US, UK Diabolic Lie: Syria Used Chemical Arms

You have to admit it. The Americans and British do make a formidable double-act – of deception and criminality. Where one party has the firepower, the other has the liar-power by Finian Cunningham

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron (L) and President of the United States of America Barack Obama confer at the top of the Heads of State and Government meeting on Afghanistan in Chicago, Illinois, during the NATO 2012 Summit May 21, 2012.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron (L) and President of the United States of America Barack Obama confer at the top of the Heads of State and Government meeting on Afghanistan in Chicago, Illinois, during the NATO 2012 Summit May 21, 2012.

The diabolic duo is at it again. This time the criminal magic show is to sell the lie to the world that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons of mass destruction. Weeks of political choreography have set up the issue of chemical weapons as a convenient “red line”.

Now, hey presto, the threshold has been reached for the Americans and the British to justify ramping up their criminal interference in Syria from covert proxy terrorism to overt state terrorism.

The role that Britain’s David Cameron is playing today – of giving the Obama administration a cloak of credibility – is the exact same role that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair played 10 years ago for then US President George W Bush.

In 2003, the Bush administration was trying to sell the world a pretext for invading and expropriating Iraq with claims that the Baghdad regime had weapons of mass destruction. But the problem for Bush then was that his stories of uranium “yellow cake” from Niger and samples of chlorine “proving” chemical weapons (instead of drinking-water treatment) just didn’t sound credible. The Cowboy President was too easily derided as the Cowboy Salesman.

Enter the talented Mr Blair whose job was to plug the American credibility gap. Blair’s Oxbridge education and typical British pretensions of civility and probity were crucial to selling the American war on Iraq. Where Bush sounded shaky and snaky, Blair sounded ever-so reassured and righteous about the non-existent facts of Iraq’s threat to world security. Recall Blair’s now-infamous claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction on Britain “within 45 minutes”.

It is a classic trait of the British ruling class – to sound reassuring, measured, credible and reasonable when in fact they are nothing more than low-life liars with fancy accents. This British ability to dissimulate reality is astounding. Yet down through history the British rulers have got away with this charlatan act over and over again. Yes, the British conman is parodied in cinema, but somehow the world keeps buying the artful dodger act.

Ten years after the invasion of Iraq by American and British-led forces – and more than 1.5 million Iraqis dead, and millions more orphaned or displaced – Bush and Blair should be prosecuted for launching a war of aggression based on outrageous lies. Yet, thanks in part to a servile mainstream media, Bush and Blair were this week cavorting at the White House with Obama and three other former US presidents to celebrate the opening of a library dedicated to the intellectually challenged Bush Junior.

Even more incredibly, 10 years after the American and British-led genocide in Iraq, the same double act is being played again over Syria claiming weapons of mass destruction as justification for military action.

There are a few squeamish voices in the Western media cautioning about the “mistakes” of Iraq. This is pathetically not good enough. What these media should be calling for, if they had any integrity, is the prosecution of Bush and Blair, as well as Obama and Cameron. But no, what we read are “cautions” over the “mistakes” of “rushing into” Iraq.

In other words, the Western media are buying and selling the same old American-British ploy of creating a pretext for criminal aggression towards a sovereign country – this time, Syria.

While on his weapons-flogging tour of the Middle East, the American secretary of offence Chuck Hagel said:

“The US intelligence community assesses with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale.” The unconvincing Hagel then blew the sales pitch by adding: “We are not sure of the origin but any use of chemical weapons in Syria is likely to have come from the Syrian regime.”

In other words, with varying degrees of confidence, we haven’t a clue.

Despite the vague words and innuendo from Hagel and the White House, the unmistakable slant given by the Western media was that the American government had conclusive evidence that the Syrian authorities had used chemical WMDs.

The familiar credibility gap in the American regime’s rhetoric was shored up the next day by Britain’s David Cameron. He told the BBC:

“It is extremely serious – this is a war crime – and we should take it very seriously.”

Cameron added:

“I think what President Obama said was absolutely right – that this should form for the international community a red line for us to do more.”

In this display of rectitude and haughty moral tone, Cameron was reprising the role of Blair from a decade ago – giving the American administration a certain stamp of credibility and gravitas for ulterior, criminal motives that are in fact based on dubious speculation, if not cynical barefaced lies.

But let’s take a closer look at the words of Cameron and his “confident” assertion of Syrian government war crimes.

The British prime minister said: “It is very disturbing what we are seeing. It’s limited evidence but there’s growing evidence that we have seen, too, of the use of chemical weapons, probably by the regime.”

Behind the façade of an assured trusty politician is the sneer of a dodgy second-hand washing machine salesman.

The crux of the matter is there is no evidence; only American and British insinuation of what is “likely” and “probable” to suit their illicit agenda of forcing regime change in Syria through escalating violence on the civilian population.

Obama and Cameron are downplaying a direct military attack on Syria for now. But what this double-act is trying to achieve through their latest show of deception is to give themselves a license to escalate their covert terrorism in Syria.

Cameron said:

“The question is how do we step up the pressure and, in my view, what we need to do – and we’re doing some of this already is shape that opposition, work with them, train them, mentor them, help them, so that we put the pressure on the regime and so what we can bring this to an end.”

These words are self-indicting. Note how the American and British magic trick of WMDs is used to not only justify regime change through proxy terrorism, but also to justify the now openly admitted past crimes of Western funding and “mentoring” of these same terrorists in Syria.

The incorrigible lies, deception and criminality give a new meaning to the American-British so-called “special relationship”.

Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio.

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