Once again, we see the frightening collusion of the U.S. Imperial government with their war partner British colonialists, but this time not in Iraq but in Syria. Immediately upon the arrival of the UN sponsored Arab League Delegation (AL) into the Syrian capital and cities, the American media antagonists wasted not a second in discounting the AL’s initial reporting, fearful that the 150+ observers in the delegation weren’t going the way of their interventionist plans, and not siding with the opposition’s claims, coming primarily from the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Anderson Cooper, the CNN poster boy popularized by the corporate media as “going beyond the headlines to tell stories from many points of view, so you can make up your own mind”, (amazingly covering events in Haiti, Libya, Somalia, the Sudan, etc.) all reinforcing the dominant White House/British/French narrative, is now busy promoting the opposition in Syria. (Original Piece)
Over the past several days CNN via Cooper has presented on national TV a supposed ‘independent journalist’ who was ‘smuggled into Homs’ at ‘great personal risk to his safety’. This brand of phony journalism: “reporters we can’t name” and “videos we can’t verify the authenticity of” is shamelessly presented by Cooper as “going behind the scenes and keeping them honest”. Yet if we listen closely to the entire report by this so-called ‘independent journalist’ we have a shining example validating the Syrian government’s assertion that these are ‘armed terrorist groups’ funded and armed by outside foreign forces. In the reporter’s own words: “We are getting armed, we have the Free Syrian Army. We will have to fight.” Where is his independence?
A White House statement directly interfering with the AL’s mission and revealing Washington’s clear interventionist goals and overt support for the London-based opposition, condemned what it called ‘the Syrian military attack’ on Homs, adding that “…if the violence continues, the international community (meaning NATO, Britain and the United States) will have to consider – quote – “other means to protect Syrian civilians.” This was the same excuse used nine or ten months ago to unleash the brutal assault on Libya by the U.S. and NATO, in order to secure Libya’s vast oil and gas reserves for the western ‘democracies’. But since U.S.-NATO has the blood of close to 50,000 Libyans on its hands, it’s going to be more difficult to pull this off in Syria.
A recent trip to Homs and Syria by eyewitness journalists and political analysts Webster Tarpley and Tierry Meyssan, both of whom spent time in Libya before and after the NATO attack, in November 2011 interviewed Syrian citizens and witnesses who attest to the presence of black hooded snipers appearing on rooftops in Homs who randomly kill innocent civilians on their way to work or school or shopping. The major difference is that the West and SOHR, not even inside the country proclaim these hooded criminals are Syrian police and military officials, while two genuinely independent (not hired or paid by foreign governments) reporters strongly suggest the hidden hand of extremist external Salafi and Al Qaeda elements whose job is to sow chaos and fear among the Syrian people in order to destabilize the Syrian government. We encourage readers to visit these two sites to listen for themselves: Tierry Meyssa here and Webster Tarpley on KPFA radio program “Guns and Butter”.
If this sounds far-fetched, let’s look back at a little history.
Let’s recall a BBC’s World news headline back in 1996: ‘Middle East Unscom ‘infiltrated by spies’ when the United Nations’ Special Commission known as Unscom was in Iraq monitoring Iraq’s nuclear facilities. So many American and British Intelligence Spies were sent inside Iraq as to render Unscom’s mission impotent, and this paved the way for the invasion of Iraq. Are we seeing a similarity of 1996 but now in Syria and with the United States trying to discredit an organization not entirely in its intelligence hands? Hearing these same two governments infamous for attacking Middle Eastern/African governments not toeing Washington’s line bellowing against the AL’s mandate is indeed a sorry replay of history.
Who can forget that it was the United States, under George W. Bush, in service to the Tel Aviv war machine, who killed the UN fact-finding mission to Jenin following Israel’s massacre of civilians in April 2002, rendering an investigation of Israeli war crimes there meaningless? When it suits Western hegemonistic goals to destroy UN fact-finding missions, they will attempt to do so, but when they can USE them as in the case of Unscom in Iraq, we know the outcomes.
What makes the Western media coverage of events in Syria eerily similar to the scenario orchestrated at the United Nations about Libya is that all the spokespersons of the opposition speak NOT from inside Syria, but from London, Cairo and New York, as the British-US-NATO funded opposition in Libya did for months preceding NATO’s assault. Asserting that Bashar Ashad is “killing his own people” are the West’s code words for the U.S.-British SCRIPT about governments they want overthrown. Why not make cases against Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain? They ARE “KILLING THEIR OWN PEOPLE” in front of the eyes of the world, but how is it that there is no outcry from the self-appointed ‘international community’ calling for investigation and an end to those governments’ violence against truly peaceful protestors? We’re not talking about a double standard here: we’re talking about a crime of war and destabilization against sovereign governments!
AUTHOR
Eleanor Ommani is Co-founder of American Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC) and a Board Member of WESPAC, a peace and justice coalition active in her community on the East Coast, USA. She can be reached at: aifc@optonline.net Web: www.iranaifc.com
