We didn't start this war, Assad did, when he bombed his own people.

That was President Barack Obama at a joint press conference with French President Francois Hollande back in November of 2015. If that didn't ring a bell, it should have. The claim that "Saddam gassed the Kurds" was one of the propaganda points that the Bush team hammered repeatedly in 2002 during the run-up to the Iraq war. US Senator Hillary Clinton made the same claim during her speech supporting the AUMF on October 10, 2002. If it seems like the Neocons in both political parties are using the same playbook, it's because they are.

I've been reading a book by Diana Johnstone called Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The book was published in 2015 and is available from CounterPunch Books. The author is, obviously, not a big fan of Former Secretary Clinton but I want to emphasize that this is not a partisan issue. We're talking about the Deep State here and presidents of both parties are guilty of co-operation with the Neocons who run that state. Back in 2007 Gen. Wesley Clark went public with a Neocon memo he had seen that called for regime-change in seven countries in five years. These included Iraq, which the Republican Bush administration invaded, and Libya and Syria which have been the victims of regime-change under the Democratic administration of Barack Obama. Although the US war for regime-change in the Middle East began with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Johnstone claims that the playbook for regime-change was actually pioneered during the Clinton administration with the Kosovo war of the late 90s. Here's what she says:

The Kosovso Experiment
During the 1993-2000 Clinton Presidency, Yugoslavia was used by the foreign policy establishment as an experimental laboratory to test techniques of U.S. control, subversion and regime change that would subsequently be practiced elsewhere. Viewing Yugoslavia as a mini-USSR, with Serbia in the role of Russia, breaking up Yugoslavia and subsequently Serbia itself (by detaching Kosovo) was a rehearsal for the process we have recently seen unfolding in Ukraine, with Russia as the target.
The same techniques are recognizable:
Hitlerization. The aggression begins as a propaganda war, waged by mainstream media organically linked to leading government policy makers and think tanks. In the first stage, the targeted country virtually disappears under the shadow of its leader, labeled a “dictator” (even if fairly elected), who is portrayed as the embodiment of evil on earth and “must go”. Personalities as diverse as Slobodan Milosevich, Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gaddafi, Bachar al-Assad and now Vladimir Putin have been cast in the role of the new Hitler.
Sanctions. Economic sanctions against the Hitler of the day serve to stigmatize the evil one, destabilize relations and rally internal allies who still hesitate to have recourse to arms but are willing to go along with the supposedly “peaceful” method of making him change his ways. When sanctions fail, public opinion has been prepared to consider military force “necessary”.
Local clients. The United States has a long record of supporting the worst elements in the targeted state, forces that will stop at nothing. In Serbia, the United States gave political and military support to ruthless criminals. In Muslim countries, the U.S. has supported and armed Islamic fanatics. In Ukraine, the anti-Russian campaign relies on unrepentant Nazi militias to rule the streets.
Human Rights NGOs. So-called Non-Governmental Organizations, in reality closely linked to or even financed directly by the U.S. government (most notably the National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiaries), play a central role in claiming to incarnate a genuine democracy which is being strangled by the targeted “Hitler” when police intervene against the disorder provoked by “genuine democrats”. Scenarios adapted by political scientist Gene Sharp from the experiences of revolutionary or progressive movements are used as the training manual for actions designed to win sympathy by provoking state repression, with no political content beyond opposition to the present ruler. The agitation of the “Otpor” youth group in Serbia, trained by U.S. specialists in Budapest, was the model adapted later for subsequent “color revolutions”.
Sabotaging diplomacy. To prepare the Kosova war, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stage-managed false negotiations between the Yugoslav government and Albanian nationalists from Kosovo at the Rambouillet chateau, keeping them apart, replacing professor Ibrahim Rugova as the head of the Albanian delegation with her criminal client Hashim Thaci, and introducing an ultimation (total military occupation of Serbia) that obliged the Serbs to refuse and thus take blame for “refusing to negotiate”. It has become customary for U.S. representatives in the United Nations to sabotage negotiations by moralizing tirades, insults and lies.
Criminalization. In regard to the Yugoslav conflict, the overwhelming influence of the United States enabled Washington to initiate the practice of using international tribunals to treat the enemy as common criminals rather than as political adversaries. The concept of “joint criminal enterprise”, used in U.S. criminal law against mafia gangs, was imported into the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia to apply to the Serbs, with the implication that the mere defense of Serbian interests was criminal. Subsequently, the United States has succeeded in influencing the International Criminal Court (to which the United States itself does not adhere) to indict enemies such as Moammar Gaddafi on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations, since it is claimed that one cannot negotiate with an indicted criminal.
Scare Word “Genocide”. Whenever the United States takes sides in an ethnic or political conflict somewhere, the usual procedure is to accuse the other side of planning to commit “genocide”. This rules out considering that both sides may be fighting for specific territorial or political gains which, if properly understood, might be mediated.
Media and Propaganda. The key to the whole system of aggression is the U.S. mastery of a vast propaganda machine, centered on mainstream media. Background music is provided by the entertainment industry, Hollywood in particular, which churns out glorification of violence to smash an enemy. Video games are a powerful new factor in normalizing killer instincts. Fact and fiction blend together in the visual imagination of endless battles between Good and Evil, packaged and sold to the American public.
Bombing. This is the final argument, the sword of Damocles hanging over every dispute.
For the Pentagon, NATO, the CIA, the NED, mainstream media, and the U.S. foreign policy establishment, the Kosovo war was an excellent learning experience, a training ground, a preparation for future adventures. It was the war to start wars.
For the Clintons, Kosovo was a distraction from personal scandals and an opportunity to step onto the big stage of world affairs. Bill Clinton is worshipped in Kosovo as the founding father of this little U.S. protectorate wrested from Serbia. A ten-foot high gilded statue of the Arkansas benefactor waves from Bill Clinton Boulevard, with a clothing boutique named “Hillary” nearby. While the United States is increasingly hated around the world for its military interventions and constant bullying, this intervention has created an enclave of fanatic pro-Americans. On her visit to Pristina in 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was able to bask in adulation. It says a lot about U.S. decline in the eyes of the world that Kosovo and Albania are today the most enthusiastically pro-American places on earth. It is nothing to be proud of.