the limping messenger

I republish this news-tableau originally launched on 4 September, 2013 on my Flickr page. It had 11,965 views since then.  It takes part in a debate in the aftermath of  a retaliation attack of USA and allies on Syrian governmental targets, as a punishment for the use of chemical weapons on the city of Ghouta on 21 August, 2013, allegedly by Syrian government forces. An attack that caused over seven hundred deaths. This was not the first and not the last attack with chemical weapons. A useful overview of all 80 or so cases – since October 2012 – can be found on a dedicated Wikipedia page “Use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War” whereby it becomes clear that some cases are disputed and often the perpetrator of an attack using chemical weapons can not with full certainty be pointed at. Indeed the ‘news’ or ‘fakes news’ battles around these chemical attacks are poisonous themselves. When we take the highest estimation of casualties of the Syrian Civil Ear, since its start in the year 2011 then – according to the United Nations and the Arab League envoy to Syria, the total number of death is 400.000. 
The total number of deaths by the use of chemical warfare in Syria using the data of the list on Wikipedia cited above, plus the latest (alleged) attack on Douma is 2002 (again I take the highest estimates). Bombardments and (other) usage of high explosives may have caused – directly and indirectly – the highest death toll, whereby it is irrelevant for a victim if she/he was targeted or an unwanted side effect of an attack, a “collateral victim”. As my argument below is about the hysteric hypocrisy in the media and by ‘Western governments’, here the three chemical weapon attacks that did produce the highest numbers of deadly victims:
1) Ghouta (area) 21/8/2013: 800 + (numbers differ enormously: lowest 281, highest 1729)
2) Khan Shaykhun 4/4/2017: 100
3) Douma 7/4/2018: 70

There Are No Humanitarian Weapons – biggest lie of these days “THE GRADING OF KILLING METHODS IN SYRIA” as if Chemical Weapons are worse than Conventional Weapons as if there is a humanitarian red-line that must not be crossed in warfare.

Pondering for days how to expose THE BIGGEST LIE OF THESE DAYS “THE GRADING OF KILLING METHODS IN SYRIA” as if death by the dagger, sword, machete, pistol, riffle, mortar, land mine, machine gun, cannon, missile, aerial bombing, napalm, arson, dynamite, nitro glycerine, and hundreds of other explosives, electronic shocks and nuclear explosion, are any better. Dead is dead, also for those who remember the killed ones personally, those who stay behind.

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE INHUMAN ABOUT CHEMICAL KILLINGS THAN ABOUT HIGH VELOCITY PIECES OF METAL AND EXPLOSIVES DIRECTED AT HUMANS AND HUMAN HABITAT, ANIMALS AND NATURE?

HOW BRAINWASHED IS EVERYBODY that many start to doubt if they should support a military intervention of the Americans and their Allies in Syria. How brainwashed they must be when using the big number of violent death (just over 100.000) in Syria from the UN Human Right Research WITHOUT TAKING IN ACCOUNT WHO HAS BEEN KILLING WHO, how many of these killings were the result of all kind of inner strives and crimes by all sort of freedom fighters equally repulsive as committed by the governmental troops of Bashir Al-Assad. How naive to think that after the launching of missiles on Assad regime targets, civil war and terrorism will end in Syria.

The most massive use of chemical warfare in the narrow sense was last century in a war between Iran and Iraq that lasted 8 years and took over one million victims, of which tens of thousands died because of the use of chemical warfare methods, mainly against soldiers, but also in some cases against civilians, mainly in Iran, but also in Iraq itself, whereby also Iran attempted to use chemical warfare agents. The Iran Iraq War of the eighties last century did not trigger any call of ‘intervention’ and hardly any protest in the world. In the years 1987/88 there has been – well documented – tactical support by USA military and CIA personal for Iraq gas attacks on Iranian troops. There was no red-line then under that geo-political circumstances.

Because napalm, agent orange and depleted uranium weapons, and several kinds of so called nerve gasses for crowd control do fall outside of the international acclaimed definition of ‘chemical warfare’, the Western democracies think they can proudly pose as humanitarian warriors. Less forget the massive use of these human killing substances and devices in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Algerian War, Madagascar, the Gulf War, the Iraq War… by all those humanitarian generals of the USA and its allies.

Let alone that we recall all the devilish plans that have been prepared, but not executed, or only partly, of devastating large agricultural zones, of breaking irrigation dams, of bombing hydro-electrical dams, drowning thousands, triggering famines, ill health and massive death of illnesses like TB and Cholera, from Korea to Indochina.

Miles of historical, juridical, medical and military books and reports can be dragged in to support this kind of argumentation, to rip away the blindfold of public opinion as it is daily put in position and fastened by the major media.

THE ONLY HUMANITARIAN POSITION TO TAKE IS REFUTE ALL WARMONGERS, EVEN THE SMALL ONE WITHIN YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU DID NOT WORK HARD ENOUGH TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN HALF TRUTH AND FULL LIES.