In October 2016, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad famously railed against a viral photo of a bloodied Aleppo boy in an ambulance while insisting that it was a forgery. Now, he’s claiming that a chemical attack on Syrian civilians never happened. Yes, Assad wants everyone to believe that the widespread reports and video footage (of convulsing children) surrounding the attack are also forgeries. That would also include U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley holding up photos of dead children, along with media coverage of a grieving father burying his infant twins (as shown above).
Agence France-Presse published an exclusive video interview of Assad stating, “There was no order to make any attack.” He says the whole situation was faked because the U.S. wanted to justify Trump’s military strike on Syria. This tale places Assad squarely in Baghdad Bob territory or with the Pizzagate crowd, which insists that the attack was staged by the “deep state” as a false flag meant to incite war. Here’s more of Assad’s propaganda:
“Definitely, 100 percent for us, it’s fabrication. Our impression is 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. You have a lot of fake videos now. We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhun. Were they dead at all? It’s stage one, the play [they staged] that we saw on social network and TVs, then propaganda and then stage two, the military attack.”
It’s almost awe-inspiring to see him go to such great lengths even in the face of stark evidence. Meanwhile, Russia has already condemned the U.S. strike on a Syrian airbase while teaming up with Iran to threaten a “show of force” if Trump crosses red lines again. Russia has somehow blamed rebels for the chemical attack despite Assad’s history of using chemicals on his own people. This comes as no surprise, as Russian State TV labeled Assad’s nightly strikes on Aleppo civilians as “fake news” last year.
Rex Tillerson went on record last weekend to call Russia “incompetent” for failing as guarantor in holding Syria to its 2013 agreement to destroy its chemical weapons.
(Via Agence France-Presse)