The Rush to War 729


I have never ruled out the possibility that Russia is responsible for the attack in Salisbury, amongst other possibilities. But I do rule out the possibility that Assad is dropping chemical weapons in Ghouta. In this extraordinary war, where Saudi-funded jihadist head choppers have Israeli air support and US and UK military “advisers”, every time the Syrian army is about to take complete control of a major jihadist enclave, at the last moment when victory is in their grasp, the Syrian Army allegedly attacks children with chemical weapons, for no military reason at all. We have been fed this narrative again and again and again.

We then face a propaganda onslaught from neo-con politicians, think tanks and “charities” urging a great rain of Western bombs and missiles, and are accused of callousness towards suffering children if we demur. This despite the certain knowledge that Western military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have had consequences which remain to this day utterly disastrous.

I fear that the massive orchestration of Russophobia over the last two years is intended to prepare public opinion for a wider military conflict centred on the Middle East, but likely to spread, and that we are approaching that endgame. The dislocation of the political and media class from the general population is such, that the levers for people of goodwill to prevent this are, as with Iraq, extremely few as politicians quake in the face of media jingoism. These feel like extremely dangerous times.


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729 thoughts on “The Rush to War

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  • Harald K

    Craig Murray,

    Of course you’re never going to read this long down in a thread spammed by conspiracy theorists, but please take a look at this:

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/04/11/open-source-survey-alleged-chemical-attacks-douma-7th-april-2018/

    When we try to find out the truth, first leave motives out of it. First find out WHAT happened. Then you can start to speculate about why, if you really need to. The best is when you don’t have to trust people very much at all to find out what happened. This is the case with chemical attacks in Syria.

    • MarkSpencer

      By “conspiracy theorists” you mean anyone who casts doubt on the official line, right, Harald? Well, it seems that suggesting Assad would use chemical weapons, thereby jeopardizing not only himself, but his entire country and his allies, when he was poised to take Douma anyway – like he took the rest of Syria from the Jihadi headchoppers – without any need of CWs, is the most tinfoil of all available theories.

      Oh, and that Bellingcat article has nothing to disprove that this “attack” couldn’t just have been staged by the Jihadis.

      • Kempe

        ” Oh, and that Bellingcat article has nothing to disprove that this “attack” couldn’t just have been staged by the Jihadis. ‘

        Here we go again. You cannot disprove it therefore it must be true!

        How about some evidence, hard evidence, that it WAS staged?

      • Harald K

        What did I just say? Find the facts, don’t speculate about motives if you don’t have to. Speculating about motives is exciting, but pretty worthless. Looking for facts – often boring facts, like who said what when, or what is that thing in that image – is usually far more fruitful.

        By conspiracy theorist, I mean for instance someone claiming that it’s easy to stage a false flag attack with chemical weapons, inside a besiged city, and fake it flawlessly (including fake video of dying kids, fake images of gas canisters) with poor Russia and Assad being powerless to expose it.

        The conspiracy theorist asks who can you trust. Sane people ask _what_ can you trust, and realize that not everything is equally easy to fake.

  • Douglas

    It is foolish of us to second-guess the motives and strategies of unelected, ruthless, savage dictators.

    They do not think like us.

    The jury may be out on both these attacks. But I do know that I will never believe a word which comes out of the mouths of Putin or Assad. Their history of deceit, complete disregard for any human rights, and horrific oppression speaks for itself.

    The vast majority of us commenting on this page never lived under a totalitarian government and cannot imagine how such a government thinks or acts.

    • MarkSpencer

      It is foolish of us to second-guess the motives and strategies of unelected, ruthless, savage dictators.

      If you mean Assad, he’s been elected President by the Syrian people:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_presidential_election,_2014

      As for being ruthless and savage, NATO leaders certainly deserve these labels more, having caused so much greater death, injury, destruction and chaos in the Middle East than Hussein, Qaddafi, or Assad ever did.

    • MarkSpencer

      But I do know that I will never believe a word which comes out of the mouths of Putin or Assad.

      Oh, so Putin too? That guy was elected President four times, and not even Western governments deny the massive support he has from the Russian people.

      Their history of deceit, complete disregard for any human rights, and horrific oppression speaks for itself.

      Are you still talking about Putin and Assad? Because it seems so much more fitting for USA, NATO, and their oppressive anti-democratic “allies” all over the world, including the Middle East (or are you saying Saudi Arabia, for instance, is a beacon of democracy and freedom?)

      The vast majority of us commenting on this page never lived under a totalitarian government and cannot imagine how such a government thinks or acts.

      You might be living under one right now. In fact, your fervourous pushing of government propaganda and disregard of critical opinion is very much reminiscent of how a totalitarian government thinks or acts.

    • Jo Dominich

      Douglas, I am assuming you are referring to Donald Trump and Teresa May are you? Would you care to provide any evidence of a history of deceit, complete disregard for any human rights and horrific oppression? I certainly can’t find any. We might not YET live in a totalitarian government but, we do live in an electoral dictatorship which has some of the features of a totalitarian state. Our Press cannot be said to be exactly ‘free’ or impartial, the majority is owned by one Rupert Murdoch whose media outlets are better known as the Tory Propaganda Machine – they support the Government blindly whether they are right or wrong. We have a Prime Minister today who is going to by pass the parliamentary process to go to war with Russia and Syria – why, because she might well lose the vote in parliament which would mean her losing power – totalitarian enough for you? Get real

  • Jo Dominich

    Having regard to Trump’s indication that he is going to send missiles to Syria and his comments to Russia, we are now on the eve of a very very serious situation. What is going on with our MPs and media? This is clearly a false flag operation by the the White Helmets to stir mass hysteria and prevent Assad’s Government to retake control of Syria and start to rebuild it. I cannot believe our own politicians, those of France and the USA actually believe this shit and the media are pushing and pushing the sorry excuse we have for a Government in the UK to a serious war because the rabidly right wing media in this country want it, all, as one USA senator said, in the interests of Israel – who want to take the Golan Heights (rich in oil and mineral resources of course). Assad is no monster, Netanyahou and Trump on the other hand are. I would now like Jeremy Corbyn, the only parliamentary voice of reason in this whole dangerous affair to take to the House of Commons and make the most impassioned, fact based, anti-war speech he can and stuff the reaction from the dumb MPs in his party who call him out for him and stuff the media. He needs to large, full on and use facts such as: In 2013 the UN found, when investigating a gas attack in Syria that, the rebels (funded by the USA and the UK) had been given chemical weapons and had used them on Syrian civilians and Syrian armed forces; that neither Syria or Russia have any chemical weapons as verified and confirmed by the OPCW in 2013 and 2017 respectively; that this is a false flag operation by the pro rebel White Helmets to create hysteria just at a time when Assad has virtually taken back control of the whole of Syria; that there still is NO independent international verification of a gas attack having actually taken place; that over a month ago, Russia has been telling the UN that they had intelligence information on the ground that the rebels were planning a false flag attack in order to discredit Assad and Russia giving an example that the rebels had bussed in children, women and older people from other areas, congregated them in a public square, ready for a photo shoot to claim a gas attack; that inspectors from the OPCW are on their way to Douma at the request of Russia and Syria to investigate whether a gas attack actually took place. I know the mass media mount a vicious and malicious press campaign against Corbyn every time he opposes the Government on this but right now, we need him to be the only sane voice in Parliament and a very very loud one – to do a much more intense and louder Tucker Carlson speech. Please Jeremy, get the truth out there as strongly, passionately and as loudly as you can. We need your voice and we need it now. Stuff the idiot MPs in your party who are warmongerers and stuff the media.

  • Stephen Lambert

    Thank you. While their are people like you there is still some hope. I just hope there are enough.

  • Bill Hosie

    I totally agree with the escalation of war from the East and the warmongers of the West need to remember it is chronicled that the end of the world will start from there the biggest evil in the world today is greed and will be their downfall

  • Tom McMaster

    Couldn’t agree more Craig. It’s good to have someone of your experience using your talents for ‘good’!

    • mk

      why do you lie Craig Murray? about jihadists having “israeli air support”? There is no love lost between Israel and Assad, but it does not mean rebels have their “air support”. Makes me hard to believe anything you spurt out about so-called Russophobia.

  • Roy David

    I cannot help but agree with your observations, Craig – it very much does feel like the end game in Syria. It is almost as if the West and its proxies have had a final scenario up their sleeves all along should Assad ‘win’ the war (a civil war it is NOT) and have been waiting to play it. The propaganda machine is now in full swing, aided by a complicit and cowardly MSM, That this was anything other than regime change from the outset is plain and, as in Iraq and Libya, the outcome is far from certain, perilous in so many ways. The propaganda was then as now; the WMD, the ‘Benghazi slaughter’ etc (disproved by the subsequent Parliamentry enquiry – did anyone read that?). So we are left with the legacy of the usual demonising rhetoric where spin is repeated as fact, the gullible swayed like the flimsiest of saplings in a strong wind, where voices of calm and sobriety are lost in that gale. I shudder to think what might be yet to come.

  • Hefaistos

    Jaysh al-Islam is the jihadist group that was in Ghouta when the chemical attack happened. They have previously been known to use chemical weapons in Aleppo, Syria. Here’s what a director at CIA has to say about them:

    “The Jaysh al-Islam militant group should be excluded from Syria peace talks because a group which uses chemical warfare should not be at the table and be treated as civilized, said retired CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson.

    A toxic gas attack was perpetrated by the Jaysh al-Islam militant group against Kurdish YPG forces and civilians in the city of Aleppo on April 7. The group admitted using “forbidden” weapons against the Kurdish militia.”

    So, these known perpetrators of chemical attacks are the partners of the USA/alliance, it’s these terrorists that the West wants to protect.

    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/338934-chemical-gas-aleppo-syria/

  • Timothy Horton

    Russia will not be attacked, rather the Western Power Matrix fears them, with the coming debt crisis in the West.

    We have twice the global debt of the 2008 debt crisis, and it’s no guess that twice the debt is far more than twice the problem. Nothing has gotten any better in a decade, Europe is worse across the board, whether you look at governments or businesses or individuals.

    They had Russia on their knees, financially and militarily, not long ago. The Russians had aging nuclear missiles, and the Americans would soon have Anti ballistic missile systems to shut Russia down. In the event of a cataclysm, Russia would pose no threat. That’s all changed recently. Russia’s SATAN2 missile announcements were timed to coincide with the beginning of the western crisis.

    I strongly believe that a crisis was supposed to happen right about now (I nailed the 2008 crisis to within a few weeks, and moved all my money in Febrary). You may say that I’m a conspiracy nutbar, but 2008 was planned. They changed regulations to create the crisis, and oversight was left gaping open so the problem was hidden. When it hit, they solved a debt crisis with a much worst debt crisis. First they shifted the debt burden from banks to taxpayers (100% of the debt in places like Ireland) with $5T for the banks to multiply by 12 to 20, and gave them absolutely free money (zero interest rates for a decade) in unlimited amounts. For dessert, they then let them rewrite the banking rules so that all but 4,000 of the 15,000 banks in the US went under. Economists have written tombs, but the end result was to do wonders for the banks and nothing for the economy. The most respectable economist I know thinks it was negative. I can keep going.

    Imagine if you could not make your payments, and the bank’s solution was to finance your payments for a decade at super low rates, and let you borrow much more for some real excitement. Does that make sense? If your bank likes the deal, I’m not sure the bank likes you.

    I think the goal has been to crush us under debt and insolvency, then offer a “rescue” that solves our problems by taking them away, and replacing them with a global central bank, global currency, global financial rules, all of it an extension of the EU model, implemented in a global panic so we don’t have much say. Loss of sovereignty, loss of governance, loss of rationality, only now there would be one big monopoly of rule, and probably no good alternatives. Welcome to the biblical future.

    I have worked for years in big banks, and I could see the preparations for a new crisis, like a secret project code name for “all the pieces falling into place”, and and the timing of projects told me 2018. Jim Rickards “Rule to Ruin” makes a very good case for 2008.

    Here it is 2018. We’ll see. One can only hope that Russia, China, and the like frighten them enough to think twice. Russia to the rescue.

  • Helen

    The report from a medic I heard on the radio sounded convincingly like a chemical weapons attack.

  • Steve Crickmore

    The Army of Islam was inflicting substantial casualties on the elite Panther Brigade (Syrian Arab Army special operations forces) who led the invasion of Douma last week. The Army of Islam refused to surrender and said they wanted to work out a deal to remain in Douma. This was a non-starter for Bashar al-Assad, who wanted all the rebel bases near the capital completely gone. But my hypothesis is that he could not risk losing more troops from the crack Panther Brigades.

    So he decided to send down a barrel bomb of mixed chlorine and sarin gas on Douma. Perhaps he just meant to kill a dozen or two dozen Army of Islam fighters. Instead, the gas killed around 70 people, including mostly civilians and some children, and the relief workers in the enclave got video and blew the whistle on the regime. Al-Assad brazenly committed a war crime, confident that the Russian Federation would protect him from its consequences. The Army of Islam was inflicting substantial casualties on the elite Panther Brigade (Syrian Arab Army special operations forces) who led the invasion of Douma last week. The Army of Islam refused to surrender and said they wanted to work out a deal to remain in Douma. This was a non-starter for Bashar al-Assad, who wanted all the rebel bases near the capital completely gone. But my hypothesis is that he could not risk losing more troops from the crack Panther Brigades.

    https://www.juancole.com/2018/04/reverse-syrian-gloating.html

    • JakeMorris

      These bots are not even trying, just posting a boatload of propaganda bs.

      The text even repeats itself three or more times (didn’t bother to count), so it was posted automatically.

      This is flooding at its most obvious.

    • Katerina

      Keep dreaming….. your army of islam are murderers. The Syrian Army wanted to invade Ghouta?????? You invade a foreign country not your own…this was an operation to free Ghouta from the muslim head choppers

  • Vial Jean-Claude

    I totally agree. It’s a dirty and dangerous game played by US, British and French governments with the full support of the media.

    • Olaf S

      Great links!
      Obama the war criminal?
      BTW, the task he gave the CIA was not secret in itself, only the operation details. I remember well Obama on TV several years ago declaring: ”I have decided to not put boots on the ground in Syria. Instead I have ordered the CIA to give every possible support to the opposition groups”. I understood at once what it meant: CIA organisation plus ”unlimited” funding from countries like SA, plus the lax weapons export regulations (if any) of some of the new U.S. allies in the eastern Europe and on Balkan, would mean flooding Syria with vast quantities of weapons and resulting in destruction, destruction, destruction.

      One might add that the founders of IS, Al Baghdadi and his gang, at a time when the Obama gang was displeased with the Shia government in Iraq (and as always searching for ways to overthrow Assad), were released by the Americans from their Bucca prison in Iraq. (were they apparently had been allowed to make plans in relative comfort)…

      When we are at it, let us have a look at a few more of Obama’s darker sides.

      1. He has admitted, say, in his last interview in the WH, that his biggest mistake was throwing Libya into chaos.(by not bothering to contemplate the consequences of the attack, incredible!). Ought to immediately return the Peace Price, if you ask me. (And the money too, please, mister!).

      2. Being aware of Russia’s helpfulness in the diplomatic sphere and in general (far into Obama’s second term Russia allowed most of the supplies to Afghanistan to go by rail through Russia, to mention just one telling little thing). In response: Confrontation and war-mongering rhetoric, like comparing Russia with IS and a deadly virus in an infamous UN speech.. (speechless!)

      3. Thoughtlessly getting involved in the Ukraine, where the complexity of the situation probably is far beyond reach of any American politician. (will they never learn?). Filling the Black Sea with warships, stuffed with cruise missiles pointing at Russia. Plus: Avoiding to really support the Minsk peace talks. Plus: Bearing the moral responsibility for the Krim annexation, if you ask me. A considerate, knowable, peace-loving person in his position would have put pressure on the Ukraine, to guarantee prolonging of the Russian’s leasing agreement of the Sevastopol naval base territory. (The Russians could not risk loosing its Black Sea fleet, and this would be very understandable to anybody aware of Russia’s – historically more than justified! – security needs). Plus hypocrisy: Supporting the unconstitutional Majdan coup, but condemning the referendum on Krim.

      4. Steering towards more military confrontation in Asia (Obama’s ”Pivot Asia” military build-up).

      5. I could go on and on! (The drone killings! Failing whistleblowers like Snowden. Giving NSA free reign. Allowing the shadowy interrogation centers around the world. Aggressive behaviour on the border to North Korea…).

      6. Probably not more evil than most people on a personal level, Obama seem to have ended in the pocket of the Intelligence Community and the Military (and of the McCain camp), probably due most of all to naivety. He simply had not the format of a Nixon or a Kennedy, say, to see the reality behind the propaganda mist.”We are the good guys!” It is called moralism and is dangerous in international politics, where you need pragmatism more than anything else.

      All in all, if there is a WWIII, Obama will probably be more responsible for it than anybody else. If it goes nuclear, and the following radioactive contamination turns out to disturb the genetics of all things living, one will have to consider Obama the most dangerous/destructive person in the history of mankind, and that by an extremely large margin.

  • Neil Pirie

    So one of the un answered questions is : does the military/industrial complex want minerals or oil from the middle east?
    Or why did Alec Salmon letr trump have his sssi golf course
    Two questions.
    Sorry, I’m from Fife

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