Taken from the comments below ‘US and imperialist allies launch strikes against Syria’ april 14, wsws.org, april 14:

“i know I shouldn’t do it because it’s bad for my health but I sometimes tune in to Louis Proyect to see what spin he is giving these events. His latest is jaw-dropping:  https://www.counterpunch.or… [‘Chemical Attacks, False Flags and the Fate of Syria’ by Louis Proyect]
“Apart from the slimy tactic of drawing a parallel between the false flag interpretation of the alleged Syrian chemical attack and the theory that the moon landings were faked, he also says this:

“One argument against Assad’s guilt is the often-heard claim that since he was winning the war, why would he use a tactic that would give the USA an excuse to intervene. Perhaps the muted response of both Obama and Trump was enough to persuade Assad’s military to go full steam ahead.”

[wd here: I’ll add more Proyect bits]:

“Syria, Russia and Iran dismissed such reports as a “false flag” in which jihadists used fraudulent photos and videos to pressure American imperialism into taking their side in an all-out attack such as the one that took place against Iraq in 2003. For those of a conspiracist bent, this was a con job just like the Apollo Moon landing hoax when film simulations supposedly substituted for the real thing.”

“And also as has happened in the past, much of the left accepts the “false flag” narrative. In an interview with teleSUR, Max Blumenthal dismissed reports of casualties as untrustworthy because they have been furnished by what he called jihadist-supporting elements such as the White Helmets and the mainstream media. His advice to the audience was to trust the much more reliable Russian media. At the risk of sounding like a reactionary goon, I prefer the NY Times to Sputnik especially for Melissa Clark’s recipes.”

“The Bellingcat website is perhaps the only place where you can find fact-based reporting on chemical attacks in Syria. It was launched by Eliot Higgins, a British citizen-journalist who relies heavily on open source material and field reports from the affected areas. In an April 11 entry, [referencing reports from the now-infamous Syrian Network for Human Rights] there is an attempt to ground the Douma incident in verifiable data such as the characteristic yellow cylinders in which weaponized chlorine gas is delivere. There are also videos of corpses in the basement of a building that was within the impacted area, each with the tell-tale sign of white foam around the nose and mouth.”…and a whole lot more.

From another commenter:

 “Your initial instinct was correct: reading the increasingly unhinged scribbling of Proyect, especially at such a time, is not good for one’s mental health. It’s like reading the late Hitchens at the time of the invasion of Iraq. I won’t even glance at Counterpunch either ever since its editor, Jeffery St. Clair begged WAPO to be removed from the bogus “#propornot” blacklist. Since then the site has been censoring critics of the anti-Russia campaign like Diana Johnstone, while opening itself to pro-imperialist cranks like Proyect. If you can’t stop watching the “train wreck” just take a gander at his internet list serve to count the percent of postings written by none other than the jumped up wannabe film critic himself.”

From Alexander Cockburn’s (Rest in Power; his oeuvre) younger brother at CP, a few paragraphs from ‘Big Noise: Apocalyptic Tweets, Limited Strikes’ by Patrick Cockburn, April 13, 2018:

“The attacks may or may not deter Assad from using poison gas in the future, but they will not change the balance of power against him. Chemical weapons are only a small part of his arsenal and have played only a minor military role in the war. Out of the half million Syrians who have died in the conflict over the last seven years, just 1,900 are estimated to have been killed by chemical weapons.”

“Possibly it was the Syrian government’s frustration at the continued resistance of part of Jaysh al-Islam, the Saudi-backed jihadi movement in Douma, that led it to use chlorine gas. It had done so before without provoking an international reaction, but this time authentic-looking video was broadcast around the world showing dying children gasping for breath. The pictures provoked a wave of international fury which culminated in the US-led airstrikes on 14 April.

If the Syrian government’s purpose in launching a chemical weapons attack was to force the final surrender of the Douma rebels, then it succeeded. Within hours of it happening, Russian military police moved into Douma to supervise the departure of rebel fighters and to suppress looting by government forces. On 12 April, the Syrian national flag was finally raised over a building in central Douma and the long siege was over.”

Or how about this from Nick Pemberton, a student at Gustavus Adolphus College who  is currently employed by Gustavus Dining Service: ‘Did The Chemical Weapons Attacks in Syria Happen? We Need A Different Question’, April 16, 2018

Lurking within his ‘regardless, Syria needs no more war’ analysis:

“There has been a lot of debate other whether the chemical weapons attacks in Syria “really happened”. On the one side, you have the corporate media for the West, on the other side you have the corporate media for the Russians, as well as the conspiracy-oriented fringe in the U.S. Obviously one side is correct, and the truth does matter, but it really is the wrong question to be asking.”

In their extremely lengthy Jan. 2018 mea culpa explaining some hood-winking by a ‘fake writer’ Alice Donovan in their ‘Ghosts in the Propaganda Machine’, I was disappointed to see this from Jeffrey St. Clair and his co-editor Joshua Frank:

“CounterPunch did not receive the “terrorist financing” submission, but we were approached by Mangal on December 21, 2016, with a piece that attempted to discredit Bana al-Abed, an eight-year-old Syrian girl, who, with the help of her English speaking mother, became a Twitter sensation during the battle for Aleppo.  Assad-friendly writers were quick to push back against al-Abed’s version of events and her growing popularity. Mangal’s piece mimicked these talking points and wasn’t exceptionally groundbreaking, so we passed.

No doubt there were grounds to be suspicious of al-Abed’s overnight rise, but the counter-propaganda campaign was equally as shallow. [wd here: < the link goes to Vanessa Beeley at 21stcenturywire.com] In retrospect, the fact that Mangal was writing about the alleged fake identity of al-Abed (she had a habit of trying to expose fakers) — who is a very real girl now living in New York  [<NYT:Bana al-Abed: From a Syrian War Zone to New York City] — is a bit comical. It seems Mangal has done her best to vanish, while al-Abed is still promoting herself and her family’s plight in Syria.”

It’s hard to imagine ‘believing’ that Bana Alabad is anything but one outrageous psyop, save for the fact that the soulful eyes of chirren sell R2P wars so well.  Emotional reaction trumps reason, doesn’t it, allowing so many to disbelieve their own lying eyes.  Caitlin Johnson has some of the evidence, as does Barbara McKenzie.

OTOH, CP has published Robert Fisk’s ‘The Search for the Truth in Douma’, April 17, that’ seemed to rip the veil off the many lies and obfuscations of the Western Imperium and their MSM scribes.  This may indeed be in response to Fisk’s exposé at the Independent, which includes video.  And Paul Street’s new column is good, including the fact that

“It has not been proven that Assad or his military ordered the chemical attack”  and that “It is distinctly possible that aysh al-Islam, the jihadist group in control of Douma at the time of Assad’s alleged chemical attack, staged the alleged chemical attack as part of its propaganda campaign against the Assad government.”

‘Syrian medics ‘subjected to extreme intimidation’ after Douma attack; Doctors say those who treated patients after attack have been told they and their families will be targeted if they speak out’, the Guardian, April 17

Is the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM) a new White Helmets?  Anyhoo: buyer beware, methinks.

More ‘leftists’ and ‘leftist organizations’ pullin’ their punches, and/or advocating for war; these are just a few such from wsws.org:

‘Pseudo-left parties promote US-French-British bombing of Syria;  Will Morrow, 16 April 2018

“A number of political parties that call themselves socialist proved they are nothing of the sort by lending support to Friday night’s illegal US, French and British bombing of Syria.

Groups like the American International Socialist Organization (ISO), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the French New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) are pro-war organizations. They are participating in a propaganda campaign with the capitalist press organs and the intelligence agencies to spread the lie that the bombings are justified on a “humanitarian” basis and that additional military force is required. Socialists reject these attempts to cover imperialist intervention in a fraudulent “left” veneer.

First, these pseudo-left groups attack those who question the legitimacy of the CIA and MI6 claims that Assad used chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta last week. They accept the claims produced by the same military intelligence agencies that spread the lie of “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of over 1 million people.” and so on.

‘A new “left” appeal for imperialist intervention in Syria’, Bill Van Auken, 2 March 2018

“On February 27, the New York Review of Books published an open letter signed by some 200 people, many of them identifying themselves as activists, academics, writers and journalists. Originally titled “Stop pretending that you can’t do anything to save Syrians,” the headline was subsequently changed to “The World Must Act Now on Syria.”

The letter was published with no introduction. Who wrote the text of the letter, who changed its title, how the signatures were gathered and indeed all other information about the document is left in the dark.

Its purpose, however, is crystal clear. Issued in the midst of a massive war propaganda campaign in the Western media over the Russian and Syrian government assault on the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, one of the last strongholds of the Islamist militias backed by Washington and its regional allies, the letter constitutes an open appeal to the US and the other imperialist powers to launch a full-scale military intervention.

Like the media propaganda campaign of which it is an integral part, the “open letter” constitutes a thoroughly one-sided, false and deeply hypocritical portrayal of the Syrian developments.

It protests solely “the crimes that the Assad regime has committed against Syrians, aided by local and foreign militias, by Iranian strategic and financial aid, by Russian airpower and mercenaries.” [major snip]

“All of these pseudo-left elements are aligning their politics directly with those of US imperialism and in particular with those sections of the US military and intelligence apparatus that are demanding a more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Not only are they functioning as direct accessories to the crimes committed against the masses of Syria, but they are helping to pave the way to world war.”

‘Chomsky’s pro-imperialist Afrin petition’, Nick Beams, Feb. 6, 2018

I do love the hell outta this one though: ‘Glenn Greenwald: Evidence That Assad Used Gas ‘Overwhelming’ – Amy Goodman Agrees!’ via Russia-Insider

But the quote of the month comes from this new report by Will Morrow at wsws: ‘As lies on Syrian gas attack unravel, US and UK shift to claims of Russian “cyber war”:

“The FBI report is no doubt also aimed at fuelling the ongoing campaign by the intelligence agencies and the Democratic Party demanding that Trump further escalate the confrontation with Russia. The Times and the other Democratic Party-aligned media denounced the Trump administration’s announcement yesterday that the US will not at this time impose further sanctions on Russia, contradicting the statements of Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, over the weekend.

The Times quoted Democrat Eliot Engel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who said, “I am outraged that President Trump pulled back sanctions on Russia for its support of the Assad regime.” Times columnist Nikolas Kristof, who has made his career promoting imperialist wars in the name of “human rights,” praised the arch-reactionary Haley against Trump in an appearance on MSNBC, declaring that she was “much better regarded than almost any other member of the administration in foreign policy.”

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(cross-posted from Café Babylon)