Syria “Truth Bombs” Explode Western Lies

Damascus winning information war as well as military struggle

Kevin Barrett

Jumada' al-Ula' 06, 1441 2020-01-01

News & Analysis

by Kevin Barrett (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 48, No. 11, Jumada' al-Ula', 1441)

As Syria continues to reassert increasing control over its territory, a series of “truth bombs” has rocked the world during the past several weeks. From OPCW whistleblowers and WikiLeaked documents showing that the April 2018 Douma “chemical weapons attack” was a false-flag fraud, to President al-Asad ridiculing the alleged killing of al-Baghdadi, exposing Western support for Da‘ish and al-Qaeda and revealing that the US occupation of Syria likely involves 10,000 mercenaries not just a few hundred regular soldiers, the Western propaganda narrative is being blown to smithereens.

Those who follow alternative media outlets like Unz.com, GlobalResearch.ca, VeteransToday.com, and my own TruthJihad.com knew shortly after the April 7, 2018 Douma incident that the Western mainstream media narrative was highly dubious. But it wasn’t until late-November 2019 that documentary proof emerged. The implosion of the Douma hoax began with former Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele’s article citing two OPCW whistleblowers’ accusations that the organization’s Douma reports were, according to virtually the entire inspection team, “scientifically impoverished, procedurally irregular and possibly fraudulent.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post, which famously exposed the US government’s Vietnam war lies in the Pentagon Papers, should have turned Steele’s revelations into screaming front page headlines. But they didn’t. It was left to Fox News host Tucker Carlson to break the story into the US mainstream on November 25, ten days after it first appeared on Counterpunch. Instead of a Pulitzer Prize nomination, Carlson got accused of treason.

Then on December 14 WikiLeaks released a new batch of documents documenting massive internal dissent in the OPCW in general, and the Douma inspection team in particular, against management’s insistence on blaming al-Asad for the alleged chemical attack. Yet once again the mainstream media refused to report the story. The mind boggles: conclusive documentary proof reveals an alleged WMD attack that almost triggered World War III was almost certainly a fraud — and the media won’t report it! Such is the state of “freedom of the press” in the West. As of December 17, if you Google “Wikileaks OPCW” and look at the previous week’s posts, you’ll find this bombshell story reported by, in order: almasdarnews.com, wsws.org, RT.com, Wikileaks, GlobalResearch.ca, PressTV .com, and antiwar.com. You won’t find a single mention of it in the New York Times, Washington Post, Toronto Globe and Mail, BBC, UK Times, PBS, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, CNN, NBC, CBS, or even Fox (at least until Tucker Carlson decides to do a gloating “I told you so” segment). The only decent mainstream reporting on the issue in English, thus far, is Peter Hitchens’ December 14 Mail on Sunday article.

The West’s Great Wall of Censorship has not only prevented the OPCW Douma hoax story from gaining mainstream traction, it has also suppressed a stunning series of mid-December interviews given by Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. On Nov-ember 27 Paris Match published censored “excerpts” of its interview with al-Asad. Even with the censorship, the leading French magazine couldn’t hide the fact that al-Asad is standing up for the rule of law, both domestic and international, against the lawless neocons who orchestrated the destabilization of his country.

The Syrian president heaped scorn on key aspects of the Western mainstream narrative. He pointedly ridiculed the absurdity of the accusations that his forces had used chemical weapons, “We were advancing and making good progress, so why would we need chemical weapons? That is the question. More importantly, every place we enter, there are civilians whose lives return to normal. How could they remain there while we were using chemical weapons?! In fact, the lies in Western media and in Western politics have no limits on this subject.”

Al-Asad also mocked the even more limitless lies of the so-called Global War on Terror. Asked if he really believed France supports terrorism, al-Asad replied “definitely.” Questioned about the Americans’ claimed killing of Abi Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Asad said, “I always laugh when this question is raised, because the more important question that should be asked is: was al-Baghdadi really killed or not? And did this ‘fantastic play’ staged by the Americans take place in reality?” When the interviewer protested that Da‘ish has admitted al-Baghdadi’s death (through its PR agency, Israeli Mossad cut-out SITE Intelligence Group – KB) al-Asad said, “Yes, of course. But Da‘ish was created by America; Da‘ish is part of the play and they taught al-Baghdadi how to act when he was in American prisons in Iraq. That’s why I’m saying did this big play [the alleged killing] actually take place? We don’t know.”

Apparently the Western media-propaganda establishment determined that al-Asad’s Paris Match interview, even in its redacted public form, was not helpful to their cause; too many explosive truths were being spoken. So the Syrian president’s next interview, with the Italian RaiNews24, was suppressed in its entirety. It can be accessed only in the alternative media.

Al-Asad’s third explosive interview, conducted with a friendlier outlet, China-based Phoenix Television, was likewise blacked out from the Western media. In it al-Asad asserted that Syria’s security situation is now stable enough for the reconstruction process to enter its next phase, and that Western sanctions — presumably including ramped-up sanctions such as those passed by the US Congress on December 17 — will not stop it, “We have found certain formulas, which will not be disclosed of course, for [Chinese companies] to enter the Syrian market safely and consequently contribute to the reconstruction process in Syria.”

Interestingly, al-Asad said that of all the current leading presidential contenders, “Trump is the best because he is the most transparent… [not] that he is good; but transparency is a good thing especially when it comes to Western politics, because we have become accustomed to masks that hide real Western intentions regarding the world.” The famously narcissistic Trump would probably take that as a compliment. But al-Asad’s real meaning, of course, is that Trump plays the role of the proverbial ugly American quite transparently; he is a transparent idiot, sociopath, and war criminal. When Trump rabidly sides with the most outlandish Zionist extremists even while calling them “not nice people, brutal killers,” and insists that America will remain in Syria “only for the oil,” his transparency is much appreciated even though his actions are not.

Al-Asad told his Chinese interviewer that China’s Belt and Road initiative represents “a worldwide transformation in the nature of international relations” and that Syria looked forward to eventually joining it. He suggested that unlike the US, whose corrupt and chaotic government is completely controlled by self-interested lobbies, China (like Syria) has a state structure that tries to promote general well-being and the national interest.

The fact that America is totally controlled by greedy, self-interested lobbies, private corporations, and crime syndicates, he implied, ex-plains why changing the US administration produces few if any meaningful changes in policy. It also explains why the US has “thousands, maybe tens of thousands” of privatized mercenary fighters occupying Syria to “keep the oil for Israel,” despite its protestations that there are only a few hundred uniformed troops there. It is this decadent hyper-privatized neoliberal-Zionist system, al-Asad suggested, that has lost the war in Syria and is in the process of losing its dominance over the world.

When will the American mercenaries and terrorists finally fulfill Trump’s promise and leave? Most likely they will pull out under fire sometime in mid-to-late 2020. At this writing (December 18) Syrian troops are on the offensive. They have recently captured Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib as well as many rebel-held areas in Hama province, and are pushing north toward Ma‘arah al-Nu‘man on the strategic M5 highway linking Damascus and Halab (Aleppo). Anti-government forces are gradually surrendering and reintegrating into Syria, and Arab countries are moving to re-establish ties with Damascus. As the Syrian government re-establishes control over more and more of its foreign-mercenary-occupied territory, it will be able to turn its attention toward supporting the kind of anti-US-occupation insurgency that will, as I wrote in last month’s Crescent, most likely force the American occupiers to leave sooner rather than later.