the spot by the White Helmets. Or they may have just been acting. The mention of “persons affected in the reported incidents” does not identify them as victims and suggests that only some of them may have been exposed to a temporary irritant. So the others, most of them, were not exposed to even anything temporary. What are they telling us, in this round-about manner? There is no mention or confirmation of any dead or damaged victims of the so-called attack, despite the media horror story we were fed, based on unverified information from the jihadists who, it would appear, stage-managed the entire event they filmed.
At that time, with the real Syrian army ascendant, gassing civilians near a hospital would have been a pointless military move, whether or not it was waving a red flag at Uncle Sam. Whatever the propaganda tells us of Assad, there is never any suggestion that he or his generals are that stupid.
On August 22nd, Trump’s National Security advisor, John Bolton, appears to have given the cue to the jihadist insurgents for another false flag event by once again publically pronouncing that “…if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.” Suggestions keep appearing in the media that Assad will use chemical weapons in the battle for Idlib. They are laying the foundation for a fake attack. America, and perhaps Britain and France, will again be poised to send more missiles to an undeserving recipient and do whatever they can to prolong conflict in the Middle East and maintain healthy profits for their arms industries.
What surprises me is how they get away with it, and why so many of the mainstream media appear to believe the lies they are fed. If not then how do they sleep at night? ISIS and their associates are a truly unpleasant murderous bunch. If you did not look at the link to their Yazidi genocide then take a look now. They are not deserving of continued tacit support and sympathy from our governments and media. It is past time for the conflict to end, though the enclave of armed fundamentalists in Idlib will continue to fight in any way they can, including the staging of terrorist attacks abroad. It’s what they do.
The US military establishment would hate to lose two of its favourite enemies, ISIS and Al Qaeda, and are terrified that Trump might make peace with Russia. Without enemies, how could the military and intelligence communities defend their ever-increasing budgets? As I have put it before, the voracious military establishments of America and Britain are threatened not by any enemy, but by the absence of one. Without an enemy to fear there is no perceived need to support the expensive, and destructive, military and intelligence communities that act like a state within a state.
Of course, I hope another gas attack is never staged, and that events move swiftly to an end of the conflict in Syria without further fighting or civilian death. I hope that the Yazidi captives are freed and able to rejoin and rebuild their communities. Most of all I look forward to the day when peace has comfortably settled into to the whole of Syria, from where my father’s parents emigrated to America over a century ago. I have been twice to the village where my father’s aunt’s descendants lived, as did that aged aunt when I visited Mishtaya, a village in the hills outside Homs mercifully unscathed by the war.
May there be an end to pointless conflict. Peace is not an unnatural condition for mankind. It was the norm for millennia before rulers imposed themselves upon developed and largely peaceful civilisation.
Gregory Sams 