New Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack Being Reported By All The Usual Suspects

by Caitlin Johnstone, Steemit

The western propaganda machine is endlessly impressive. People are so pervasively brainwashed by mass media psyops that they now find it easier to believe that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are deliberately killing civilians with poisonous gas for no reason whatsoever than to believe that the same empire which deceived us into Iraq is deceiving us into Iraq’s next-door neighbor Syria.

There are early reports of another mass casualty chemical weapons attack in Syria, as usual in a region crawling with known terrorist forces, and as usual just as those terrorists are suffering critical defeats. As usual, the attack is placed in a location replete with children and cameras. As usual, all the expected high-profile pro-regime change propagandists are all over it, from the White Helmets to Charles Lister to Eliot Higgins to Julian Röpcke.

Details are sketchy and unconfirmed, but the early narrative being promulgated is clear.

“If 30+ died in the CW attack in Douma, then it would be the most fatalities in a chemical attack in Syria since Khan Sheikhoun just over a year ago,” said the Atlantic Council’s Eliot Higgins of the attack. “This could be another major moment in the conflict, something depressingly dependent on whether or not Fox and Friends covers it.”

“Much attention was paid to #Trump’s desire to withdraw troops from #Syria, but tonight’s CW attack in #Douma relates to an entirely different area of U.S. policy,” tweeted Lister. “There is agreement in the White House than a ‘mass casualty chemical attack’ would be grounds for action.”

So to be clear, we’re being asked by these people to believe that Bashar al-Assad launched a “mass casualty chemical attack”, the thing which would provoke the wrath of the US war machine, just as Trump was seeking a withdrawal from Syria and just as Assad was approaching victory in Douma. We are being asked to ignore the fact that the area is crawling with actual, literal terrorists, to ignore the western empire’s extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture support for military aggression, to ignore the extremely suspicious western funding and terrorist ties of the White Helmets who are circulating these photos and information, and to ignore the fact that Syria has been a target of imperialist regime change for many years. We are being asked to ignore all that and believe instead that Assad spontaneously began acting against his own self-interest so that he could kill children for no discernible reason…

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