{"id":90481,"date":"2017-04-17T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=90481"},"modified":"2017-04-17T14:05:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T13:05:24","slug":"wag-the-dog-how-al-qaeda-played-donald-trump-and-the-american-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/04\/wag-the-dog-how-al-qaeda-played-donald-trump-and-the-american-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Wag the Dog \u2014 How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump and the American Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Responsibility for the chemical event in Khan Sheikhoun is still very much in question.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Yuri Gripas \/ Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Apr 2017 – <\/em>Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump<\/a>, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria.\u00a0 At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared \u201cto our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria \u2013 if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!\u201d<\/p>\n

President Obama, despite having publicly declaring the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime a \u201cred line\u201d which, if crossed, would demand American military action, ultimately declined to order an attack, largely on the basis of warnings by James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, that the intelligence linking the chemical attack on Ghouta was less than definitive.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama, in a 2016 interview with The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, observed, \u201cthere\u2019s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow. It\u2019s a playbook that comes out of the foreign-policy establishment. And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and these responses tend to be militarized responses.\u201d\u00a0While the \u201cWashington playbook,\u201d Obama noted, could be useful during times of crisis, it could \u201calso be a trap that can lead to bad decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

His \u201cred line\u201d on chemical weapons usage, combined with heated rhetoric coming from his closest advisors, including Secretary of State John Kerry, hinting at a military response, was such a trap. Ultimately, President Obama opted to back off, observing that \u201cdropping bombs on someone to prove that you\u2019re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.\u201d\u00a0The media, Republicans and even members of his own party excoriated Obama for this decision.<\/p>\n

Yet, in November 2016, as president-elect, Donald Trump doubled down on Obama\u2019s eschewing of the \u201cWashington playbook.\u201d The situation on the ground in Syria had fundamentally changed since 2013; the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, establishing a \u201ccapital\u201d in the Syrian city of Raqqa and declaring the creation of an Islamic \u201cCaliphate.\u201d\u00a0 American efforts to remove Syrian President Assad from power had begun to bar fruit, forcing Russia to intervene in September 2015 in order to prop up the beleaguered Syrian president.<\/p>\n

Trump, breaking from the mainstream positions held by most American policy makers, Republican and Democrat alike, declared that the United States should focus on fighting and defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) and not pursuing regime change in Syria. \u201cMy attitude,\u201d Trump noted, \u201cwas you\u2019re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria… Now we\u2019re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.\u201d Moreover, Trump observed, given the robust Russian presence inside Syria, if the United States attacked Assad, \u201cwe end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than two months, the new Trump administration seemed to breathe life into the notion that Donald Trump had, like his predecessor before him, thrown the \u201cWashington playbook\u201d out the window when it came to Syrian policy.\u00a0 After ordering a series of new military deployments into Syria and Iraq specifically designed to confront ISIS, the Trump administration began to give public voice to a major shift in policy vis-\u00e0-vis the Syrian President.<\/p>\n

For the first time since President Obama, in August 2011, articulated regime change in Damascus as a precondition for the cessation of the civil conflict that had been raging since April 2011, American government officials articulated that this was no longer the case.\u00a0 \u201cYou pick and choose your battles,\u201d the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told reporters<\/a> on March 30, 2017.\u00a0 \u201cAnd when we\u2019re looking at this, it\u2019s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.\u201d\u00a0 Haley\u2019s words were echoed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who observed that same day, while on an official visit to Turkey, \u201cI think the\u2026 longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

This new policy direction lasted barely five days. Sometime in the early afternoon of April 4, 2017, troubling images and video clips began to be transmitted out of the Syrian province of Idlib by anti-government activists, including members of the so-called \u201cWhite Helmets,\u201d a volunteer rescue team whose work was captured in an eponymously-named Academy Award-winning documentary film. These images showed victims in various stages of symptomatic distress, including death, from what the activists said was exposure to chemical weapons dropped by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that very morning.<\/p>\n

Images of these tragic deaths were immediately broadcast on American media outlets, with pundits decrying the horrific and heinous nature of the chemical attack, which was nearly unanimously attributed to the Syrian government, even though the only evidence provided was the imagery and testimony of the anti-Assad activists who, just days before, were decrying the shift in American policy regarding regime change in Syria. President Trump viewed these images, and was deeply troubled by what he saw, especially the depictions of dead and suffering children.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Drew Angerer via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The images were used as exhibits in a passionate speech by Haley during a speech at the Security Council<\/a> on April 5, 2017, where she confronted Russia and threatened unilateral American military action if the Council failed to respond to the alleged Syrian chemical attack. \u201cYesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents,\u201d Haley said, holding up two examples of the images provided by the anti-Assad activists. \u201cWe saw rows of lifeless bodies, some still in diapers\u2026we cannot close our eyes to those pictures.\u00a0 We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act.\u201d\u00a0 If the Security Council refused to take action against the Syrian government, Haley said, then \u201cthere are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013, President Barack Obama was confronted with images of dead and injured civilians, including numerous small children, from Syria that were every bit as heartbreaking as the ones displayed by Ambassador Haley. His Secretary of State, John Kerry, had made an impassioned speech that all but called for military force against Syria.\u00a0 President Obama asked for, and received, a wide-range of military options from his national security team targeting the regime of President Assad; only the intervention of James Clapper, and the doubts that existed about the veracity of the intelligence linking the Ghouta chemical attack to the Syrian government, held Obama back from giving the green light for the bombing to begin.<\/p>\n

Like President Obama before him, President Trump asked for his national security team to prepare options for military action.\u00a0 Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not seek a pause in his decision making process to let his intelligence services investigate what had actually occurred in Khan Sheikhoun.\u00a0 Like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump was driven by his visceral reaction to the imagery being disseminated by anti-Assad activists. In the afternoon of April 6, as he prepared to depart the White House for a summit meeting with a delegation led by the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump\u2019s own cryptic words in response to a reporter\u2019s question about any American response seem to hint that his mind was already made up. \u201cYou\u2019ll see,\u201d he said, before walking away.<\/p>\n

Within hours, a pair of U.S. Navy destroyers launched 59 advanced Block IV Tomahawk cruise missiles (at a cost of some $1.41 million each), targeting aircraft, hardened shelters, fuel storage, munitions supply, air defense and communications facilities at the Al Shayrat air base, located in central Syria.\u00a0 Al Shayrat was home to two squadrons of Russian-made SU-22 fighter-bombers operated by the Syrian air force, one of which was tracked by American radar as taking off from Al Sharyat on the morning of April 4, 2017, and was overhead Khan Sheikhoun around the time the alleged chemical attack occurred.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the American strike was two-fold; first, to send a message to the Syrian government and its allies that, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, \u201cthe president is willing to take decisive action when called for,\u201d and in particular when confronted with evidence of a chemical attack from which the United States could not \u201cturn away, turn a blind eye.\u201d\u00a0 The other purpose, according to a U.S. military spokesperson, to \u201creduce the Syrian government\u2019s ability to deliver chemical weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the policy honeymoon the Trump administration had only recently announced about regime change in Syria was over.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s very, very possible, and, I will tell you, it\u2019s already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,\u201d President Trump told reporters before the missile strikes had commenced<\/a>.\u00a0 Secretary Tillerson went further: \u201cIt would seem there would be no role for him [Assad] to govern the Syrian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a reversal in policy fundamentals and direction in such a short period of time is stunning; Donald Trump didn\u2019t simply deviate slightly off course, but rather did a complete 180-degree turn. The previous policy of avoiding entanglement in the internal affairs of Syria in favor of defeating ISIS and improving relations with Russia had been replaced by a fervent embrace of regime change, direct military engagement with the Syrian armed forces, and a confrontational stance vis-\u00e0-vis the Russian military presence in Syria.<\/p>\n

Normally, such major policy change could only be explained by a new reality driven by verifiable facts. The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria\u2019s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.<\/p>\n

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred.\u00a0\u00a0Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.<\/p>\n

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.<\/p>\n

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda\u2019s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. Ammar Abdullah \/ Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo.<\/p>\n

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.<\/p>\n

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine\/white phosphorous blend.\u00a0 If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and\/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.<\/p>\n

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria\u2019s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?<\/p>\n

Such analysis seems beyond the scope and comprehension of the American fourth estate.\u00a0 Instead, media outlets like CNN embrace at face value anything they are told by official American sources, including a particularly preposterous insinuation that Russia actually colluded in the chemical weapons attack; the aforementioned presence of Russian officers at Al Shayrat air base has been cited as evidence that Russia had to have known about Syria\u2019s chemical warfare capability, and yet did nothing to prevent the attack.<\/p>\n

To sustain this illogic, the American public and decision-makers make use of a sophisticated propaganda campaign involving video images and narratives provided by forces opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, including organizations like the \u201cWhite Helmets,\u201d the Syrian-American Medical Society, the Aleppo Media Center, which have a history of providing slanted information designed to promote an anti-Assad message (Donald Trump has all but acknowledged that these images played a major role in his decision to reevaluate his opinion of Bashar al-Assad and order the cruise missile attack on Al Shayrat airbase.)<\/p>\n

Many of the fighters affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham are veterans of the battle for Aleppo, and as such are intimately familiar with the tools and trade of the extensive propaganda battle that was waged simultaneously with the actual fighting in an effort to sway western public opinion toward adopting a more aggressive stance in opposition to the Syrian government of Assad. These tools were brought to bear in promoting a counter-narrative about the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident (ironically, many of the activists in question, including the \u201cWhite Helmets,\u201d were trained and equipped in social media manipulation tactics using money provided by the United States; that these techniques would end up being used to manipulate an American President into carrying out an act of war most likely never factored into the thinking of the State Department personnel who conceived and implemented the program).<\/p>\n

Even slick media training, however, cannot gloss over basic factual inconsistencies. Early on, the anti-Assad opposition media outlets were labeling the Khan Sheikhoun incident as a \u201cSarin nerve agent\u201d attack; one doctor affiliated with Al Qaeda sent out images and commentary via social media that documented symptoms, such as dilated pupils, that he diagnosed as stemming from exposure to Sarin nerve agent. Sarin, however, is an odorless, colorless material, dispersed as either a liquid or vapor; eyewitnesses speak of a \u201cpungent odor\u201d and \u201cblue-yellow\u201d clouds, more indicative of chlorine gas.<\/p>\n

And while American media outlets, such as CNN, have spoken of munitions \u201cfilled to the brim\u201d with Sarin nerve agent being used at Khan Sheikhoun, there is simply no evidence cited by any source that can sustain such an account.\u00a0 Heartbreaking images<\/a> of victims being treated by \u201cWhite Helmet\u201d rescuers have been cited as proof of Sarin-like symptoms, the medical viability of these images is in question; there are no images taken of victims at the scene of the attack. Instead, the video provided by the \u201cWhite Helmets\u201d is of decontamination and treatment carried out at a \u201cWhite Helmet\u201d base after the victims, either dead or injured, were transported there.<\/p>\n

The lack of viable protective clothing worn by the \u201cWhite Helmet\u201d personnel while handling victims is another indication that the chemical in question was not military grade Sarin; if it were, the rescuers would themselves have become victims (some accounts speak of just this phenomena, but this occurred at the site of the attack, where the rescuers were overcome by a \u201cpungent smelling\u201d chemical \u2013 again, Sarin is odorless.)<\/p>\n

More than 20 victims of the Khan Sheikhoun incident were transported to Turkish hospitals<\/a> for care; three subsequently died. According to the Turkish Justice Minister, autopsies conducted on the bodies confirm that the cause of death was exposure to chemical agents. The World Health Organization has indicated that the symptoms of the Khan Sheikhoun victims are consistent with both Sarin and Chlorine exposure. American media outlets have latched onto the Turkish and WHO statements as \u201cproof\u201d of Syrian government involvement; however, any exposure to the chlorine\/white phosphorous blend associated with Al Nusra chemical weapons would produce similar symptoms.<\/p>\n

Moreover, if Al Nusra was replicating the type of low-grade Sarin it employed at Ghouta in 2013 at Khan Sheikhoun, it is highly likely that some of the victims in question would exhibit Sarin-like symptoms. Blood samples taken from the victims could provide a more precise readout of the specific chemical exposure involved; such samples have allegedly been collected by Al Nusra-affiliated personnel, and turned over to international investigators (the notion that any serious investigatory body would allow Al Nusra to provide forensic evidence in support of an investigation where it is one of only two potential culprits is mindboggling, but that is precisely what has happened). But the Trump administration chose to act before these samples could be processed, perhaps afraid that their results would not sustain the underlying allegation of the employment of Sarin by the Syrian air force.<\/p>\n

Mainstream American media outlets have willingly and openly embraced a narrative provided by Al Qaeda affiliates whose record of using chemical weapons in Syria and distorting and manufacturing \u201cevidence\u201d to promote anti-Assad policies in the west, including regime change, is well documented.\u00a0 These outlets have made a deliberate decision to endorse the view of Al Qaeda over a narrative provided by Russian and Syrian government authorities without any effort to fact check either position. These actions, however, do not seem to shock the conscience of the American public; when it comes to Syria, the mainstream American media and its audience has long ago ceded the narrative to Al Qaeda and other Islamist anti-regime elements.<\/p>\n

The real culprits here are the Trump administration, and President Trump himself. The president\u2019s record of placing more weight on what he sees on television than the intelligence briefings he may or may not be getting, and his lack of intellectual curiosity and unfamiliarity with the nuances and complexities of both foreign and national security policy, created the conditions where the imagery of the Khan Sheikhoun victims that had been disseminated by pro-Al Nusra (i.e., Al Qaeda) outlets could influence critical life-or-death decisions.<\/p>\n

That President Trump could be susceptible to such obvious manipulation is not surprising, given his predilection for counter-punching on Twitter for any perceived slight; that his national security team allowed him to be manipulated thus, and did nothing to sway Trump\u2019s opinion or forestall action pending a thorough review of the facts, is scandalous. History will show that Donald Trump, his advisors and the American media were little more than willing dupes for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose manipulation of the Syrian narrative resulted in a major policy shift that furthers their objectives.<\/p>\n

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra (Al Shayrat had served as the principal air base for operations in the Palmyra region). The breakdown in relations between Russia and the United States means that, for the foreseeable future at least, the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. For a man who placed so much emphasis on defeating ISIS, President Trump\u2019s actions can only be viewed as a self-inflicted wound, a kind of circular firing squad that marks the actions of a Keystone Cop, and not the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation in the world.<\/p>\n

But the person who might get the last laugh is President Assad himself. While the Pentagon has claimed that it significantly degraded the Al Shayrat air base, with 58 of 59 cruise missile hitting their targets, Russia has stated that only 23 cruise missiles impacted the facility, and these did only limited damage.\u00a0 The runway was undamaged; indeed, in the afternoon of April 7, 2017, a Syrian air force fighter-bomber took off from Al Shayrat<\/a>, flew to Idlib Province, where it attacked Al Nusra positions near Khan Sheikhoun.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=158rase_ES4<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq, Scott Ritter was labeled a hero by some, a maverick by others and a spy by the Iraqi government. In charge of searching out weapons of mass destruction within Iraq, Ritter was on the front lines of the ongoing battle against arms proliferation. He has had an extensive and distinguished career in government service and is an intelligence specialist who served 12 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including assignments in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. In 1991, Ritter joined the United Nations weapons inspections team, or UNSCOM. He participated in 34 inspection missions, 14 of them as chief inspector. Ritter resigned from UNSCOM in August 1998, citing U.S. interference in the inspections. He is the author of many books, including<\/em> Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein; Target Iran: The Truth About the White House\u2019s Plans for Regime Change; and Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. Contributor author<\/em>: Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West\u2019s Road to War, <\/a>\u00a0Clarity Press. He is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, with a B.A. in Soviet history.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 huffingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other winner in this sorry story is ISIS, which took advantage of the American strike against Al Shayrat to launch a major offensive against Syrian government forces around the city of Palmyra. The breakdown in relations between Russia and the USA means that the kind of coordination that had been taking place in the fight against ISIS is a thing of the past, a fact that can only bode well for the fighters of ISIS. Meanwhile, responsibility for the chemical event in Khan Sheikhoun is still very much in question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}