…or more precisely, like a False Flag attack to stampede President Trump into attacking Syria (and indirectly Russia) rather than ISIS. Here’s why. Please note:
- I’m NOT claiming that it *is* a hoax or a false flag. Only saying why it might be, on present information. Why we should want everyone to take a deep breath and slow down.
- For brevity, I’ll say Deep State to mean “the consensus of the U.S. intelligence agencies” or “the permanent bureaucracy of the U.S. intelligence community”.
- For brevity, I’ll say Controlled Media to mean “the mainstream media, largely controlled by Deep State and certain billionaires”.
Now for the reasons.
- Syria’s dictator Assad has nothing to gain by chemical attacks on his own people. He gains no strategic territory. He does not intimidate his opponents, nor kill many of them, nor destroy much of their equipment. He only unites the world against him. It does not help him win.
Even if Assad is the New Hitler testing the nerve of the West: History shows that megalomaniacs always test their opponents’ nerve by going for a worthwhile objective, a genuine win. For example: Hitler in 1936 re-militarized the Rhineland; Saddam in 1990 seized Kuwait and its rich oil fields. Nothing like that, here.
- Until recently, Deep State claimed that Assad had absolutely NO chemical weapons. Here’s a Rewind reel to refresh your memory.
Of course the Deep State could have been wrong (whether mistaken or deceptive), when its politicians and Controlled Media said those things. The point is: They were said. The sudden reversal requires explanation and accounting. Which, so far, has not been given.
- ISIS and the Syrian rebels (they’re much the same people, on adjoining territory) do have chemical weapons. Even Foreign Policy magazine says so.
- ISIS and the Syrian rebels, and the Deep State factions which back them, do gain by a false-flag attack that gets President Trump to bomb Assad – instead of moving to “eliminate” ISIS, as he was promising.
- Suddenly, it’s The Children. Normally, the Controlled Media will avoid showing pictures of maimed children. The exception is when they’re out to whip people up toward some specific end – like, say, a war. This time, they’ve been showing the dead kids (whom we all pity) a great deal.
Yesterday, I watched both Nikki Haley’s speech to the U.N., and President Trump’s statement to the nation. Both were high on emotion and very short on facts, evidence or logic. That’s a giant red flag.
- Deep State and Controlled Media have hoaxed us before. Some would bring up the Iraq War and WMD, as an example. I wouldn’t, but that’s a long story. It doesn’t matter, because we have other examples.
Are you old enough to remember Nariyah? She got us into the first Gulf War with her tearful tale of Iraqi soldiers ripping babies from incubators – and it was fake, fake, fake.
- We’ve had reports in the not-too-distant past, that Deep State was planning false-flag chemical attacks in Syria. Click on this one, allegedly from the Daily Mail. So, the idea isn’t all that far-fetched.
- The wrong people are praising Trump’s response of bombing Syria.
When known, Deep State-backed war-mongers like Hillary Clinton, John “Landslide” McCain, and the Saudis approve of your attack on some country, it’s a good time to think twice.
I’m open to solid evidence that Assad did the attack. But if it’s a hoax: then it’s a pity that it has worked; Trump is bombing Syria. After months of failed and ridiculous “Trump is a Russian spy!!1!” innuendo, have the Deep State and Controlled Media found a different way to manipulate him into doing their wars?
Trump’s emotional statement, yesterday, was all-too genuine and sincere. Pictures of dead kids are, it seems, a way to corner him into changing policy and doing your bidding.
I think we should still be going after ISIS. Given that ISIS is largely a creation of the Saudis and certain U.S. Deep State factions, it makes perfect sense to me that the latter – and their minions in the Controlled Media and both U.S. political parties – would be so determined to either knock Trump out of office, or yank him over to their preferred policy of war on Syria/Assad/Russia (largely ignoring ISIS).
Well put, Jeff. To say the least, I was disappointed in Trump’s actions. As recently as a couple of years ago, DJT was cautioning against a Syrian adventure.
I’m not a foreign affairs expert but, best I can tell, there are no “good guys” in the Syrian civil war (talking about the belligerents, not the “collateral damage”).
As with Iraq, Libya, etc I’ve yet to have anyone discuss who/what will fill the leadership vacuum is/when Assad is gone.
Lastly, this would not be the first time that ISIS, al-Queda, al-Nusra, and the like have used civilians as props in a photo-op atrocity.
From the commentary on Twitter, a lot of Trump supporters are severely disillusioned. For everyone’s sake, I hope DJT knows what the hell he’s doing here. Surely he learned from W and BHO what the fallout of this can be.
Re Nariyah: I’ve already seen something by a bigfoot journo mentioning the heart-breaking photo of the little boy, drowned and face down on the beach, in a column praising action in Syria. Sad as the little boy’s death was, it’s a Big Lie when it comes to this: the family had been living in a (for Turkey) decent town for a couple of years and had gone cheap on smuggling the family into Europe.
Supposedly, a bomber was observed on radar taking off from a Syrian air base and flying at an altitude consistent with a bombing run right before the attack is said to have occurred.
Assad could have kept a stash of sarin away from inspectors, but to what end? Russia had plenty of opportunity to respond last night. They have installed batteries of SAMs in Syria, which they could have used to try and shoot down our Tomahawks if they had wanted. So why didn’t they? My guess is that Russia has gotten tired of Assad and decided that he needed to go, and went for a horrible method of murder to provoke Trump into action.
It’s hard to sit still and say, “Well let’s just sit and think about this”; there’s a reason so many people are giving Evan McMullin the side-eye when you have video of children twitching in agony as they die of sarin. I’m not going to begrudge Trump a targeted missile strike; hell, if it had been me, I probably would have done far worse. But he needs to consider the next move carefully. And whatever we do, please don’t turn this into another “nation building” project. Our men and women should strictly be a demo crew; we’ll subcontract the Egyptians, the Israelis, and the Jordanians to clean up the mess afterwards.
Thanks guys. Sean L – I agree, that the one silver lining in this is that Trump’s response has been limited. Relatively limited. And, “so far”. Russia has to respond now, but he did at least signal his non-aggressive intentions (toward Russia) by warning them before the attack.
“Deep State” presumes that our various intelligence operations are capable of executing a well-planned and -coordinated conspiracy. History says otherwise.
@ ILC: As I said a few days ago, we gain nothing by antagonizing Putin. Assuming that Putin isn’t just trying to get rid of a political pawn who has become a liability, and any saber-rattling on his part is just kabuki. But if it turns out that the Russians actually had a hand in this gas attack… well, things will get interesting. And they’ll kind of have to.
Mike M – They do covert operations. Many fail, yes. But many others succeed. So, they have some capacity for conspiracy.
Also: It doesn’t need a conspiracy, only a culture. The difference is that, in a culture, individuals act spontaneously towards certain ends. (“spontaneously” == without specific direction or conspiracy)
A good example is, well, a bureacratic culture whose key members instinctively understand and advance the bureaucracy’s perceived interests.
So I stand by my usage of the term, Deep State, to mean:
does it make any difference, if we depose assad who is going to replace him, isis? we deposed terrible governments in Afghanistan and Iraq what good did it do? the people want the terrible governments back. the idea that we could win the hearts and minds of muslims was a terrible mistake
@ salg: Which is why, when we are done wreaking whatever carnage we are going to wreak, we turn to the neighboring countries, say, “You lot, clean this up. No arguments, I’m not in the mood,” and storm off in high dudgeon. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of stiffing a date with the bill, but I think we’ve learned that deprogramming lunatic Mid-East regimes is best left to their not-lunatic Muslim and Jewish neighbors, since they have a better idea of what exactly the problem is than we do.
I, for one, want to keep the Saudis as far away from the rebuilding project as possible. Syria was actually liberal for the region. We don’t need another autocratic theocracy in the Middle East, two is enough.
I still think that a successful drone decapitation-strike through Dr. Assad’s bedroom/bunker window wouldn’t be a tragedy. Obama should have done that years ago when the Red Line was crossed.
Death is death, and war is hell, but… Chemical and biological weapons should be one of the Genii left firmly in the bottle. With a retribution-cost high-enough to keep it there, even if irrationally and disproportionate…up to and including getting nuked for one’s sins.
The Deep State is really good at spying on outsider Republicans who threaten the political order. When it comes to spotting domestic terrorists (Mohammed Atta, Omar Mateen, Tashfeen Maleek, “Speedbump” Tsaernev, Nadal Hassan) they kind of suck at it.
The insider Republicans are out praising Trump today. They do take a valid shot at Obama – “America is back, ready to lead again” rhetoric – but it’s still creepy.
I like Trump better as a peace-mongering outsider.
I used to think Rubio was kinda hot, but…now I seem him as McCain Jr., a ghoul-in-training.
I have been on record for years (paraphrasing Bismark) that Syria is not worth the bones of one dead American. I am disturbed by both the chemical attack (which may indeed be a false flag, although I do not doubt that there were chemical weapons left–no information, just a suspicious mind) and our response. KCRob is right (#1): there are no good guys in the belligerents in the Syrian Civil War.
However, for the cost of nearly 60 tomahawk cruise missiles, we have signaled that this is not the feckless, although pro-Muslim, previous Administration. There was once a toast in the British Navy, “To the Queen, and confusion to her enemies!” I think the attack is causing confusion, which is a good thing. This may give us more clout in discussions over there. Arab cultures admire power.
In the back of my mind is a thought that perhaps the Middle East is not the sole region having a message sent to. The Chinese premier is with President Trump: I wonder if the missiles might not also be sending a message to Red China and North Korea that we will not dither with our reactions.
Was it a chemical/biological weapon? Sure looks like it.
Where did it come from. The Russians? Doubtful. Assad? That’s what Trump and his advisers concluded. False flag? The question remains – where did it come from? If not Assad then he either supplied it or he was extremely negligent in controlling whatever he had retained.
Either way Assad paid a price.
I have read others who suggest the hoax scenario on a sort of reverse Occam’s razor type of logic.
There is no plus side that I can offer for Assad to gas what appears to be a relatively minor place to target.
However, Assad is perfectly positioned to go live in France and live off his billions tucked away in Switzerland. He can’t be either dedicated to Syria or blind to the fact that the whole country is crumbling around him. Assad has got to be sleeping with one eye open, because there must be at least three palace coups in the planning.
Assad is no more religious than was Saddam; he is not a fundamentalist fanatic. His younger brother Maher is the commander of the elite republican guard and probably has a push-me/pull-me relationship with the dictator. It could be that Maher ordered the attack as a way to get Assad to retire before he is “retired.” We will have to wait and see.
Having never been a dictator of a war torn country with religious fanatics and zealots fighting against me before they turn on each other, I have no idea of what would seem “logical” to Assad.
Hopefully, Trump has thrown a bolt of lightening, in the style of Zeus and no landing crafts are being contemplated.
I do not know of even one semi-sensible plan for sorting out things in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran or Syria.
My other hope is that Trump is getting the House of Saud, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States to forget the Palestinian petty bickering and leave Israel alone while they unite against lunatic Islam. They couldn’t do better than have Israel work with them.
Turkey still hates the Armenians and the Kurds and the Yazidis, but they have essentially calmed down on the genocide solution. Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria have worked out dictatorships which keep their fundamentalists from boiling over. el-Sisi is returning Egypt to fundamentally more peaceful times by targeting the Egyptian Brotherhood and showing young radicals what happens when they mess with Egyptian “democracy.”
We need to all grow up when it comes to the realities of life in the Islamic world. They will absorb more and more Western principles as they quash their Islamic loonies. The Saudis, for instance, are facing getting rid of the Wahhabism which they released on the world.
I imagine that Trump is not much interested in another bunch of “strategy” for taking Syria through to Sesame Street and fields of unicorns.
The whole, “what’s the end game” worrying is up to Assad. I suspect that there are plenty of Tomahawk missiles at Souda Bay in Crete to keep Assad busy tidying up.
Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, the PLO, Somalia, China, and a lot of others got a message from Trump’s action.
Just to keep up consideration of the false flag possibility… it’s known that ISIS and the Syrian rebels do have chemical weapons. Where did they come from? Per my linked Foreign Policy article, they captured some of Syria’s awhile back.
Now, where did Syria’s come from? “Russia” is one answer, simple but not necessarily the right answer. My post makes a cryptic (to keep things short) reference to Saddam’s WMD. Well… contemporary articles from 2003 said that truckloads of chemical weapons were seen going up to Syria for safekeeping just before the U.S. invasion, and separately in 2004 and later years, articles said that U.S. forces had found unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical weapons in Iraq. And where did Saddam’s come from? I don’t know, but “the U.S.” seems quite possible; and anyway, the U.S. invasion could have knocked them loose (so to speak) or into the wrong hands (again Syria).
So, this question is not so easy to answer. Everything in the Middle East is a mess, and no one’s hands are very clean.
Exactly.
I read a Controlled Media Q&A which said that Assad’s motive for the chemical weapons was, “he wants to win”. Umm, no! This particular attack *in no way* helps him to win. Quite the opposite. On the other hand, if pinned on Assad, this particular attack helps ISIS and the Syrian rebels (and their Saudi and U.S. Deep State backers) a lot. Cui bono?
I don’t take that for granted. In some accounts, Saddam was a secret fundamentalist who daily wrote verses of the Koran from his own blood that a nurse drew. The story is surrounded by questions, but I don’t rule it out entirely. In other words: with these Middle East dictator loons, you just never know.
That’s interesting. The inexplicable attack could have been Game of Thrones stuff within the Assad regime. Duly noted. But again, I would have liked Trump to stop and consider it.
My Turkish-American friend says that’s yet another example of complicated Middle Eastern politics and myth-making. In his account (or the standard Turkish account), there was never a “genocide” in the racially-motivated sense; it was just politics; a nasty way to put down a nasty, badly-timed, badly-themed rebellion in one section of Armenia.
Agree.
Let’s hope. 🙁
I was certain that I heard there were manufacturing facilities in Iraq prior to the US invasion; somehow, I don’t think the US supplied all of the ones used on the Kurds, or at least there were replenishments down the line. If it’s sarin which was used in Syria, remember that as we learned from the Japanese subway attack, it’s relatively easy to make. Many US households have its source ingredient as a decorative fixture. Why is the science behind Breaking Bad so plausible to the same people who think chemical agents require a level of technical expertise on par with building a nuclear reactor?
As for the “Gawrsh, how did Syria get chemical weapons?!” questions…um, I’m pretty sure that at least some crossed the border from Iraq early in 2003. Everyone knew Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons. Then, after the invasion, it was presto-changeo, no evidence whatsoever! (And BTW, in my mind, chemical weapons were the WMD everyone was looking for but couldn’t find—which gave us five years of “Bush Lied! People Died!”)
Oh, and ILC…before you go back into hibernation for another five months, could you put on your tool belt and take a look around and figure out what broke the site (ie, all bold text everywhere, the comments link on the home page which doesn’t open up into its unique pop-up any more, long comment threads of which the first half of the comments disappear)?
RSG – yes, will get on it this weekend.
ILC,
I’m assuming the identification of sarin gas is correct. That is highly unstable stuff. If ISIS took it from others or even created their own, they would need to have the facilities to store its components and mix them just before use and/or to have storage that is fairly sophisticated.
Assad is thinking in a different plane than any of us can rationally understand. I would say the same for the little Korean nut case and Boko Haram. We can judge what they may do from what they have done. But predicting what their form of Mau-Mauing might turn out to be is just a degenerative parlor game. The twelve Caesars finally came down to Nero and Caligula. Assad has had 17 years to end up where he is and, so far as I can see, he is at the end of his time and Syria is in for a lot worse for years to come. Until Islam works out its fanatical internecine differences from within their ranks, Islam will continue to be a world wide problem.
I think a lot of you make a mistake in presuming that Assad is logical.
Good analysis, AFAICT.
Someone should bring it before Mr president and explain him how it would likely be a better idea to forget Assad and go back to more consistency : say, by joining Russia to finally, once and for all, turn ISIS into ground meat to feed to the swine.
ISIS are nothing but a bunch of psychopath artifact of the Deep State, on the CIA payroll just as Al Qaeda was/is from day one.
RSG – solved the “bold text everywhere”!
“the comments link on the home page which doesn’t open up into its unique pop-up any more” – Noted and will take a look later.
“long comment threads of which the first half of the comments disappear” – Could you please point me to an example? (like a post having the problem)
ILC,
I applaud your return and your emphasis on the politics of big issues.
I note that you have taken Tucker Carlson to heart. I am delighted that at long last someone is breaking eggs in the establishment hen house.
We have drifted too far into the realm in which a “fact” is whatever is being repeated and called a fact. Tucker Carlson takes me back to the playground in the fourth grade where we used to yell at some big mouth to “prove it.” It would be nice to be able to believe the news reporting once again.
All the whacky social justice insanity just seems to bubble out of the septic system and it is constantly amazing just what the loons will dream up next.
But all those issues are distractions to keep us from confronting the knotty problems which plague us. I believe Trump has eye on the causes of the problems and he is oriented toward solving them. If he can use liberals, libertarians, conservatives and moderates in the process, he is also building a coalition and broader base. That is Dengism, named for Deng Xiaoping’s theory: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.”
This is the most recent example of a messed-up comment thread. The counter shows 61 comments, but as of this writing, only 11 are displayed (but not the last eleven comments, as far as I can tell). The RSS feed shows the maximum 20 comments. Whatever tweaking has been going on has shaken loose more content than was there just yesterday, as the tally counter was at 51 with only Heliotrope’s solitary intermediate comment (now listed as “#1”) showing.
This is not unlike what Scott Adams has been saying in regard to the actions of POTUS DJT when they bubble up in the real world. He defines it in terms of a “systems-thinker” approach vs a “goals-thinker” approach, similar to how he operates in the business world. [SA believes in this delineation so much his next book is titled The Systems President, due in October.]
Unfortunately in the hyper-partisan world in which we live, every action which doesn’t fit the expected narrative is somehow suspect. The Resistance types on the left are now scratching their heads over an action suggested by Queen-denied Hillary which they said would never occur under the administration of President P*ssygrabber (for spite, if nothing else) which actually did occur within minutes of the suggestion. Meanwhile, supporters of candidate DJT are responding to the same action with a “WTF?! This isn’t what we voted for!” as if every presidential act should be submitted to a roundtable for their approval.
I fear it has gotten so bad that a Franklin Roosevelt would have problems today getting support (or congressional approval) for a response to Pearl Harbor and a Harry Truman would be quickly labeled a warmongering war criminal for dropping Fat Man & Little Boy. I just hope that the next 9/11 happens on the watch of a Democrat so that Republicans don’t have to play offense (in action) and defense (in explanations) for awhile.
RSG – After a software upgrade, it started trying to paginate at 50 comments. I turned that off. So, your link at #24 should display all 61 comments now.
The remaining issue is the lack of a popup when you click on the comment link. Not sure if I can help with that, but I will take one more look at it, in the next few days.
I disagree. There was no doubt about what happened at Pearl Harbor: thousands of people saw the Japanese planes for themselves. But what do you do in a world where the media creates distrust in itself, by actually faking the news? I have a post coming up about that.
Umm…IIRC, he was. He just had a manly attitude about it: confidence that he was doing the right thing, his actions were his problem, what to think about his actions was other people’s problem.
Yep, that ‘splains it. Helio’s previous #1 comment was actually #51 of overall comments and only #1 on the de facto second page.
FWIW, it has occurred before, presumably in the past also as the result of a software update. I’m guessing it falls into the “It’s a feature, not a bug” category. It may also be by design, since displaying an individual blog posting as the result of clicking on a comments link would also result in potentially more ad display opportunities for those who are looking to boost revenue. That someone might not actually want to do that probably didn’t occur to those that wrote the ‘feature’ into the software.
Yeah, but the same was true for the events of September 11, 2001 except that millions saw it happen in person and tens of millions of more on live television.
Still there are influential people who say that it didn’t really happen the way eyewitnesses saw it (ie, airliner crashes vs controlled demolition) along with all sorts of blather about how it was scientifically impossible the way people saw it happen with their own eyes. I suspect the next such event will cause people to be even more skeptical as it relates to a military response, in much the way that since the Vietnam War-era, there is no such thing as a ‘just war’ among many (most?) of the left.
Only in retrospect (‘revisionist history’). The few people who were talking about warmongering in 1945 were the pacifists and socialists and peaceniks of the era whom no one paid any attention to. The “war criminal” charge didn’t start getting thrown about until the late 1960s/early 1970s. A friend of mine (lifelong Democrat) recalls hearing all sorts of antiwar sentiment about World War II in her university classes circa 1970, but when she came home and tried to recite those to her mother, she was quickly interrupted and informed that her Uncle Buster would have not come home alive if the bombs weren’t dropped. She then informed her of the first-person details about the tunnels and the logistics which the Japanese had in place to thwart land-based and conventional air attacks. Of course none of these details were communicated in the college classes that my friend was taking at the time.
As a student growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, I never heard any of the war criminal stuff in elementary through high school. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in college and overheard a classmate in my theology class talk about the skin melting off the bodies of the victims in Nagasaki & Hiroshima, all in the context of how awful a thing it was, that I heard any indignation over the US-led events of WWII. (Of course it helped that I grew up in an overwhelmingly Republican community and both sides of my family had military veterans of WWII.)
I would also add that one never saw President Truman’s head on a stick in the background of a television show nor him being hung in effigy in protest marches in 1945 or later. Whatever protests there were were subdued and very limited. Yes, partly that was due to the more honest media coverage of the day (and that live coverage was limited to spotty radio transmissions and recorded coverage was largely heavily-edited newsreel footage), but also that it was considered to be unpatriotic to criticize the US and its leaders in a time of war.
Now, we’ve moved to the exact opposite, where “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!” and if you’re not constantly questioning every government action (when doing so from the left), you’re not being an ‘honest citizen.’
I accept that account of it. So then…Harry Truman was “slowly” (not “quickly”) labeled a war criminal….