@shaharazade Major explanation can be found in revealed State Dept. documents from the Clinton era. Basically the reason is to keep Israel as the only nuclear power in the ME. Overthrow Assad and then Iran can be limited in developing its own weapons. Absolutely nothing to do with human rights, democracy, etc.

https://foia.state.gov/search/results.aspx?searchText=C05794498&beginDat...

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498 Date: 11/30/2015 RELEASE IN FULL The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.

Negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear program will not solve Israel's security dilemma. Nor will they stop Iran from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program — the capability to enrich uranium. At best, the talks between the world's major powers and Iran that began in Istanbul this April and will continue in Baghdad in May will enable Israel to postpone by a few months a decision whether to launch an attack on Iran that could provoke a major Mideast war.

Iran's nuclear program and Syria's civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. What Israeli military leaders really worry about -- but cannot talk about -- is losing their nuclear monopoly. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today. If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself

Comprehensive article by the late Robert Perry.

How Hillary Clinton Ignores Peace

#2 What was/is this insane war about? What promoted the US to start raining down bombs? Who knows why, most likely oil, but whatever the motivation the dark masters of the universe decided Syria and it's people were in line for the US 'foreign' treatment.

Why get into Assad being a 'brutal dictator'? How do you know this? Is not every rat bastard leader the US supports not a 'brutal dictator' of worse proportions then Assad? Or is not every really nasty brutal dictator we support globally not considered a 'democratic' leader?

This obscene, illegal war seems to me to be backed up by blatantly cooked up propaganda. Kinda like the brutal insane war against Libya. Civil war my ass. Read today about a wikileak's release that seems to me to shed light on the cooked up narrative that this insanity is based on. So crazy to try to make a cohesive narrative out of any of the US's unleashed attack dogs across the world.

Deluge Of New Leaks Further Shreds The Establishment Syria Narrative

"The new publications by WikiLeaks add new detail to this still-unfolding scandal, providing more evidence to further invalidate attempts by establishment Syria narrative managers to spin it all as an empty conspiracy theory. The OPCW has no business hiding any information from the public which casts doubt on the official narrative about an incident"

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/deluge-of-new-leaks-further-shreds-th...

@gjohnsit
A fucking globalist propaganda machine and a fucking globalist mouthpiece to catapult the bullshit!

I wrote dozens of posts in DKos debunking HRW in my 10 years at DKos. I hoped to not have to do that here. It's deja vu all over again. Sorry, I'm pissed off....

How Propaganda Feeds War on Syria

Western propaganda against countries targeted for “regime change” can be especially insidious because mainstream journalists abandon skepticism and go with the flow, such as the case of Syrian “torture” photos, writes Rick Sterling.
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It has been famously said, “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” This report is a critical review of the so-called “Caesar Torture Photos” story. As will be shown, there is strong evidence the accusations are entirely or substantially false.

Overview of ‘Caesar Torture Photos’
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For the past two years the story has been preserved with occasional bursts of publicity and supposedly corroborating reports. Most recently, in December 2015 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report titled “If the Dead Could Speak” with significant focus on the Caesar accusations.

Following are 12 significant problems with the “Caesar torture photos” story:
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Syria: ‘Human Rights Watch’, Key Player in the Manufacture of Propaganda for War and Foreign Intervention

The Washington-based group ‘Human Rights Watch’– controlled by the US foreign policy elite – has released another volley in its campaign to back the ‘humanitarian war’ being waged against the independent nation of Syria.

This is not the first or second fabrication against Syria run by Human Rights Watch. The group was amongst the first to falsely blame the Syrian government for the East Ghouta chemical weapons incident of August 2013. The ‘moral panic’ from that accusation almost sparked a major escalation of the war.

Several reports have since proven that the accusation was a fraud. A group led by Catholic nun Mother Agnes Mariam produced a report showing the video evidence of the incident had been manipulated and staged; US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh showed that US intelligence implicating the Syrian Government had been fabricated; and the New York Times retracted its support for speculative telemetry evidence, which they had claimed implicated the Syrian Army. On the other side, Syrian witnesses, a Jordanian reporter and a Turkish human rights group (‘Peace Association and Lawyers for Justice in Turkey’) implicated Saudi-backed terrorists. Further, the last UN report on the incident says that, in most instances, chemical weapons were used ‘against soldiers’; that is, against the government. HRW has neither retracted nor apologised for its role in this scam.
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Propaganda War on Iran
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The Times falsely blamed Iranian security forces for CIA-orchestrated violence.

Instead of denouncing Trump regime economic terrorism on Iran. along with breach of international and constitutional law for abandoning the Security Council’s unanimously adopted JCPOA nuclear deal, Times propaganda said the following:

“The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers, which President Trump abandoned, calling it too weak (sic).”

Unilaterally imposed sanctions by one nation on others have no legal validity, a UN Charter breach. Countries complying with them are complicit in criminality. So are go along establishment media.

In cahoots with their corporate donors and US-led Western interests, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) largely operate as imperial propaganda machines.

Commenting on violence in Iran last month, HRW falsely accused its
government of “cover(ing up a) brutal crackdown” — while ignoring US dirty hands all over what happened.

Its Middle East director Michael Page lied, claiming its authorities “threatened detainees with death.”

HRW mocked the notion that what continued for days were orchestrated riots. Its ringleaders and other hooligans involved warrant harsh punishment according to law.

Page turned truth on its head, claiming “people (were) protesting for a better life.”

HRW ignored mass turnouts in Tehran and elsewhere, supporting actions taken by the government to quell days of rioting — what ruling authorities everywhere would do under similar circumstances, reality HRW excluded from its propaganda report.

Amnesty International (AI) was just as one-sided in reporting on last month’s violence in the Iran, saying:

“The international community must denounce the intentional lethal use of force by Iranian security forces…”

Fact: “The international community must denounce the” CIA-orchestrated violence, vandalism and chaos in Iran and everywhere else — high crimes against humanity the Times, HRW and AI ignored, falsely blaming Iranian security forces for the latest chapter of US aggression on Iran by other means.

The pro-Western/pro-imperial office of the UN commissioner for human rights falsely blamed Iranian security forces for days of disruptive violence staged by CIA recruited hooligans.
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HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocritical Representatives of Washington? (Part 2)

As I noted in Part 1 of this article, Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an integral part of the West’s propaganda machine. I noted that “HRW serves as intermediary between the facts on the ground, and the western public who rely on the organization (and similar NGOs such as Amnesty International) to accurately tell the story of a given conflict.” But of course the function of HRW runs far deeper than simply presenting information in a biased way. Rather, HRW shapes the narratives of conflicts, narratives which become solidified through repetition, and which eventually become regarded as undeniable facts.
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HRW on Libya
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HRW on Syria
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HRW on Venezuela
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Human Rights Watch is undeniably an appendage of US foreign policy. It is in many ways part of the “soft power” arm of US power projection, a means of delegitimizing, demonizing, and otherwise destabilizing countries that do not play ball with the US. From Ukraine to Libya, Syria to Palestine and Venezuela, HRW has shown itself to be treacherous, and a willing servant of Empire. It is for this reason that well-meaning people around the world, not to mention government and political organizations, must recognize HRW as the enemy, rather than an ally.

#4 there is vast evidence

Nine months of research reveals some of the human stories behind the more than 28,000 photos of deaths in government custody that were smuggled out of Syria and first came to public attention in January 2014.

The 86-page report, “If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities,” lays out new evidence regarding the authenticity of what are known as the Caesar photographs, identifies a number of the victims, and highlights some of the key causes of death. Human Rights Watch located and interviewed 33 relatives and friends of 27 victims whose cases researchers verified; 37 former detainees who saw people die in detention; and four defectors who worked in Syrian government detention centers or the military hospitals where most of the photographs were taken. Using satellite imagery and geolocation techniques, Human Rights Watch confirmed that some of the photographs of the dead were taken in the courtyard of the 601 Military Hospital in Mezze.

And there are victims that survived.

Let's not be foolish. Much of what is said about Assad is true.
What those facts don't do:
1) make this war any less illegal
2) change our war crimes
3) make the guys we've been backing any less head-chopping terrorists