It would appear to be so.
H/T: Fjordman
Having gained the upper hand in the military conflict in recent months, Assad does not need gas. He did not use it not because he is necessarily horrified at the thought of its effects but because its use makes no sense. In view of his string of recent battlefield successes, using gas would have been strategically unnecessary, tactically irrelevant, and politically suicidal. The Allawite-officered army is doing quite nicely with their conventional arsenal. In a conflict that has killed tens of thousands by small arms and artillery fire, a barrage of sarin causing a few hundred civilian deaths would not have been a rational option.
Syria: A Classic False Flag Atrocity
Whenever there is a widely publicized atrocity in a country gripped by civil war, followed by an orgy of the pornography of compassion, it is sensible to ask cui bono and to examine all evidence in minute detail. When an incident is immediately used as grist for the interventionist mill, it is reasonable to assume that we are dealing with a false flag operation, just like the February 1994 Markale market explosion in Sarajevo —which a secret UN report blamed on the Muslim side—or else with an outright lie, like the 1990 false testimony of “nurse” Nayirah about Iraqi soldiers taking dozens of Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and leaving them to die. The Račak “massacre” that preceded the U.S.-led NATO aggression against Serbia in 1999—staged by the KLA and William Walker for the benefit of the Clinton-Albright war machine—is another prime example of the genre.
The incident at Ghouta, a suburb just outside Damascus, was not a lie—that many people have died is beyond dispute—but there is plenty of evidence, circumstantial as well as factual, that it was staged by the rebels in order to provoke Western military intervention. The timing is the first clue. A team of UN inspectors arrived in Damascus on August 18 to investigate earlier claims of gas attacks. On August 21 the rebels announced that government forces had used poison gas to kill hundreds of civilians earlier that morning, and released a series of gruesome videos to support the claim.
Like Bashar al-Assad or hate him, he is not an idiot. Even if the use of poison gas at Ghouta had made military sense—which decidedly it did not—he would have told his commanders not to even think of using it with the team of experts on chemical weapons encamped only a few miles away. Letting them do it three days after the UN team’s arrival would have been outright insane.
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As of 1442 Hours, CST, given the Iranian response to the US bringing men and material towards Syria, and the fact that no one can definitively tell what is going on inside Syria, it seems like Obama is unilaterally setting up a tee shot for Iran against Israel. Korea may be considered a set up. Vietnam a setup. WWII a set up and so forth. Our State Department and White House seem to be hell bent on setting us up for yet another tragedy. As of this moment, I do not discount the false flag theory. It has worked rather successfully throughout much of modern history.
These devious ‘rebels’ will stop at nothing to get Uncle Sap led by our ”Dear Leader’ to do their dirty work. Just as in the Balkans Bill Clinton bombed Serbia and NATO was the KLA ‘air force’ , in this case the fools and dupes in our Western powers will allow their air armadas to become the Al Queda or Islamist ‘air force. There are no good guys in this civil, sectarian, and tribal war, the best thing to do is stay the hell out of it.
I too question the validity of the charge that poison gas was used in Syria. When poison gas was used in Iraq, the videos showed were conclusive. There were not just dead people in the Iraqi video. There were dead birds, mice, rats, puppy dogs, kitty cats… everything!
Here, they’re just showing us a lot of white body bags.
It should be noted that when poison gas was used to attack the Iraqi town of Halabjeh, there was no great panic on the part of the U.S. State Dept. Only when the Iraqis invaded Kuwait several years later did the U.S. State Dept. get hysterical about it.
That this is being used as a pretext for a U.S. strike on Syria leaves me wondering: what real benefit can anyone realize by a U.S. attack?
It seems to me that the only ones who gain are the Saudis. The U.S. attacks Syria; the price of petroleum goes up; the Saudis get rich. We saw this just a few years back when the U.S. initiated hostilities against Moammar Khadafi in Libya.
For some strange reason, the U.S. will tell Israel that we’ve done them some kind of big favor in attacking Syria. Having found the Arabs so despicable that the U.S. bombs them into the stone age, we will turn around and demand that the Jews make concessions to these very same Arabs. This makes perfect sense to some people.
Did Assad really use poison gas? To date, I haven’t seen any real conclusive evidence.
What’s going on here!
You’re right. However, I’m seeing articles about the Saudis not signing on to US intentions to hit Syria
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324906304579038910953494966.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
It doesn’t mean that your premise isn’t wrong however, time will tell. That Obama can get away without consulting congress about his planned war intentions is stunning, but in view of the weak opposition leadership…i’m not surprised.