{"id":302377,"date":"2017-04-06T01:21:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T00:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-the-syrian-gas-attack-is-probably-fake\/"},"modified":"2017-04-06T01:21:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T00:21:25","slug":"why-the-syrian-gas-attack-is-probably-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-the-syrian-gas-attack-is-probably-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Syrian Gas Attack Is Probably Fake"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<p>Dirty tricks are like favourite records: play them too much and they get jaded. We haven\u2019t heard about gas attacks in Syria for some time, but now, once again, the media \u2014 and, sadly, the Trump administration \u2014 is in overdrive about what is claimed to be a gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikoun by the Assad government.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, the use of gas should not be regarded as particularly \u201cevil\u201d in a war that has also seen bombing and shelling of civilian areas as a matter of course, not to mention all the refinements to cruelty that ISIS and their like have introduced. But it is. We get it. Gas\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theoccidentalobserver.net\/2013\/08\/the-gas-cloud-of-western-intervention\/\" target=\"_blank\">is \u201cevil,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and you\u2019re very, very bad if you use it. OK? So, stop!<\/p>\n<p>But this means that gas attacks are also an extremely useful means of propaganda \u2014 but only if your opponents are seen to do them. In fact, this negative propaganda effect totally outweighs gas\u2019s military benefits. And, yes, using gas may have military benefits, although in this case it\u2019s hard to see how any possible benefits could outweigh the costs in terms of increasing the level of Western hostility.<\/p>\n<p>An important precedent\u00a0is the major gas attack, apparently by sarin rockets, that took place in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ghouta_chemical_attack\" target=\"_blank\">Damascus suburb of Ghouta<\/a>\u00a0in 2013 in which from between 350 and 1,400 people died.<\/p>\n<p>Now, horrific as the attack was, there was a certain logic in it that made blaming the Syrian government plausible. The Syrian army was fighting street-to-street, house-to-house, trying to recapture&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/redice.tv\/news\/why-the-syrian-gas-attack-is-probably-fake\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dirty tricks are like favourite records: play them too much and they get jaded. We haven\u2019t heard about gas attacks in Syria for some time, but now, once again, the media \u2014 and, sadly, the Trump administration \u2014 is in overdrive about what is claimed to be a gas attack on the Syrian town of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-302377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}