US airstrike against Syria forces, war crime: Journalist

Stephen Lendman, author and journalist from Chicago, has been interviewed by Press TV about an audio file, which the Syrian government says proves a recent US attack on Syrian forces in Dayr al-Zawr was a deliberate act in support of terrorists.

Lendman says he is not surprised that “there’s an audio file showing that US forces conspired with ISIS (Daesh) to launch the attack on Dayr al-Zawr and killing 82 Syrian soldiers and injuring maybe hundred others.”

The Syrian forces were attacked because America wanted to disrupt the process of ceasefire in Aleppo and destroy any chance of peace in Syria, he said, noting that the United States’ plan for Syria is “regime change” and is attempting to turn the Arab country into a “vessel state.”

The US attack on a Syrian base in Dayr al-Zawr is just “a devastating” war crime and Washington tries to slough it off by calling the strike as a mistake, while the American military knows exactly who they target.

Speaker of the People’s Council of Syria Hadiya Khalaf Abbas said Monday that the Syrian intelligence possessed an audio file of conversation between Daesh terrorists and American military prior to the US-led airstrikes on the Syrian government troops near Dayr al-Zawr on September 17.

Lendman argued, “America is directly involved in aiding Daesh, al-Nusra and all other anti-government forces; arming, funding, training, directing them, teaching them atrocities, use of chemical weapons and use of banned weapons.”

“The US intends to continue war until its objective is achieved” in Syria, Lendman warned, adding that the only way to defeat the US intervention is by Syrian forces with Russian help.

He also emphasized that after the US attack on Dayr al-Zawr, the Americans coordinated it with Daesh forces to position themselves to occupy the airbase that America was bombing.

Pointing to the approach used by the United States in responding to the world public opinion after such incidents, he stated that the US and its allies like Britain and France called for holding an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to bash Russia and Syria and deflect attention away from Washington’s crime.

Syria has been gripped by a bloody foreign-backed militancy since March 2011.