The Independent- Reports about Chemical Weapons in Syria as Sheer Lies

The rumors on the presence of chemical weapons in Syria are sheer lies fabricated by pseudo-experts who do not even know where Syria is located, a leading British media said, adding that Damascus has repeatedly confirmed that it will not use the toxic substances against its civilian population.

The Independent in an article by renowned journalist Robert Fisk wrote that it is for over a week that the US, the UK and France have once again engaged in spreading the groundless rumors about the possibility that the Syrian government might use chemical weapons against the armed rebels.

It noted that the bigger the lie the more people would believe it. “We all know who said that, but it still works.”

“We have been hearing all this stuff since last year such as Syrian (president) Bashar al-Assad has chemical weapons, he may use them against his own people. If he does, the West will respond and Assad’s government repeatedly said that if it had chemical weapons, it would never use them against Syrians,” Fisk said.

Over the past week, all the usual pseudo-experts who couldn’t find Syria on a map have been warning “us again of the mustard gas, chemical agents, biological agents that Syria might possess or might use”.

Fisk said that the sources are the same fantasy specialists “who didn’t warn us about 9/11 but insisted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in 2003: ‘unnamed military intelligence sources’. Henceforth, its acronym UMIS will be used”.

And now, the coup de theater; “someone from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called me up this week” to talk about the alleged use of “chemical weapons by Hafez al-Assad in Hama” in the “city’s uprising in 1982”.

Their sources were the “same old UMIS”. But “I happened to have got into Hama in February 1982, which is why the Canadian was calling me, and no one ever used chemical weapons back then”.

“Not a single soldier I saw in Hama carried a gas mask. No civilians carried gas masks. The dangerously perfumed air which I and my colleagues smelt after chemicals were used by our (then) ally Saddam against Iranian soldiers in the 1980s was not present. And none of the dozens of civilian survivors I have interviewed in the 30 years since 1982 ever mentioned the use of gas,” Fisk said

Yes, the bigger the lie, the better. “Certainly we journos have done our duty in disseminating this bunkum,” he added.

Fisk noted that’s why, when Saddam first used gas on Halabja, the “UMIS told CIA officers to blame Iran”.

“Now Washington is playing the same gas-chanty all over again,” he said.