The contra-narrative about Assad’s alleged gas attack is gaining traction as the evidence comes in. It increasingly seems probable that some folks suffocated or were overcome with smoke inhalation and hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) when buildings, tunnels and underground bunkers collapsed into clouds of dust during the final battle for Douma last Saturday.
Then the desperate remnant of the jihadist Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam) holed up there piled the bodies in a basement, spread shaving cream on their lips and proceeded to videotape furiously. Thereafter, they charged into a nearby hospital (which was treating hypoxia victims) with their video cameras in hand, yelling "chemical attack" while water-hosing one and all, thereby setting off the pandemonium seen on social media around the world.
We haven’t gotten to Douma yet to check out this contra-narrative, but an intrepid young reporter named Pearson Sharp did. Along with his camera crew, he visited the site of the attack, the hospital and the nearby rebel weapons dump – and interviewed dozens of people in the immediate vicinity.
According to Sharp, none of them witnessed the alleged gas attack or believed it happened, and several personnel at the Douma hospital corroborated the phony water-dousing melee. Indeed, the head surgeon insisted to him that no one had died at the hospital from chemical agents.
And he also saw and videoed room after room stacked with rockets, mortars and other military gear and filmed the debris and dilapidated remnants of buildings in the town.
No doubt about it. Douma is the victim of a vicious civil war fought for keeps by both sides. It’s the kind of place where folks get terrorized, bombed, shot, suffocated, shrapneled and blown to smithereens.
This kind of urban warfare is its own horror show, chemical agents or no. And most surely, there is no way to accurately determine who did what from a 6,000 mile away vantage point in Washington.
That’s especially the case with Douma because it appears that much of its bedraggled population had been literally driven underground into tunnels, basements and behind makeshift earthworks to shelter from the fighting and bombing.
There, they were the captives of the brutal, armed jihadists of Jaysh al-Islam, and it was in this subterranean setting that the room full of bodies and the frenzied hospital scenes transmitted over social media actually transpired. That is, the whole event was completely invisible to Washington’s vast, high-powered eyes in the sky.
Then again, you are apparently a tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist if you doubt the official narrative – conjured in offices along the Potomac – in the slightest. That’s even if you actually walk the debris-ridden tunnels of Douma, as did young Mr. Pearson Sharp.
Within hours of his report (linked below), the liberal mainstream media was already attacking it as the work of a rightwing conspiracy nut.
But here’s the thing. Pearson Sharp is one of the anchors on the OAN cable news network (One America News Network).
That’s notable above all else because the OAN is the Donald’s next bestest cable network after Fox. It was launched a few years ago by a right-wing San Diego entrepreneur and now boasts 30 million subscribers to Fox’s 90 million.
So it’s Fox News Jr. in terms of viewer reach, but when it comes to boosting all things Trump, it appears to leave even Sean Hannity in the dust. Or as the Denver Post snarkily noted:
One America News is an obscure TV channel struggling to emerge from the cellar of the cable ratings, but it is nonetheless one of President Donald Trump’s favorite media outlets. It’s not hard to see why: On One America newscasts, the Trump administration is a juggernaut of progress, a shining success with a daily drumbeat of achievements.
OAN, based in San Diego, made its first splash in the opening weeks of the Trump campaign, when the channel became the first to carry Trump’s campaign speeches live and in full – a decision followed quickly by the owner’s directive that other candidates’ rallies not be given the same treatment, according to internal emails.
Since then, OAN has become a reliably sympathetic voice of the administration’s goals and actions. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has a deal to appear regularly on the channel.
So imagine the Donald’s surprise when he saw this?
Then again, we were more than a bit surprised when the new sanctions ballyhooed on the Sunday talk shows by the Donald’s UN embarassador Nikkei Haley, suddenly got cancelled – apparently on the orders of POTUS himself.
And then came the cable cr......
https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2018/04/18/the-deep-state-and-the-big-lie-douma-deposed/
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