{"id":349247,"date":"2018-02-21T18:21:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T17:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/dont-be-a-moron-lewrockwell\/"},"modified":"2018-02-21T18:21:43","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T17:21:43","slug":"dont-be-a-moron-lewrockwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/dont-be-a-moron-lewrockwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Be a Moron: &#8211; LewRockwell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>On February 16, 2018,\u00a0<i>Bloomberg\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0Eli Lake<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/view\/articles\/2018-02-16\/russia-attacked-u-s-troops-in-syria\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0an article entitled \u201cDon\u2019t Be Fooled: Russia Attacked U.S. Troops in Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For context, the U.S.-led coalition<a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2018\/02\/07\/politics\/us-strikes-pro-regime-forces-syria\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0conducted air and artillery strikes<\/a>\u00a0against what was believed to be pro-government forces in Syria on February 7, 2018, in response to an \u201cunprovoked attack\u201d launched by these pro-regime forces. Not long after, reports<a href=\"http:\/\/theantimedia.org\/us-bombed-russians-syria\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0began emerging<\/a>\u00a0that significant numbers of Russian personnel were included in the over 100 dead and wounded, though Russia denied this at first. As the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/theantimedia.org\/us-killed-russians-in-syria\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">evidence began to mount<\/a>, the accepted version of events on both sides was that those involved were Russian mercenaries and contractors, not official troops.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the incident initially, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/russia-mercenaries-killed-by-us-troops-in-syria-gun-battle-g5zswflfg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0he had\u00a0<i>\u201cno idea why they [pro-government forces] would attack there, the forces were known to be there, obviously the Russians knew.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWe have always known that there are elements in this very complex battle space that the Russians did not have, I would call it, control of,\u201d<\/i>\u00a0he added.<\/p>\n<p>In response to this conundrum, Lake wrote:<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cNow, it should be said that Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, is a very smart man. His perplexity in this case is probably what Plato called a \u2018noble lie,\u2019 a falsehood spoken by a leader to achieve a greater social good. If Mattis acknowledges the obvious \u2014 that the Kremlin authorized a direct assault on a U.S.-sponsored base by non-uniformed personnel \u2014 he risks an escalation spiral in Syria. Better to express bewilderment and give Russian President Vladimir Putin a chance to back down and deny culpability, which he ended up doing despite the heavy casualties suffered by his&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/02\/no_author\/dont-be-a-moron-russia-didnt-attack-us-troops-in-syria\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On February 16, 2018,\u00a0Bloomberg\u2019s\u00a0Eli Lake\u00a0published\u00a0an article entitled \u201cDon\u2019t Be Fooled: Russia Attacked U.S. Troops in Syria.\u201d For context, the U.S.-led coalition\u00a0conducted air and artillery strikes\u00a0against what was believed to be pro-government forces in Syria on February 7, 2018, in response to an \u201cunprovoked attack\u201d launched by these pro-regime forces. Not long after, reports\u00a0began emerging\u00a0that significant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-349247","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\/349247","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}