It was a hell of a rollercoaster ride on the Trump train last week, with reverberations still ringing from his Syrian missile attack, while China’s President Xi was with him at Mara Lago resort over the weekend.
Many feel the timing was not a coincidence. In what appeared to be a hastily drawn up plan that ended with 36 of the 59 launched Navy Tomahawks being shot down, the Pentagon got a big surprise,
The command brass handled it in the usual way, brushing it off as nothing and having “no comment”; and then following that up with a 14-page declassified report, which they claimed confirmed their hard Intel that Assad had ordered the attack. But there was just one problem with that claim – it did not. There was nothing in it that proved Assad’s complicity.
Then began a flurry of back-channel calls going into Pentagon generals, trying to get some clarification as to what their delusion was, and some testy conversations were held. Everything they put on the table could just as easily have been made up. We already knew that SAA plane had taken off from the base, as the Syrians had admitted they had run a bombing mission against Idlib that night, often done against targets where they don’t want day-time civilians around.
We described their 14-page report like shooting an arrow into a target and then painting a bullseye around it. They did not like it, but this was no time to mince words. The biggest betrayal of a President and his military command to their oath of office is to take the country into war on fake Intel.
Sadly, the US has a long history of this, all verified; and we had to rub this in their faces to demonstrate that every time they pull this stunt, they drag the reputation of the military and Intel command down further.
Then came the big question no one was asking. What would have been Assad’s motive? Why would he do a gas attack at this point in the war, when he is winning? The Russians would never have gone along with it.
And it was totally unnecessary to use a chemical weapon,when we have watched the Syrian and Russian airforces’ impressive track record with theireffective air campaign against the terrorists and insurgents. The brass of course had no answer. Any discussion of motive had not been cleared in their briefing books.
But worse, American media was totally in the bag on this one. They also never brought up the topic of motive. Why would Assad do something so stupid at this point in the war? It would be a gift from the gods for the Pentagon to have live-fire demonstrations to show the public how they are getting their money’s worth from the military budget.
The Navy blew $180 million in Tomahawk cruise missiles. Those onboard the ships got to see many of the missiles shot down over the water. The Russian air defense control system was obviously armed and ready to shoot. This is the same Navy where the Marines reported several weeks ago that half of their aircraft were unflyable due to no funding for needed maintenance.
Now how stupid is that? The back slapping was going on about the great mission. The brass just ignored all challenges to their claims. Their attitude was that it’s done, over, and you cannot touch us. But it does not end there, not by any means.
Veterans Today took the offensive by publishing a film showing Idlib’s Jihadi medics, or actors, giving fake adrenaline injections to what appeared to be opiated babies with their eyes glazed over, working a long injection needle around in their little hearts. But there was just a small problem – the video’s close-up still shots of the injection tube afterward, showed it still had the same level of adrenaline as when they started the process.
This was just another White Helmet production to frame Assad as a baby killer. We thank the Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR) for the video and their analysis. The group, by the way, has a sterling reputation and accepts no outside funding to assure its public independence.
VT sent our own team into Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib last week. It was dangerous, but the team had good cover and came in through the Turkish border. When they got into town – surprise surprise– they walked right into a staged video being made, or maybe film production would be a better term.
The film crew was dressed up as Al Jazeera people, but a little digging around turned up that they were a special Qatari Intel crew. And they were doing all this right in front of the townspeople, whom our team had mixed in with. The theme seemed to be a fake phosphorus attack, with smoke machines going and scenes being reshot several times.
Our team had been instructed to not take any pictures, write any notes, or ask too many questions to draw attention to itself. Such items can be a death sentence during a strip search at a checkpoint that knows its business. They safely crossed over into Syrian lines and down to Damascus, where they were debriefed.
We expect to see more of these fake Assad atrocities, and we have to really pummel corporate media for using such staged crimes with no questions asked whatsoever.
Another highpoint of the week was Professor Theodore Postol, a Professor of Science, Technology and National Security, Technology, and Society at MIT coming into this fray out of the blue. He also has extensive experience working inside government in the evaluation of weapons technology; and has received awards for uncovering false claims of missile defense systems to hide poor performance.
People like this are rare and treasured gems. We have not been able to interview him yet, but plan to as soon as we can.
What the good professor did was shred the Pentagon 14-page “proof of who did it” report to shreds, providing a more scholarly version which mirrored our position. He stated without equivocation that there was nothing in the report that validated the Pentagon claims – the main piece of evidence being a 122-mm shell tubing in a crater that was presented as the sarin source.
He concluded that it appeared to have been placed on the road, and then an explosive charge was placed on top to blow it open enough to let the sarin escape. There was no evidence of a sarin bomb drop ordnance whatsoever.
Last week was also “the Big Bomb” event, where the US super bunker-buster was used on a target in Afghanistan. VT had a team head to this scene also to give us an eye-on-the-ground report. So Mr. Trump was all smiles, as he got to pull the trigger a few times, like a kid playing with a new toy.
When questioned about the “policy” involved in these major escalations, he used a tactic that he signaled early on to duck explanations for these attacks. He said he has just “empowered the military” to do whatever they wanted to do.
This is unprecedented, as all other branches of government, especially the State Department, only found out about it when it was over, and were caught flat-footed in being able to deal with the diplomatic issues that always come up.
Don’t be surprised to see Trump wearing a cowboy hat soon. We are all beyond the point of being surprised about anything he will do.
And last, we will be asking those at the Pentagon, who claim they know everything, why has there never been a public discussion about the two chemical weapon facilities that were not under Assad’s control at the time of the Ghouta sarin attack? These were looted, with the contents being spread all the way to Mosul. Once again, the warmongers leave out every detail that could contradict their “solid proof”.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for Veterans Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.