{"id":217509,"date":"2022-08-08T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=217509"},"modified":"2022-08-03T06:38:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T05:38:48","slug":"nato-backed-network-of-syria-dirty-war-propagandists-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/08\/nato-backed-network-of-syria-dirty-war-propagandists-identified\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO-Backed Network of Syria Dirty War Propagandists Identified"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 Aug 2022 – Defaming journalism on the OPCW\u2019s Syria cover-up scandal, <\/em>The Guardian and its NATO-funded sources out themselves as the real \u201cnetwork of conspiracy theorists.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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On June 10th, The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s Mark Townsend published an article headlined \u201cRussia-backed network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified.\u201d<\/a> (\u201cRussia-backed\u201d has since been removed<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The article is based on what Townsend calls a \u201cnew analysis\u201d that \u201creveals\u201d a \u201cnetwork more than two dozen conspiracy theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign.\u201d This network, Townsend claims, is \u201cfocused on the denial or distortion of facts about the Syrian regime\u2019s use of chemical weapons and on attacking the findings of the world\u2019s foremost chemical weapons watchdog,\u201d the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). According to Townsend, I am named \u201cas the most prolific spreader of disinformation\u201d among the nefarious bunch.<\/p>\n

In hawking this purported expos\u00e9 of \u201cdisinformation\u201d, Townsend violated every basic standard of journalism. He did not contact me before publishing his allegations; fails to offer a shred of evidence for them; and does not cite a single example of my alleged \u201cprolific\u201d disinformation. Instead, Townsend bases his claims entirely on a think-tank report<\/a> \u00a0that also provides no evidence, nor even assert that I have said anything false. In the process, Townsend failed to disclose that the report\u2019s authors \u2014 the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Syria Campaign \u2014 are groups funded by the US government and other belligerents in the Syria proxy war. To top it off, Townsend fabricates additional allegations that his state-funded sources do not even make.<\/p>\n

As a result, Townsend and the Guardian have engaged in the exact sort of conduct that they falsely impute to me and others: spreading Syria-related disinformation with coordinated support from state-funded actors. The aim of this propaganda network is transparent: defaming journalism that exposes the OPCW\u2019s ongoing Syria cover-up scandal and the dirty war waged by Western powers on Syria.<\/p>\n

The OPCW cover-up is arguably the most copiously documented pro-war deception since the US-led drive to invade Iraq. In Western media, as The Guardian\u2019s behavior newly demonstrates, it is also without question the most suppressed.<\/p>\n

At the center of the story are two veteran OPCW scientists, Dr. Brendan Whelan and Ian Henderson. The pair were among a team that deployed to Syria in April 2018 to investigate an alleged chemical attack in the town of Douma. They have since accused senior OPCW officials of manipulating the Douma probe to reach a conclusion that baselessly implicated the Syrian government in a chlorine gas attack. Their claims are backed up by a trove of leaked documents and emails<\/a> that show extensive doctoring and censoring of the Douma team\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

The Douma cover-up extends far beyond the OPCW\u2019s executive suite. It also implicates NATO governments led by the US, which bombed Syria over the Douma chemical weapons allegation, and then, weeks later, privately pressured the OPCW<\/a> to validate it. Since the OPCW scandal became public, the US and its allies have thwarted efforts to address it.<\/p>\n

At the most criminal level, the scandal implicates sectarian death squads armed and funded by the US and allies during their decade-long campaign for regime change in Syria.<\/p>\n

At the time of the incident, Douma was occupied by the Saudi-backed jihadi militia Jaysh-al-Islam and under bombardment from Syrian army forces attempting to retake control. Shortly before their surrender, local allies of Jaysh-al-Islam accused Syrian forces of using chemical weapons. They released gruesome footage of an apartment building filled with slain civilians. A gas cylinder was filmed positioned above a crater on the roof. Concurrently, the White Helmets, a NATO and Gulf state-funded, insurgent-adjacent organization<\/a>, released footage of what it claimed were gas attack victims in a Douma field hospital. Several journalists, including Riam Dalati of the BBC<\/a>, Robert Fisk of the Independent<\/a>, and James Harkin of the Intercept<\/a>, found evidence that the hospital scene was staged. (In February 2019, Dalati claimed that he can \u201cprove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.\u201d Oddly, more than three years later, he has not released his findings).<\/p>\n

The White Helmets\u2019 alleged fakery of a chemical attack aftermath, coupled with the censored OPCW findings showing no evidence that a chemical attack occurred, suggest the inescapable conclusion that insurgents in Douma carried out a deception to frame the Syrian government. And given the unexplained deaths<\/a> of the more than 40 victims filmed in the Douma apartment building, that deception may have entailed a murderous war crime.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Iraq WMD hoax, the very existence of the OPCW\u2019s Douma scandal is unknown to much of the Western world. With few exceptions, establishment media outlets have refused to acknowledge the OPCW whistleblowers and the leaks that brought their story to light.<\/p>\n

After largely ignoring the OPCW cover-up since it first surfaced in May 2019, the Guardian has now published defamatory claims about journalists, myself included, who have dared to report on the censored facts.<\/p>\n

When I wrote The Guardian about the Townsend article\u2019s journalistic lapses, I did not get a response. One week later, I phoned Townsend, who was now back in the office but had yet to reply. In our conservation, which I recorded and recently published<\/a>, I repeatedly asked Townsend to substantiate his claims about me and identify even a single example of my alleged disinformation.<\/p>\n

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