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FOCUS: Marc Ash | The President Is Horrified by Slaughtered Children. Good.
Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "What the U.S. commercial broadcast media failed to mention as they portrayed the president as strong and decisive was that emergency workers in Mosul are still pulling bodies from the rubble 22 days after U.S. airstrikes killed, at latest count, 300 civilians."
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Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "What the U.S. commercial broadcast media failed to mention as they portrayed the president as strong and decisive was that emergency workers in Mosul are still pulling bodies from the rubble 22 days after U.S. airstrikes killed, at latest count, 300 civilians."
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“It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
– U.S. President Donald Trump
hat’s a powerful renunciation of military crimes against civilians. What the U.S. commercial broadcast media failed to mention as they portrayed the president as strong and decisive was that emergency workers in Mosul are still pulling bodies from the rubble 22 days after U.S. airstrikes killed, at latest count, 300 civilians.
Many of the dead were beautiful babies and God’s children as well. Chemical weapons are indeed horrific and should absolutely be banned. It is likely little comfort, however, to the surviving family members in Mosul that their loved ones were killed by American-made high explosive bombs rather than by sarin gas.
The Mosul attack is particularly troubling in light of reports by Amnesty International that U.S.-backed Iraqi authorities instructed residents not to flee the area prior to the strikes, apparently increasing the death toll.
The Mosul attack was not the first time in Trump’s brief tenure that U.S. airstrikes have slaughtered civilians. Newsweek reports that as of March 31, estimates by human rights groups put the number of civilians killed by U.S. airstrikes under Donald Trump’s authority at nearly “1,500.”
Most of the talking heads on U.S. television last night seemed more intent on justifying the U.S. retaliatory strikes on the Syrian airbase at Homs than even mentioning the rapidly expanding death toll from U.S. military actions under the Trump administration, let alone the prodigious Obama era body count.
If beautiful babies slaughtered in horrific fashion actually do matter at this stage, as always, the United States now under the direction of a pathological liar and consummate propagandist is the not greatest defender, but the greatest offender.
Under sustained pressure over Russian collusion allegations and domestic policy failures, Trump appears enthusiastic about playing the role of military enforcer. Tough talk and body counts will reliably drive popularity ratings in America the beautiful, even if nothing else does.
George W. Bush was political toast on September 10th, 2001. He was seen as an illegitimate occupant of the White House after what was widely viewed as a stolen election. The Republicans looked poised to a take major beating in the 2002 midterms. That all changed the next day.
In America, war is the great unifier and the great destroyer of social fabric. If the president needs cheap political currency, he can always get it through military action.
Bashar al-Assad is a brutal, iron-fisted ruler who will not hesitate to use illegal weapons, torture, and murder against his own people. But newly-elected president Donald Trump is on pace to be a significantly more prolific killer than even Assad.
Trump may not know what he’s doing, but the people on the ground struggling to pull their loved ones, many beautiful babies, from the rubble do.
We are getting a steady stream of images of civilians killed by Assad’s attack. But the images of U.S. war strikes remain largely hidden from view. “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
Indeed.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Neil Gorsuch Confirmed, Republicans Take Control of Supreme Court
Ian Millhiser, ThinkProgress
Millhiser writes: "By a 54-45 vote, the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Friday. The vote effectively returns control of the judicial branch - and with it, the U.S. Constitution - to Republicans. Once Gorsuch is sworn in, Republicans will enjoy a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court."
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Ian Millhiser, ThinkProgress
Millhiser writes: "By a 54-45 vote, the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Friday. The vote effectively returns control of the judicial branch - and with it, the U.S. Constitution - to Republicans. Once Gorsuch is sworn in, Republicans will enjoy a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court."
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COMMENTS:
I agree that Trump is showing himself to be a world class hypocrite in shedding such public tears for the victims of the gas attack at Idlib and no reaction all from the images of the massacred people in Mosul.
But I'm still concerned that ALL the images we have from Idlib have been made by the White Helmets, a propaganda project of ISIS that is funded by government in the US and UK, principally. Many of the photos are clearly staged. The fact that many of the White Helmets are not wearing gloves, masks or any protective gear means that it was definitely not a Sarin attack.
Just like the last high profile gas attack at Ghouta, there are lots of children and no mothers or young women. There was a mass kidnapping of children just a week before the attack at Idlib. And there are flat bed trucks all around, suggesting that bodies were transported on truck to this place.
I would not call this "Assad's attack." I'm pretty sure that in the next few weeks we will have conclusive proof that this was a false flag. The White Helmets participated in a mass killing of children and staged their bodies for gullible western eyes, like Trump's. But it will be too late. We know that whoever captures the media narrative in the first few hours controls the story forever -- at least in the minds of Americans.
And I don't agree, "Bashar al-Assad is a brutal, iron-fisted ruler. . . ." Compared to whom? Since 9-11, three US president have killed about 15 million people. Assad?
[quote name="Rodion Raskolnikov"]
The fact that many of the White Helmets are not wearing gloves, masks or any protective gear means that it was definitely not a Sarin attack.
I'm not disagreeing with you and the US motivation you suggest sounds like it could really have been as you say.
However, I don't know how long after the attacks, the photos were taken. From what I understand, chemical weapons don't spread and they dissipate relatively quickly. If you weren't there when it happened, you're pretty safe.
I don't know. Let me know if I'm wrong.
Thank you. And the heinous Ghouta murders were not the only time that outside, independent organizations determined that the guilty parties were out "moderate rebels."
Chemical weapons have been found in areas long held by the terrorists once they'd been liberated. The UN's Secretary-Gener al Ban Ki-moon wrote that Sarin gas itself was found in August, 2013 in "rebel" hands. Though it took the UN more than a year to admit that.
Turkish Members of Parliament presented proof that sarin and other chemical and conventional weapons were being shipped from Turkey into Syria. They, of course are no longer Members of Parliament, and could well be amongst the tens of thousands "disappeared" since the "failed coup."
Both Amnesty International and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have documented scores of instances in which the "moderate opposition" has used chemical weapons against both military and civilian targets.
And stockpiles of chemical weapons were found in schools and hospitals in Eastern Aleppo once the terrorists were routed.
The US knows all of this. Claims that the US operates on "ignorance" or "incompetence" are only apologetics.
There is a knee-jerk reaction to the sentiments expressed by Trump. Of course everyone is horrified at using poison gas against civilians, and especially children. Unfortunately, that can obfuscate the simplistic logic of violent retaliation. How many innocent lives will we kill in that retaliation? And even if we succeeded in deposing Assad, what equally insane despot would take over? In fact, was the intervention even based on Trump's sudden and new found sympathy for Muslim children, or just a way to justify an attack to increase his ratings?
It isn't as if moral outrage or compassion for his fellow humans has been in high relief up till now.
"And even if we succeeded in deposing Assad, what equally insane despot would take over?"
The plan, which has been written first in the Oded Yinon plan and CIA documents in the early 1980s, is not to replace Assad with any single despot.
The plan has always been to "Balkanize" Syria, creating a Kurdish State in the north, and giving a substantial portion of the South to Israel, and then the middle will serve as the corridor for the gas pipeline long planned by Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the two major sources of direct funding and arming of the terrorists who invaded Syria).
And now, just like in Libya, that central part would likely be held by Jihadist nut jobs who will slaughter the most ancient Christian communities in the world along with any apostates or others not pure enough for them, while fighting amongst themselves.
The propaganda against President Assad has been unrelenting for several years now, but the reality is that most Syrians voted for him and still support him. Syria was a modern, secular country with equal rights for all (including the many refugees from Palestine and Iraq, whom Assad welcomed). Syria had lower poverty rates than Israel, guaranteed food, health care and education through college for all.
"The propaganda against President Assad has been unrelenting for several years now, but the reality is that most Syrians voted for him and still support him."
It's the same propaganda (false flag operation) they tried to pull off in 2013. Assad was NOT responsible for chemical attacks on Syrians then and is NOT responsible for them now. Thank heavens Obama didn't get sucked into that one!
Like you stated, it was the U.S. and allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, behind the terrorism and false flag ops. Their goal is still to overthrow Assad ('regime change' is the less hostile term).
Thank you for calling it what it is instead of getting pulled into the 'hypocrisy' angle! In addition to the fact that Assad was elected by a majority, NOT like Trump, they have health care for all - UNLIKE the U.S.!
good piece, marc.
this is the easily predicted attack meant to shift the public's eyes from the utter incompetence of the trumpocalypse at home.
it's the final piece in making sense of our need for a coherent plan to take back our country.
While questions remain about the origins of poison employed in Syria that killed civilians, it is beyond hypocrisy that the US armed both Iran and Iraq with chem/biological weapons [WMD] to fight each other [Iran-Contra], never mind flooding the US with drugs to do so.
The US employed Napalm and Agent Orange in South East Asia, as well as land mines.
More recently, the US employed depleted uranium in Iraq.
Silence prevails as we bomb and kill in Yemen.
As people south of our border seek democracy, a future and stable governments, the US can't seem to stop destabilizing those nations for cheap labor for International Corporations and the CIA continues installing brutal dictators.
The US armed the military with Russian weapons in East Timor to kill unarmed civilians for oil.
If we want to be outraged about children and civilians being killed, maybe we should be outraged with American Empire Building that has caused brutality around the Globe.
Where has US Foreign Policy ever provided a positive outcome? Please tell me.
Syria is merely another example of the Moral Bankruptcy of the US.
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