The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has agreed to send investigators to Syria on a fact-finding mission related to last week’s accused “gas attack” in the Idlib Province. They will gather samples and interview survivors of the incident.
The OPCW investigators will be operating out of Turkey, at least to start with, and Turkey was quick to back the investigation. The Russian government also endorsed the planned investigation, urging the OPCW to not just investigate the site of the incident, but also the Syrian Air Base which was supposedly the origin of the attack.
US Ambassador Kenneth Ward reiterated that the US is convinced that Syria has chemical weapons. He offered no endorsement for the investigation, but rather condemned Russia again, accusing them of trying to “bury the truth.”
Russia has argued the incident was the result of Syria dropping conventional bombs on an al-Qaeda warehouse which had chemicals within, causing a release. The US has insisted Syria secretly kept chemical weapons from the 2013 disarmament and used those, attacking the Syrian airbase in retaliation.
Russia has been urging an investigation instead of just a quick rush to judgment, and US-Russia tensions have been soaring in no small part over this issue, with US officials sometimes expressing openness to an investigation, but all the while insisting they’ve already drawn their conclusion and accusing Russia of involvement, all the while conceding they have no evidence to that effect.
Actually the reports I read were that Al Jazeera and Reuters were on the scene filming for the White Helmets – nothing surprising happens in the ME – anything is possible with the western and gulf medias joining the slaughter.
Can US propaganda be defeated?
Even if the findings proved Assad innocent there would be little chance of the American people accepting the findings. They would see it as treason to doubt their own country’s word.
The entire premise of Raimondo’a article is wrong. And it’s wrong for the same reason that the premise for war against Iraq was wrong.
Raimondo is trying to say that Trump was fooled, and thereby taking responsibility off of Trump and then placing that responsibility elsewhere. He fails to make the point that even if Trump is being fooled, Trump is a willing fool. Believing in the effort to place the blame on Assad is completely in sync with Trump’s agenda of war with Syria. And nobody is going to claim that the gas attack scenario had any purpose other than legitimizing a US led war on Syria. Not even Raimondo.
And so the same game is once again being played as the game that was played for war on iraq. The attempt to push the narrative that Bush2 was fooled by those pushing for the war on Iraq.
No! If Bush was a fool then he was a willing fool to the propaganda he needed to go to war with Iraq. And this time, it’s no different with Trump.
If Raimondo wants to be antiwar then he’s going to have to go all the way and stop presenting this sort of dodge that is meant to take the responsibility off the guilty part. Trump!
I would dearly love to tell Raimondo directly but he is being protected from people such as me who question him. Some of us are banned from posting on his editorials.
What more proof is needed against Raimondo’s guilt of not allowing free flow of views that don’t agree with his spin on the stories.