{"id":358557,"date":"2018-04-26T23:09:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/douma-it-just-doesnt-ring-true\/"},"modified":"2018-04-26T23:09:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T22:09:00","slug":"douma-it-just-doesnt-ring-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/douma-it-just-doesnt-ring-true\/","title":{"rendered":"Douma: \u201cIt Just Doesn\u2019t Ring True\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Jonathan Freedland\u2019s<\/a> \u2018committed denialists and conspiracists\u2019, and Paul Mason\u2019s<\/a> victims of Putin\u2019s \u2018global strategy\u2019 clutching at \u2018false flag theories\u2019, presumably include Lord West, former First Sea Lord and Chief of Defence Intelligence. In an interview<\/a> with the BBC, West commented:<\/p>\n

\n

President Assad is in the process of winning this civil war. And he was about to take over and occupy Douma, all that area. He\u2019d had a long, long, hard slog, slowly capturing that whole area of the city. And then, just before he goes in and takes it all over, apparently he decides to have a chemical attack. It just doesn\u2019t ring true.<\/p>\n

It seems extraordinary, because clearly he would know that there\u2019s likely to be a response from the allies \u2013 what benefit<\/em> is there for his military? Most of the rebel fighters, this disparate group of Islamists, had withdrawn; there were a few women and children left around. What benefit was there militarily in doing what he did? I find that extraordinary<\/em>. Whereas we know that, in the past, some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals [see here<\/a>], and of course there would be huge<\/em> benefit in them labelling an attack as coming from Assad, because they would guess, quite rightly, that there\u2019d be a response from the US, as there was last time, and possibly from the UK and France\u2026<\/p>\n

We do know that the reports that came from there were from the White Helmets \u2013 who, let\u2019s face it, are not neutrals [see here<\/a>]; you know,…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Freedland\u2019s \u2018committed denialists and conspiracists\u2019, and Paul Mason\u2019s victims of Putin\u2019s \u2018global strategy\u2019 clutching at \u2018false flag theories\u2019, presumably include Lord West, former First Sea Lord and Chief of Defence Intelligence. In an interview with the BBC, West commented: President Assad is in the process of winning this civil war. And he was about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-358557","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\/358557","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\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}