Russian, Syrian propaganda unmasked by brutal reality
Re: “US is probably lying about chemical attack”, Have Your Say, yesterday.
Sam Khoury shows an amateur’s lack of understanding of what he calls “reality”, with regard to Assad’s use of chemical weapons platforms to murder his young and old citizens in Idlib.
Khoury says that the “Assad government has at its disposal bombers and heavy artillery (conventional weapons) that can kill thousands in a short period of time”.
“Can”? “Short”?
We’ve been waiting for six long years for this horrific war to end.
The same calculus could be used with regards to Saddam’s use of gas at Halabja, and indeed by Germany initially and the allies thereafter during World War One. Moreover, and by this line of reasoning, one may argue that Saddam or the armies in Europe could have continued to use conventional weapons only, without resorting to weapons of mass destruction. They did not.
Khoury appears to be unaware of the stricken province’s strategic importance in terms of stiffening rebel resistance, and Assad’s increasingly desperate attempt to bring a quick end to a devastating civil conflict. So using chemical weapons in Idlib terrifies the population and that the rebels “loose [sic] their will to fight?” It didn’t happen in 2013, and it won’t happen now.
Perhaps Khoury thinks that the pictures of children suffering from the unmistakable, now-verified symptoms of a gas attack are “fake news”, staged Hollywood-style theatrics, to shift the emphasis from cynical Russian, Syrian and Iranian propaganda (which he seemingly believes) to offer Trump a pretext for aggression and upgrading US meddling in the country. This is little more than absurd fantasy, and paints a totally false picture of what is really happening in Assad’s abattoir of a country.
Dr Frank
Bangkok
