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May 10, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
44:14
A Tale of Two Narratives #2 - The First Casualty
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This video is the second part of an investigation into the allegations that the Syrian government, led by Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons on the 4th of April 2017 in Khan Sheikhun, in the northern province of Idlib.
I will be directly referring to conclusions drawn from the evidence presented in part 1, so I'd recommend watching that video before continuing with this one.
The allegations of a chemical weapon attack have been presented by both the Pentagon and French intelligence services.
The Pentagon released a map that reportedly shows the flight pattern of a Syrian aircraft that is alleged to have dropped chemical weapons on civilians.
Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, said, quote, We have a very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out by aircraft under the direction of the Bashar al-Assad regime, and we also have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas.
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster reinforced this statement with, quote, Our intelligence community, in cooperation with our friends and partners and allies around the world, collaborated to determine with a very high degree of confidence precisely where the location originated, and then, of course, the sorts of chemicals that were used in the attack.
The allegation of the use of chemical weapons, in this case the use of sarin gas, appears to be corroborated by Dr. Abdel-Hay Tanari, an internal medicine specialist who reported information by phone call from a field hospital supported by the Syrian American Medical Society.
Tanari claimed to have treated 22 patients that exhibited symptoms consistent with exposure to sarin gas.
He claims that 74 people died due to the alleged chemical attack, drawing this number from a document he had seen that was released by the Idlib Health Directorate.
UK newspaper The Daily Mail published a speculative article containing photographs of purported chemical weapons munitions at the Al-Shayrat airfield that was struck by US Tomahawk missiles causing minor damage.
The pictures were sourced from Twitter and show a pile of containers that seemed to be containers that could contain chemical weapons, although no further information is available.
Satellite images of Al-Shayrat airfield corroborate that these pictures are of the airfield and that the airfield was likely damaged by the US strike.
Syrian planes continued to take off from the airfield the following day.
Despite the Syrian government volunteering to relinquish its chemical weapons and the removal of these weapons being confirmed by the United States government, allegations that the Syrian government did not disclose the full extent of their chemical stockpiles surfaced in 2014 and persisted until 2016, when inspections by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons declared that multiple sites revealed the presence of four chemical warfare agents.
Two unnamed military officials speaking on behalf of the US government stated, quote, We highly suspect, and in fact, there's no credible alternative to a Syrian regime air attack as the source of the chemicals that killed so many Syrian civilians.
There's no credible opposition capability with nerve agents.
ISIS has experimented with mustard agents, blister agents, not nerve agents, but this is well beyond the technical capability of the opposition.
The officials also claim they suspect the alleged attack was carried out with the help of the Russian military personnel also stationed at Al-Shayrat Airfield.
French intelligence services declassified a report on the 26th of April 2017 regarding the events of the alleged attack.
The report is based on intelligence from France's own sources that claim to use samples that were collected independently from Khan Sheikhun.
The report claims that on the 4th of April 2017, airstrikes against civilians in Khan Sheikhun killed more than 80 people and according to their experts has been scientifically confirmed to be caused by a highly lethal neurotoxic agent.
The chemical signature of the samples apparently matched the chemical signature of an unexploded sarin grenade allegedly recovered from a separate alleged attack in Sarakib, which is also in Idlib province, that took place on the 29th of April 2013.
The report claims that a helicopter flew over the city in the afternoon and dropped three unidentified objects from high altitude that emitted white smoke on their descent on a north-south trajectory.
According to the report, only the Syrian government could have done this.
The unexploded grenade was recovered from the third point of impact.
The report states that the chemical compound contained within the grenade was produced using the same manufacturing process that produced the sarin from the 4th of April attack.
The report contains a military analysis that claims the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhun came after a Syrian army offensive, which included conventional bombing, in which the Syrian army was able to push back Islamist fighters and secure most military objectives, though not all.
The Islamists retained a presence in the region, although the Syrian government is now in control of most of the area, and al-Nusra control of the local area is severely depleted and continues to wane.
The report claims that French intelligence services are aware that the Islamist factions have chemical weapons capabilities and are aware of coordination between them, but, to the knowledge of the French services, none of these groups has the capability to employ a neurotoxic agent or the air capacities required.
The report also rejects the possibility of the attack being conducted by the Islamic State, as they are not present in the sector.
The French intelligence services also reject the theory of the attack being staged as not credible due to the influx of victims in local hospitals and the simultaneous massive uploading of videos showing symptoms of sarin use.
The report concludes by stating that France assesses that the Syrian armed forces perpetrated the chemical attack using sarin gas.
The Pentagon's report contains many unsupported allegations made with very high confidence on the word of the intelligence community.
Given the history of unproven allegations from the intelligence community, these should not be trusted and be treated with a high degree of scepticism.
According to citizen reporters, the provincial administration of Idlib is controlled by Islamists loyal to al-Nusra and operate as a front for them, with little to no real governance for the benefit of the people of Idlib.
Information from the Al-Nusra-controlled government should be treated as dubious at best, although the inconsistent casualty figures are not necessarily a reflection of a deliberate attempt to mislead and could instead be simply down to inaccurate reporting in a time of war.
The report contains no information on how the sample from Khan Shaykun was collected and how it could be verified as legitimate.
The account of the Sarakib attack is contradicted by eyewitness accounts that describe the falling objects as canisters and not grenades, with further eyewitness inconsistencies in the accounts.
The reported effects were also inconsistent with the effects of sarin gas, with one claiming that there was a horrible suffocating smell and that he couldn't see anything for three or four days.
Reports on Khan Shikun from alleged victims of the sarin gas include claims that they could smell it from 500 meters away.
In its pure form, sarin gas is odourless and tasteless and people may not even know that they're under attack.
Sarin gas is a neurotoxin that operates by inhibiting an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitters used to stimulate nerves.
Sarin prevents the enzyme from deactivating the nerve, causing the nerves to continue firing.
The nose runs, the eyes cry, the mouth drools and vomits, bowels and bladder evacuate themselves, along with convulsions and paralysis.
If the dose is fatal, death comes in 1 to 10 minutes.
If the victim survives, the effects dissipate rapidly with no permanent effects.
One of these canisters was recovered and described as a box-like container with a hollow concrete casing inside, which was corroborated by an al-Nusra rebel fighter, with video evidence.
There is no further evidence presented that the grenade used by French intelligence to ascertain the source of the sarin was used by the Syrian army, that the sarin grenade was apparently placed inside the container with a concrete casing for reasons unknown.
The north-south trajectory of the helicopter brings into question the origin of the helicopter.
Idlib borders Turkey to the north, and Turkish whistleblowers claim to have evidence that Turkish intelligence services previously aided Islamist rebels.
It cannot be ruled out that this was a Turkish helicopter carrying out a false flag attack to blame on the Syrian government, already under the threat of invasion should they cross the red line of using chemical weapons.
According to a BBC report, activists on the scene declared, Let the world hear, Obama-Obama.
Regime troops have crossed all red lines.
This would appear to be an attempt to craft a narrative surrounding the event by the Islamist rebels.
Both reports contain no reference to information provided by Turkish whistleblowers that Turkish intelligence is funneling sarin gas to al-Nusra fighters, nor that Khalid el Ponte believes that Islamists use sarin in Ghouta in 2013.
It makes little tactical sense to drop chemical weapons after an area has been captured.
The US assessment that Syrian planes flew over the location is not conclusive proof that these planes dropped chemical weapons.
The Syrian Air Force conducts regular conventional bombing raids.
Despite evasion from Bashar al-Assad on the subject in multiple interviews, the Syrian government undoubtedly has chemical weapons stockpiles to some degree, even after the United States investigation and clearance.
Assad has stated in interviews that Syria holds these stockpiles out of fear of Israel's nuclear weapons to be used in a retaliatory strike.
However, this does not mean the Syrian government uses these weapons as a matter of course, and Assad implies that these are a weapon of last resort.
The tactical assessment in the French report also brings into question the logic of the allegations.
If the Syrian government had conquered Idlib from the Islamist rebels, why would the Syrian government need to use chemical weapons behind their own lines?
More importantly, why would the Syrian government even use chemical weapons in the first place?
The United States has had plans for Middle Eastern regime change for over a decade, and has followed through on this plan on two prior occasions in Iraq and Libya.
The Syrian government must be under no illusions that the United States would do the same to Syria, so deliberately using chemical weapons would be the equivalent of Assad putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger.
In addition to this, the Syrian army has made significant gains, capturing huge amounts of territory from both former al-Nusra factions and the Islamic State, and looks set to win the war with Russian and Lebanese aid.
At this point, it appears that the only thing that could prevent a Syrian government victory in the civil war would be external intervention, which could only be triggered by the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons as a pretext for Western intervention.
There is no reason for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons, and every reason for them not to do so.
In addition to this, the Islamists have had many opportunities to use chemical weapons, and have done so repeatedly.
Prior to the split between al-Nusra and the Islamic State, the groups captured a major cache of chemical weapons from the Syrian government.
The attack was led by al-Nusra and supported by foreign jihadis.
According to an account by one of the fighters, they captured barrels filled with chlorine, mustard and sarin gas.
The spoils were distributed, but al-Nusra kept the chemical weapons for themselves, carrying them away in cargo trucks.
It is not certain what happened to them after that, and it is speculated that the Islamic State took at least part of the chemical weapons in its separation from al-Nusra.
It is known that the Islamic State used chlorine and mustard gas in Iraq on at least 52 separate occasions.
The Syrian government has denied the Western version of events, and the Russian government provided their own hypothesis.
They suggest that the Syrian Air Force bombed rebel-held chemical weapons dumps, which exploded and contaminated the area.
The Russian account has little evidence to support it and contradicts the Syrian account, so I am prepared to dismiss it completely as a fabrication.
Bashar al-Assad believes that the entire attack was fabricated in order to frame the Syrian government.
So what happened this day?
As I said, the only source is al-Qaeda.
We cannot take it seriously.
But our impression that the West, mainly the United States, is hand in glove with the terrorists.
They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.
It wasn't attack because of what happened in Khan Sheikhoun.
It's one event.
It's stage one.
The play that we saw on the social networking and on TVs, the propaganda.
And stage two is the military attack.
That's what we believe is happening.
Because it's only a few days, two days, 48 hours between the play and the attacks.
And no investigations, no concrete evidence about anything.
The only thing were allegations and propaganda and then strike.
Assad's account is actually supported by evidence, though the quality of that evidence is dubious.
The I'll add to this.
The more news, I'll do this.
The more news, the more news-reviewed andいやred, the more news-reviewed and long-reviewed, the more news-reviewed and altogether.
A short video featuring agents from the Idlib Health Directorate surfaced shortly after the alleged attack, showing the agents apparently treating victims of the attack.
Images of this were circulated around Twitter with comparative images from the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack to compare the precautions taken by each organisation, with the implication being that the 4th of April attack could not have been sarin as the aid workers in Syria were not wearing hazmat suits as in Japan and in some cases wearing no covering on their hands and sandals on their feet.
This is not necessarily indicative that the pictures were fake.
Sarin gas can be absorbed by the skin and so a hazmat suit is a sensible precaution if the option is available, but this might not be an option in war-torn Syria.
Also, sarin does not take long to dissipate, so if the medical teams had arrived a significant amount of time after the attack, the risk of being affected by the gas is very low.
However, it does seem to be a remarkable risk not to use gloves at the very least.
There is a consistent pattern of media deception in which any evidence for or against must be contextualized, beginning with the credentials or lack thereof of the people on the ground publicizing the 4th of April attack on social media.
Video of the alleged victims of the attack was posted to the internet by Dr. Shahjul Islam, where he was apparently treating patients in Khan Sheikhun.
Islam appeared on many different television networks to promote his opinion on the events.
Shahjul Islam worked in Britain as an NHS doctor before travelling to Syria to allegedly join the Islamist rebels.
Islam is well known to MI6, who declared him to be a committed jihadist and was arrested in 2012 to face charges of kidnapping journalists in Syria.
He told the journalists he had taken a sabbatical from his position at the St. Bartholomew's Hospital to wage a holy war in Syria and was apparently furious when the execution of the journalists was called off.
The case against Shahjul Islam was dropped after the victims were unable to give evidence in the trial.
The prosecutor explained the case relied wholly on their testimony and was frustrated that they could not be called, but could not expand on the reasons why.
His brother, who was also facing allegations of conspiring to commit terrorism, also had his charges dropped.
A Swedish non-governmental organisation called Swedish Doctors for Human Rights has challenged the media evidence that purports to show victims of other alleged chemical attacks.
A series of articles claims to demonstrate that the victims of these attacks do not match expected victim profiles, and Professor Marcelo Ferrada Dinoli believes that video of unknown medics injecting a naked child in an attempt to save the child's life after the 4th of April attack were faked, with the videos demonstrating that the child is not only not being properly treated, but the syringe being injected into the child is actually empty.
His conclusion, backed by three other doctors, is that, quote, life-saving procedures on the children showed in the White Helmets videos were found to be fake and ultimately performed on dead children.
As a result of this analysis, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights received many anonymous death threats.
There are many unverified images circulating on social media that appear to show staged photos.
Russian news agency TAS claims that unnamed sources among local civilians from opposition units allege that special video teams were shooting staged films in the populated localities of Serakab and Jizra al-Sukur in the aftermath of the purported shelling and airstrikes, including the use of toxic substances.
Locals apparently recognised the advisors to the video teams as film crews employed by Qatar's state-funded broadcasting station, Al Jazeera.
As with almost all information coming from Syria, this information is practically impossible to verify.
In December 2016, five people were arrested in Port Said, Egypt, for allegedly producing fake videos that they admitted they had intended to distribute on social media.
The Egyptian Ministry of the Interior published a statement that claimed the videographer was creating the footage in order to persuade the public that the images were of the war for Aleppo.
One of the videos seized by the Egyptian authorities shows an eight-year-old girl apparently soaked in blood, while a 12-year-old boy is interviewed about life under the intensive Syrian government airstrikes.
This is evidence in support of Assad's claim that there are groups deliberately fabricating propaganda against his government by creating and distributing false video and images, and it would appear that the White Helmets are directly involved in this.
The Syria Civil Defence, colloquially known to Western sources as the White Helmets, are a non-governmental, non-profit organization that apparently emerged in late 2012 after the Syrian government lost control of large swathes of territory in the early stages of the revolution.
They were initially groups of civilians who had volunteered themselves to helping people wounded in the aftermath of Syrian government airstrikes.
These groups were very quickly provided with international training and funding by both Western governments and a Turkish NGO called ACUT Search and Rescue Association.
By 2013, James Lemaziria, a former British Army officer and an advisor on the Syria conflict at the United Arab Emirates-based consultancy Analysis, Research and Knowledge organised these groups into what is now known as the White Helmets.
ARC would send volunteers to Turkey to be trained by ACUT, and by October 2014 these volunteer teams had become organised under the single banner of the Syrian Civil Defence.
The current operating budget of the White Helmets is $30 million from donations from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Japan, and the United States.
The White Helmets are headed by Raid Saleh, and operate exclusively in territory held by Islamist rebels.
They profess to be neutral and impartial in the conflict.
The White Helmets were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 and were the subject of an eponymous Netflix documentary.
The White Helmets are also the subject of a great deal of controversy that Western sources either ignore or dismiss out of hand.
For example, in 2016, a particular set of unverified images circulated on social media that showed a variation of the same theme.
A White Helmet employee carrying a dust-covered young girl's safety, presumably after having recovered her from the rubble of a house caught in an airstrike.
The three photos appear to show a different White Helmet employee each time in a different location, carrying the same young girl dressed in exactly the same clothing with a similar covering of white dust.
This led internet's commentators to speculate that these photographs were either evidence of the world's unluckiest girl having happened to survive three separate airstrikes on three different houses while wearing the same clothing each time, or that these photographs were staged.
In November 2016, a video surfaced on Twitter showing an evidently staged rescue.
In the video the participants stand frozen while a cameraman navigates around them, then the scene bursts into life in a convincing action shot.
Despite public concern that this was proof that the White Helmets were staging videos, mainstream media outlets were reticent on the video and only after widespread outrage did the White Helmets claim that the video was a contribution to the viral Mannequin Challenge trend that had started at the beginning of that month.
However, this video inadvertently answered the question raised by internet sceptics, are the White Helmets capable of falsifying convincing video evidence that would fool the public?
And the answer was yes.
A similar incident occurred in September 2013 after the BBC aired a special episode of Panorama called Saving Syria's Children.
Numerous discrepancies and incongruities are detailed in a particularly long and thorough blog post on the subject, right down to whether the attack the documentary is based around even took place.
Accounts of the event repeatedly conflict with one another, and the alleged victims of a napalm attack are shown with their supposedly burnt faces covered in cream, with eyebrows perfectly intact, and another alleged victim of napalm attack is caught grinning broadly at the camera.
Professional opinions indicate that these victims do not appear to be in significant pain from their burns, and in the words of one doctor, I think the scene of the school children coming in with the burns was an act.
The problem of fake images and videos emerging from conflict zones in the Middle East is not new, and as we saw in the first part of this series, something well within the bounds of what Western governments will fund on which they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars.
There are many reasons to believe that the professed neutrality and impartiality of the White Helmets is not true, often directly undermined by video evidence.
A first responder to the 4th of April attack was Hadi Abdullah, a known propagandist for numerous Islamist groups in Syria, including Al-Nusra.
He reported frequently with the White Helmets and has been filmed multiple times congratulating and hugging Islist fighters.
THE White Helmets AND THE White Helmets AND THE White Helmets.
Another example is a video of White Helmets employees caught in celebration with Victoria islamist rebels.
Another video on Live League appears to show an Islamist fighter executing a man by gunshots to the back of the head, and moments later in the same video, White Helmets employees calmly lay out a stretcher to carry away the victim's body.
Isam al-Saleh, a cousin of Raid Saleh, the leader of the White Helmets, and his six brothers were all defectors from the Syrian government.
Isam al-Saleh was killed in an airstrike while working for the White Helmets, and in April 2016, Raid Saleh was refused entry to the United States, where he had traveled to receive an award.
Upon arrival, he had found his visa had been cancelled and was refused entry by the authorities.
Saleh had been refused entry by the Department of State, presumably as part of the real-time vetting procedures that are in place, although no specific reason was given.
The claim that the White Helmets are a neutral organization in the Syria conflict is very likely to be false.
The Syrian government believes that they are a propaganda organization for al-Nusra and Western governments, which is why they operate exclusively in al-Nusra-held areas and are funded almost exclusively by the West.
There are also reports from Syrian civilians from Aleppo that the White Helmets were essentially a gang of thieves.
Compare reporting from CNN to the reporting from Russia Today on the White Helmets, and you can see a stark contrast in the two narratives.
To Syria now, though, if this description of what is happening in that country fails to get the world's attention, it is hard to imagine what else could.
The UN's top human rights official says the siege and bombardment of eastern Aleppo are, quote, crimes of historic proportions.
Regime forces, backed by Russian warplanes, are taking a brief humanitarian pause after pounding the rebel-held eastern parts of Aleppo.
When the bombs fall, a small group of volunteers called the White Helmets run into smoldering rubble and rescue injured and trapped victims, including infants and little children.
They saved the life of this five-year-old boy named Omran earlier this summer, his bloodied, shell-shocked face becoming a stark reminder of the toll of this war.
The White Helmets estimate that they have saved more than 60,000 lives.
It is a feat that earned them a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
The Washington Post has called their job among the most dangerous in the world.
But even the bravest have broken down from the horror of this war.
I don't call them civil defensemen, but rather the mujahideen of the civil defense.
It appears that the al-Qaeda affiliates' love for the White Helmets isn't one way.
they celebrate victories together.
Still, in an interview with RT, one of its chiefs claims that they have saved tens of thousands of lives.
Not a problem about resource, about the result.
We are until now from 2013 until now we were able to rescue 70,000 people.
Back in the Jibrin camp, brimming with people that have just fled White Helmets Turf, the organization has quite a reputation amongst the civilians that they're supposed to be saving.
Everyone that we spoke to was angry and eager to talk.
Do you ever see in Fardus men with white helmets, they're called the white helmets or the civil defense, helping people when they were injured?
When they came to help the injured, they stole from them.
If people were wearing jewelry, they cut it off.
All of them are thieves.
Some of them are honest, but many are just thieves.
They see gold and they take it.
The white helmets as sheep in wolves' clothing, thieves in disguise, was a common theme amongst the complaints.
But the allegations got more serious.
This man accused the organization of intentionally killing his little girl.
They took her to the civil defense hospital and they gave her an injection filled with air to kill her.
This man went as far as to celebrate an airstrike on his own house because he said it had been seized by White Helmets workers side by side with rebel fighters.
They forced me to leave my house and told me they were turning it into a free Syrian army base but later they were hit by an airstrike.
Finally, we got to those glossy videos appearing to show their heroics, constantly repeated by the mainstream media.
They don't help people, they only work when there is a camera on them, and when the camera is gone they leave.
They abandon people under the rubble.
They told us to pull the bodies out by ourselves.
Lizzie Phelan reporting for RT from Aleppo.
Finally, there is undoubtedly a great deal of anti-Syrian propaganda performed by pro-Western activists on social media.
Barna Alabed is apparently a young Syrian girl who, along with her mother, operates an English-language Twitter account from inside of Aleppo before the Syrian army retook the city.
Barna became famous for this and was picked up by Western media, as you saw in the first part.
She was featured on major news networks like CNN where she appeared to be coached.
She's been referred to as the Anne Frank of the Syrian Civil War by one journalist at the Washington Post.
The Twitter account is apparently run by her, with any tweets from her mother, Fatima, marked as such.
Fatima Alabed has a background in journalism.
For a seven-year-old, Barna seems to take a remarkable interest in international politics.
Her political tweets are the most numerous and are an exclusive support of the United States in opposition to the Syrian government, welcoming Trump's airstrikes against her country and once stating that it would be better to start a third world war instead of letting Russia and Assad commit hashtag Holocaust Aleppo.
An investigation revealed that she had been in Aleppo at least long enough to post for a picture.
Barna regularly posts photos to her Twitter account.
In these photos, she is always dressed in clean new clothes.
Her father is Ghassan Alabed, which citizen investigators discovered to be a real person with authentic social media profiles, with a Facebook page that dated back to 2001.
Strangely, Barna only appears on his Facebook page after October 2016, a month after Barna opened her Twitter account.
One of his earliest posts also managed to misname his daughter, calling her Zara instead of Barna.
Barna and her family apparently fled Aleppo shortly before the area their apartment complex was located in fell behind Syrian lines after the advance by the Syrian government forces on the 4th of December 2016.
On the 21st of December 2016, the BBC reported that she had fled to the rebel-held countryside to the west of Aleppo.
She tweeted a request to the Turkish foreign minister asking for help, and Erdogan personally sent a helicopter to retrieve Barna and her family.
Once in Turkey, they met Erdogan, with Barna giving him a hug and telling him that she loved him.
Barna's family appears to have some connections to jihadis.
In July 2016, video emerged of a group of Islamist rebels beheading an 11-year-old boy on the grounds that he was apparently an enemy fighter.
The man closest to the camera with a round face and wearing a baseball cap later emerged in a photograph circulating on Twitter apparently holding Barna al-Abed.
I cannot attest to the veracity of these photos nor explain their context, but it is very clearly the same man and Barna al-Abed.
It is not clear who conducted the sarin gas attack on the 4th of April 2017 in Khan Shikun, or even if a sarin gas attack took place.
Information from the event comes from unreliable sources, where we even know where the sources are, and are backed by little more than the opinions of intelligence agencies that cannot be trusted.
There is a clear political motive to remove the Syrian government from power, and history shows that the US is prepared to act on faulty intelligence.
There has been a sustained campaign of disinformation originating from anti-Assad sources, working in concert with regional powers, who have previously attempted to frame the Syrian government for a chemical attack under the working knowledge that crossing this red line would be justification for the United States to implement regime change in Syria.
It would be a tactical blunder of immense proportions if the Syrian government did indeed use chemical weapons against a civilian population that had already been largely reconquered from the Islamist rebels, formerly known as al-Nusra, at a stage in the war where the Syrian government's victory seems inevitable.
Western media has trouble explaining their own narrative in terms that make sense.
The only option is to paint Bashar al-Assad as an unhinged lunatic, power-crazed and brazenly defiant.
This is encapsulated by the oft-repeated term grim logic, in which one New York Times article declares that Assad is attempting to demonstrate the government's impunity and to demoralize its foes.
The article cites an expert who bluntly states, Militarily, there is no need, but it spreads the message, you are at our mercy.
Don't ask for international law.
You see, it doesn't even protect a child.
It is very difficult to align this description of Bashar al-Assad's motives with the interviews Assad has given Western media.
It's not clear whether it happened or not.
Because how can you verify a video?
You have a lot of fake videos now.
And you have the proof that those videos were fake, like the white helmet, for example.
There are al-Qaeda, there are Nusophon, who shaved their beard, wore white hats, and appeared as humanitarian heroes.
Which is not the case.
The same people were killing Syrian soldiers, and you have the proof on the internet anyway.
So the same thing for that chemical attack.
We don't know whether those dead children, were they killed in Khan Sheikhoun, were they dead at all?
Who committed the attack if there was attack?
What the matter?
You have no information at all.
Nothing at all.
No one investigated.
So you think it's a fabrication?
Definitely.
100% for us.
It's fabrication.
We don't have arsenal.
We're not going to use it.
And you have many indications if you don't have proof because no one has concrete information or evidences.
But you have indications.
For example, less than two weeks, around 10 days before that attack, the terrorists were advancing in many fronts, including the suburbs of Damascus and Hama, which is not far from Khan Sheikh.
Let's suppose we have this arsenal and let's suppose that we have the will to use it.
Why didn't we use it when we were retreating and the terrorists were advancing?
Actually, the timing of that attack or alleged attack was when the Syrian army was advancing very fast and actually the terrorists were collapsing.
So why to use it if you have it and if you have the will?
Why to use it at that timing?
Not when you are in a difficult situation, logically.
This is for a second, if you want to use it, if you have it and if you want to use it, again, this is if we suppose.
Why to use it against civilians, not use it against the terrorists that we are fighting?
Third, in that area, we don't have army, we don't have battles, we don't have any, let's say, object in Khan Sheikhon, and it's not a strategic area.
Why to attack it?
What's the reason?
Militarily, I'm talking about military, from me from a military point of view.
Of course, the foundation for us morally, we wouldn't do it if we have it.
We wouldn't have the will because morally it's not acceptable.
We won't have the support of the public.
So, every indication is against the whole story.
So, we can say that this play that they staged doesn't hold together.
The story is not convincing by any means.
With the US airstrike, Trump seems to have changed his position on you and Syria drastically.
You have the feeling that you lost what you have called a potential partner.
I said if it was conditional.
If they are serious in fighting terrorists, we're going to be partnered.
And I said, not only the United States, whoever wants to fight the terrorists, we are partner.
This is basic, basic for us, basic principle, let's say.
Actually, what has been proven recently, as I said earlier, that they are running hand in gloves with those terrorists.
The United States and the West, they're not serious in fighting the terrorists.
And yesterday, some of their statements were defending ISIS.
They were saying that ISIS doesn't have chemical weapons.
They are defending ISIS against the Syrian government and the Syrian army.
So, actually, you cannot talk about partnership between us who work against the terrorists and who fight the terrorism and the others who are supporting explicitly the terrorists.
Mr. President, did you give an order to strike Khan Sheikhun with chemical weapons last Tuesday?
Actually, no one has investigated what happened that day in Khan Sheikh till that moment.
As you know, Khan Sheikhon is under the control of Al-Nusra Front, which is a branch of al-Qaeda.
So, the only information the world has had till this moment is published by Al-Qaeda branch.
No one has any other information.
We don't know if the whole pictures or video that we've been seeing are true or fabricated.
That's why we asked for investigation into what happened in Khan Sheikh.
This is the second Al-Qaeda source that said that the attack happened at 6.6.30 in the morning, while the Syrian attack in the same area was around noon between 11:30 to 12.
So, they're talking about two different stories or events.
So, there was no order to make any attack.
We don't have any chemical weapons.
We gave up our arsenal a few years ago.
Even if we have them, we wouldn't use them, and we have never used our chemical arsenal in our history.
These interviews show Assad to be a softly spoken man with a very firm grasp on the geopolitical reality of the Middle East.
He shows no sign of ego or hubris as he explains the position of the Syrian government, and his explanations are not only internally consistent, but align with the evidence presented in this video.
Unlike the Western narrative, it is hard to believe that he does not understand the American sword of Damocles hangs over his head as it nearly fell on him in 2013.
He does not spend any time in these interviews on self-aggrandizement.
He does not make patriotic statements, and he does not come to irrational conclusions.
Assad insists that his government is engaged in a war against foreign jihadis, which is at least partially true, and that there is a campaign of disinformation against his government by falsifying pictures and videos in an attempt to incite Westerners into supporting regime changing Syria, which is also true.
He also specifies that the burden for proof for the allegations against his government is on those making the allegations, and the allegations from 2013 have been demonstrated to be false.
Assad does not appear to be the irrational, self-important madman that the Western media narrative requires him to be for their narrative to make sense.
I find it far more likely he is a more Putin-esque Machiavellian statesman in regards to power politics and his own position.
In conclusion, I do not know who was responsible for the 4th of April attack in Khan Sheikhun.
I find it difficult to be credulous of the claim that the Syrian government would bother with a militarily inefficient, small-scale attack with chemical weapons, when attacks with conventional weapons would not only kill more people, but not endanger the sovereignty of the Syrian government.
Given the history of false flag attacks, disinformation and self-interest arrayed against the Syrian government, I find it likely that Western powers and their regional allies would happily serve their own interests by falsifying evidence against the Syrian government and then lie to the public.
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