Syria: Asking Pilate's question

Our media blamed the Houla massacre on the dictatorial Syrian regime. But we're seeing growing indications that something else occurred...

Take the photo the BBC used to illustrate the atrocity: it showed a young boy jumping over piles of corpses neatly laid out in preparation for burial. Very dramatic, and very disturbing – except it wasn’t a photo of anything that happened in Houla. Instead, it was a photo taken by Marco Di Lauro in Iraq, in 2003, and appropriated from his web site. The stolen photo was accompanied by a caption that read:

“Photo from Activist. This image – which cannot be independently verified – is believed to show bodies of children in Houla awaiting funeral.”

That sort of media manipulation happened a lot in the early days of the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein. Fox News conjured up an entire battle which never occurred; the fall of that infamous statue was staged by Chelabi's imported goons; TV news aired unrelated footage to convey the impression that Baghdad fell after combat, when in fact the enemy commanders were simply paid not to fight.

The Daily Cheeto (and we must never forget Moulitsas' CIA background) hilariously argues that the fake photo run by the BBC was really part of an Assad regime plot. I doubt that the Damascus government has much ability to manipulate the British press, and I doubt that they're capable of what we might call an "11 dimensional chess" strategy. 

More on Houla:

...for example, one of the victims was a candidate in Syria’s recent elections who had refused to stand down at the demand of opposition “activists.” He, too, was brutally murdered, and the question is – by whom?

...there was the case of “Syria Danny,” whose on-camera antics were exposed in flagrante delicto as he staged a Syrian army “attack” for the benefit of CNN. And don’t forget the fake “blogger” who purported to be “Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari,” a 35-year-old lesbian living in Damascus, supposedly kidnapped by the Syrian regime and abused. “Amina” turned out to be a middle-aged married American schmuck and “Middle Eastern activist,” one Tom MacMaster, studying for a degree at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland.

For more on the "Danny" deception, see this very important post.

The original news accounts said that the victims were murdered by heavy artillery. We now know that this simply is not true: They were killed at close range, by small arms and knives.

There's a long history of western intelligence planting stories in the left-leaning Guardian. And it looks like that's been happening vis-a-vis the Houla massacre. This article effectively demolishes recent Guardian and BBC pieces on the Houla massacre.

The video at the top of this post demonstrates that the current actions against Syria are part of a plan formulated soon after 9/11. The appalling thing is that the Obama administration -- and let us not blind ourselves to the role played by his Secretary of State -- is continuing this neocon policy.

But don't expect better from Romney. His foreign policy adviser is Michael Hayden of the CIA and NSA. He's neocon to the core.

So we're screwed either way.