“Experts” coming to Bashar al-Assad’s rescueScott RitterFinally we come to the guy who would seem most trustworthy—Scott Ritter, whose claim to fame was debunking WMD hysteria in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The Huffington Post, a magazine generally free of conspiracy theorizing, allows Ritter to hold forth on Assad’s innocence in an article titled “Wag The Dog — How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media”.
Showing utter indifference to documenting his findings, Ritter states:
International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.
For a thorough dismantling of Ritter’s crude conspiracism, I recommend Stanley Heller’s New Politics article.
In journalism school, you supposedly learn that reporting involves answering: who, when, where, why and how. So “who” are the groups conducting international investigations? RT.com? Press TV? Abby Martin? Alex Jones? Paul Antonopoulos? Fuck if I know.
But I would recommend the Wikipedia article on chemical attacks in Syria. A chart indicates that most of them take place in rebel-controlled (or formerly rebel-controlled) areas like Idlib or Homs. The only ones taking place in government-controlled areas are in Jobar, the very locale the UN admits could not be verified.
Ritter offers up the Russian narrative, namely that the jihadists controlling the town were involved in making crude land-mines laced with a mixture of chlorine and white phosphorus that were used in Aleppo. I invite my readers to find a reference to such a weapon ever being used in Aleppo or anywhere else on the planet. Other than Mintpress, RT.com and Sputnik News of course.
Ritter takes aim at the White Helmets, who he claims exploited the sarin gas fatalities to depict Assad as a war criminal. When you are writing this sort of propaganda, smearing these first responders as al-Qaeda operatives is de rigueur.
Moving right along, he refers to townspeople reports of “pungent odors” at the time of the attack. Since sarin gas is odorless, this falsifies the claim that it was used. However, speaking of falsehoods, there is no reference anywhere to odors except in a Wikipedia article that cited a Syria Deeply article to that effect. Apparently, Ritter did not bother to check the Syria Deeply article since it makes zero references to odors. Wikipedia evidently screwed up and Ritter failed to notice that.
Doubling down on his false reporting, Ritter claims that White Helmet first responders also referred to a pungent odor. Good luck trying to find a reference to this anywhere.
Lang, Wilkerson and Ritter loom large on the Assadist “left” because this is a milieu that has little interest in or background in Marxism. For them, everything is a conspiracy. History does not take place because of the class struggle but because secret agents plot to make things happen. If you want to read an article that encapsulates the mindset of these three nitwits, just go to Infowars and you’ll see them beaten by their own game. How we ended up in 2017 with a left mired in conspiracy theories about Syria is up to future historians to unravel. All I can say is that anybody with a functioning brain must break with this shit for the sake of their sanity and for the sake of revolutionary change.