Robert
Fisk knows the Middle East like no one else. He has been covering
the region on-the-ground for the Times and the Independent for over
30 years.
He
is one of the journos I respect the most.
One
indication of how close to the truth he gets is that, despite the
fact that he is read everywhere else (and well-respected in the
Middie East), he has never been published in America.
Living in Lebanon he has no reason to be fond of Syria or the Assad regime.
Living in Lebanon he has no reason to be fond of Syria or the Assad regime.
Bashar
al-Assad, Syria, and the truth about chemical weapons gasoline demand
at lowest since 2001 in Jan-EIA
Bashar’s
father Hafez al-Assad was brutal but never used chemical arms. And do
you know which was the first army to use gas in the Middle East?
Robert
Fisk
8
December, 2012
The
bigger the lie the more people will believe it. We all know who said
that – but it still works. Bashar al-Assad has chemical weapons. He
may use them against his own Syrian people. If he does, the West will
respond. We heard all this stuff last year – and Assad’s regime
repeatedly said that if – if – it had chemical weapons, it would
never use them against Syrians.
But
now Washington is playing the same gas-chanty all over again. Bashar
has chemical weapons. He may use them against his own people. And if
he does…
Well
if he does, Obama and Madame Clinton and Nato will be very, very
angry. But over the past week, all the usual pseudo-experts who
couldn’t find Syria on a map have been warning us again of the
mustard gas, chemical agents, biological agents that Syria might
possess – and might use. And the sources? The same fantasy
specialists who didn’t warn us about 9/11 but insisted that Saddam
had weapons of mass destruction in 2003: “unnamed military
intelligence sources”. Henceforth to be acronymed as UMIS.
Coup
de théâtre
And
now, the coup de théâtre. Someone from the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation called me up this week to talk about the use of chemical
weapons by Hafez al-Assad in Hama during the Sunni Muslim uprising in
the city in 1982. Their sources were the same old UMIS. But I
happened to have got into Hama in February 1982 – which is why the
Canadian was calling me – and while Hafez’s Syrian army was very
definitely slaughtering its own people (who were, by the way,
slaughtering regime officials and their families), no one ever used
chemical weapons.
Not
a single soldier I saw in Hama carried a gas mask. No civilians
carried gas masks. The dangerously perfumed air which I and my
colleagues smelt after chemicals were used by our (then) ally Saddam
against Iranian soldiers in the 1980s was not present. And none of
the dozens of civilian survivors I have interviewed in the 30 years
since 1982 ever mentioned the use of gas.
But
now we are to believe that it was used. And so the infantile new
fairy tale has begun: Hafez al-Assad used gas against his own people
in Hama 30 years ago. So his son Bashar may do the same again. And
wasn’t that one of the reasons we invaded Iraq in 2003 – because
Saddam had used gas against his own people already and may do so
again?
Bunkum
Yes,
the bigger the lie, the better. Certainly we journos have done our
duty in disseminating this bunkum. And Bashar – whose forces have
committed quite enough iniquities – is about to be accused of
another crime which he has not yet committed and which his father
never did commit. Yup, chemical weapons are bad news, folks. That’s
why the US supplied Saddam with the components for them, along with
Germany (of course).
That’s
why, when Saddam first used gas on Halabja, the UMIS told CIA
officers to blame Iran. And yes, Bashar probably does have some
chemicals in rusting bins somewhere in Syria. Madame Clinton has been
worrying that they may “fall into the wrong hands” – as if they
are presently “in the right hands”. But the Russians have told
Bashar not to use them. Would he piss off his only superpower ally?
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