We are being played again

By Donald Hank

In this commentary, written the day after the recent terror attacks in Paris, I warned that French president Hollande may use the Paris terror attacks to overthrow Assad. I based this in part on the aftermath of the 911 attacks, reminding:

... GW Bush used the 911 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, which had not aided the 911 perpetrators in any known way. He stood on ground zero in NY and said "the people who knocked down these buildings are going to hear from us," thereby setting the stage for a false connection in the minds of Americans, most of whom unthinkingly supported the ensuing non-sequitur and disastrous wars, which led, incidentally, to the creation of ISIS. The 911 perpetrators had been mostly Saudi terrorists, supported by Saudi money, but the Saudis did not "hear from us" at all, did they? The State Department did not so much as breathe a hint of caution in their direction. The Saudi conspirators and perpetrators were in fact fully absolved of all blame, which was heaped instead on scapegoats, at a tragic cost of American blood, treasure and prestige.

I saw an analogy with the Paris attacks, where the Saudis, the true perpetrators in the 911 attacks, represent ISIS, the true perpetrators in the French attacks, and the war on Iraq, falsely purporting to be revenge for those attacks (even though Iraq had nothing to do with them), representing the attack on Syria with the full intent of destroying the government of President of Assad, one of the last truly secular regimes in the Middle East that is not aligned with the US government.

Meanwhile, European cable TV stations like the French channel TV5, German Deutsche Welle, BBC, Italy's RAI and US media outlets are constantly showing how nations all over the world are showing their solidarity with France, illuminating their monuments with the colors of the tricolore and of course, in the midst of this international blend of grief, solidarity and hysteria, no one anywhere (except me) dares to point out that the EU's open borders and quotas for refugees from the Muslim world are some of the main reasons for terror attacks of the kind the world saw playing out in Paris.

Last night France did indeed execute 150 air strikes against the supposed ISIS stronghold Raqqa. They did so illegally, without the permission of the Syrian people, as I had suggested they would in my article.

Meanwhile ISIS spokespeople have said that the the targets were no longer occupied by ISIS.

The uninitiated would expect ISIS to be lying. So how can we check on this? I decided to do a web search and find out whether Russia had already struck in Raqqa. Indeed, Russian planes, acting legally at the invitation of the Syrian people, had struck Raqqa in early October and again on Oct. 15, as reported here. Reuters reports on Nov 6 of further Russian strikes in Raqqa.

This report from Oct. 5 shows that Russia had already knocked out an ammo dump in Raqqa. Yet the French claim that last night's strikes knocked out an ISIS munitions dump in the same town.

Since I was able to find reports of at least 3 raids by Russia on ISIS targets in Raqqa, it seems odd that France would need to strike again. Certainly, Russia's strikes would have left few targets for the French, and that would seem to corroborate ISIS' claim that the French hit empty targets. Why would they do that? No doubt to claim those areas for the "rebels" fighting Assad. If the rebels reach those areas first, would the legitimate Syrian army dare to challenge them – even with Russia backing them up?

Whereas at that time of Russia's strikes, the US insisted that the Russian strike only hit "moderates," the Russians said they had hit ISIS targets. One side was lying. Surely our own State Department would never lie to We the People, would they?

This site promptly showed the State Department was indeed lying:

"The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said at least 12 ISIS jihadists from the Islamic State group were killed in the Raqqa attack."

Now it had been reported earlier that Syrian "rebels" ("moderates" supported by US but operating illegally under international law) intended to attack ISIS in Raqqa.

Now that France has struck again, perhaps striking no actual ISIS members (which the Russians may have routed completely in its October and November strikes in Raqqa), the "rebels." supported by Washington and Europe, will have the propaganda advantage because the perpetually lying and treacherously deceitful Western media can claim that anyone opposing these US-backed Syrian terrorists are besmirching the memory of the dead in Paris.

You see what a despicable game is being played to gain power in Syria illegally and against the will of the Syrian people? You see how the French are preparing the ground to claim that it was they and not the Russians who liberated Raqqa – despite the fact that Russia had repeatedly struck ISIS in Raqqa throughout October and again in November and destroyed most of the targets France claimed to strike last night? We are being played just as we were in Iraq and in the Arab Spring, eg, Libya, Egypt, Syria....

If we the people again fail to see through the ruse, we will get what we deserve. That is, if indeed the Western powers are only pretending to fight ISIS, as Obama did in Syria by dragging his feet and even "accidentally" air dropping arms to ISIS, and as Hollande is obviously doing in France, by pretending to attack ISIS when in fact his actual target is Assad, the protector of Christians and minorities in Syria, ISIS will continue to grow unopposed and the Western world will be in thrall to these people whom Donald Trump aptly calls "cockroaches."

Did the French choose to bomb Raqqa so that the anti-Assad rebels could get there first and claim it as theirs?

The Paris attack was indeed used as a pretext to attack Syria without permission from the Syrian legitimate government for the purpose of claiming the very important city of Raqqa for the rebels. This is an indirect attack on Assad, exactly as I had foreseen in yestereday's commentary.

© Donald Hank