Propaganda Is the Name of the Game in Media Reports of Atrocities in Syria

by Jeremy R. Hammond

June 9, 2012

One of the houses in Qubair was devastated inside (Photo and caption: BBC)

Another massacre has allegedly taken place in Syria that is being compared to the recent massacre in Houla. There are indeed striking similarities. As with the Houla massacre, claims that Syrian government forces or pro-regime militias carried out the atrocity are being parroted by the Western media despite the fact that such claims made by opposition groups and rebel forces remain unverified.

In the case of Houla, there are numerous indications, including eyewitness testimony, that the massacre was actually carried out by rebel forces or allied terrorist groups—with the U.S. and its allies actively supporting the opposition, including by funding and arming the rebels. The allegations of government-backed massacres of civilians are predictably being used as a pretext by the U.S. to implement a policy of regime change in Syria.

The latest massacre was alleged to have occurred on June 6, the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton headed to Turkey to “talk strategy with America’s allies,” as the Associated Press put it, “and look for a way to win Russia’s support for a transition plan ending the Assad regime.”

“It’s time for all of us to turn our attention to an orderly transition of power in Syria that would pave the way for democratic, tolerant, pluralistic future,” Clinton told reporters in Azerbaijan before leaving for Istanbul.

Clinton made clear that the U.S. was not supportive of the peace plan brokered by U.N. special envoy and former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, which seeks a diplomatic solution to Syria’s civil war.

“We think it is important for us to give Kofi Annan and his plan the last amount of support that we can muster,” she obliquely declared, “because, in order to bring others into a frame of mind to take action in the Security Council, there has to be a final recognition that it’s not working.”

A State Department official briefed reporters on Clinton’s meeting in Turkey by saying she had set forth “essential elements and principles that we believe should guide that post Assad transition strategy, including Assad’s full transfer of power.”

Also on June 6, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner stated, “We the United States hope that all responsible countries will soon join in taking appropriate actions against the Syrian regime, including, if necessary, Chapter VII action in the U.N. Security Council, as called for by the Arab League last weekend.”

The reference to Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter is an allusion to Security Council authorization for the use of force. However, the Charter would also forbid any use of force for the purpose of regime change.

NATO’s regime change operations in Libya, for example, exceeded the U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians in violation of the U.N. Charter prohibition against “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

On June 7, following reports of the alleged massacre in Hama coinciding with her visit, Clinton declared that the regime was responsible for this killing of civilians.

“The regime-sponsored violence that we witnessed again in Hama yesterday is simply unconscionable,” she stated. “Assad has doubled down on his brutality and duplicity, and Syria will not, cannot be peaceful, stable or certainly democratic until Assad goes.”

She added, “We have to do more to help organize and focus the opposition.”

It is unlikely that the U.S. would gain cover for another illegal military intervention to overthrow the Syrian regime in the form of another U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force, since Russia and China, both permanent members with veto power, have made it clear that they will not permit a repeat of what occurred in Libya.

“China and Russia strongly oppose any attempt to address the Syria crisis with military interference from the outside or forcefully impose a regime change in the insurgency-ridden country,” both nations expressed in a joint statement.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) also called for a “peaceful resolution of the Syrian problem through political dialogue”. The SCO said in a statement, “Member states are against military intervention into this region’s affairs, forcing a ‘handover of power’ or using unilateral sanctions.”

Russia has proposed to host a meeting of 15 nations and organizations to attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Russian foreign minister said that the goal would be to “agree with a circle of outside players, without the Syrians, about how we should use our influence on each Syrian group” to pave the way to ending “all military excesses”.

Russia proposed to include Iran in the discussions, which the U.S. immediately rejected, with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, telling reporters, “There is no question that it is actively engaged in supporting the government in perpetrating the violence on the ground”.

The hypocrisy is difficult to ignore, given the fact that the U.S. is admittedly actively engaged in supporting rebel forces in perpetrating violence on the ground. But Washington, as ever, holds itself to one standard and the rest of the world to another.

An apparent reference to the U.S. policy of seeking regime change in Syria, Kofi Annan urged that “Individual actions or interventions will not resolve the crisis.”

At the same time, he seemed to imply that pro-regime militiamen were responsible for the Houla massacre and alleged killings in Hama by saying, “The first responsibility lies with the government…. The government-backed militia seems to have a free rein, with appalling consequences.”

“The trail of blood leads back to those responsible,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, using similarly vague language. “Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity.”

The Syrian government denied responsibility. “What a few media have reported on what happened in Al-Kubeir, in the Hama region, is completely false,” the government said in a statement. “A terrorist group committed a heinous crime in the Hama region which claimed nine victims. The reports by the media are contributing to spilling the blood of Syrians.”

The Syrian ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Jaafari, said that government troops intervened to try to save civilian lives and that four were wounded in the attempt.

“Mr Jaafari also accused news organizations, including the BBC, of broadcasting images of bodies from an entirely different location”, The Telegraph reported, declining to inform readers that this “accusation” was true—the BBC had earlier posted an image of dead bodies purporting to be of the massacre in Houla that had actually been taken in Iraq in 2003. When the photographer who took the photo learned of this, he criticized the BBC for its “propaganda”.

The mainstream corporate media reports on the latest alleged massacre have apparently relied exclusively on claims from the Syrian opposition that pro-regime forces were responsible. The Guardian reported, “On the face of it, the circumstances of the apparent massacre at al-Qubair, a tiny village near Hama, look grimly familiar: tank or shellfire followed by an assault by the feared shabiha, paramilitary thugs drawn from the minority Alawite community of President Bashar al-Assad.”

The Guardian thus reported the account given by the opposition as fact before providing the government’s version: “The regime blamed ‘armed terrorists’ for killing nine people and accused ‘media backing Syria’s bloodletting’ of spreading lies. Opposition activists have listed 56 named victims and claim 78 died.”

Of course, if the victims of the alleged massacre—described here as “apparent” even though there had yet been no independent confirmation that a massacre even occurred, apart from the Syrian government’s own claim of nine dead—were in fact killed not by pro-regime militias but by rebel forces or allied terrorist elements, then the charge against the media of “spreading lies” would be perfectly accurate.

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About the Author

Jeremy R. Hammond

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com) and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com. He is the author of "Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis" and "The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict", both available in paperback or Kindle versions from Amazon.com. More...

20 Responses to Propaganda Is the Name of the Game in Media Reports of Atrocities in Syria

Jon Harrison

June 9, 2012 at 10:07 am

It’s unclear to me what the rebel forces would have to gain by carrying out these civilian massacres. The embattled regime, on the other hand, seems a more likely perpetrator — terror being a well-known method of suppressing civilian resistance. If Houla and the other places where massacres supposedly took place could be shown to be areas loyal to Assad, then the case for rebel involvement would be strengthened. But so far as I can tell, the massacres seem to have occurred in what amounts to rebel territory.

Tbe picture remains murky, I admit. Gievn the chaos, it could hardly be otherwise. On the other hand, the main “evidence” for rebel involvement at Houla comes from an Abkhazian journalist who is obviously parroting the Russian line. Surely we can admit that pro-regime countries like Russia are at least as likely as Westerners to file slanted stories from the scene. Russian and other pro-regime reporting constitutes pseudo-journalism to an even greater extent than the stuff put out by the BBC and American outlets.

Personally, my greatest concern is avoiding U.S. involvement on the ground in Syria. That said, I wouldn’t spend time trying to, in effect, defend the Assad regime. That’s not likely to influence the debate, to say the least.
- Jeremy R. Hammond
  
  June 9, 2012 at 12:42 pm
  
  Cui bono? Obviously not the regime, given the circumstances. Commit massacres giving the West a pretext to intervene to overthrow the regime? The US-backed rebel/terrorist forces, however, have a clear motive: to create a pretext for Western intervention to overthrow the regime. As for sources, yes, we should treat all sources with equal skepticism and weigh reports on their merits. That is what I set out to do for this report.
  - Jon Harrison
    
    June 9, 2012 at 7:07 pm
    
    Jeremy, in asking who profits you appear to assume that rationality prevails among the Syrian regime and its supporters. Terror as a weapon has been used time and time again by regimes and others who either are or feel threatened with destruction. The examples are countless, from the 16th and 17th century wars of religion to both sides in the Russian civil war to the Nazis to the Phoenix program in Vietnam to . . . and on and on. Sometimes the terror is openly acknowledged by the perpetrators; but sometimes (and Syria would seem to be a case in point) the murderers seek to blind international eyes for fear of having to appear one day before an international tribunal.
    
    I have no doubt that US/Western policy in Syria is motivated first and foremost by perceived interests. And I acknowledge that these same actors are quite capable of ginning up atrocity stories to further their policy goals. Moreover, I don’t say that you’re wrong in believing that the Syrian rebels may have have perpetrated Houla or other massacres. After all, neither one of us is in touch with the facts on the ground. That said, there appears to be a prima facie case for the regime or its supporters being behind the massacres, while on the evidence we’ve seen so far any attempt to indict the rebels would have to returned as “no true bill.”
    - Jeremy R. Hammond
      
      June 10, 2012 at 1:33 am
      
      Why do you presume members of the regime and its supporters are less rational than its opposition, Jon? This does not seem to me to be a reasonable presumption, but a prejudicial one. Yes, regimes use terror. But in case you haven’t noticed, regime opponents also have used terror time and time again as well. The examples are also countless. You are not offering a valid logical argument.
      - Jon Harrison
        
        June 10, 2012 at 12:23 pm
        
        I’m not presuming that the regime is less rational than the opposition. I tried to make plain that we don’t know for sure what happeneded in Houla and at the other massacre sites. Neither one of us is on the ground in Syria. However, in your piece I think you’re saying, or at least strongly implying, that opponents of the regime quite possibly carried out the Houla killings. My objection to stating that is that the evidence for it is extremely thin. The impression I get is that because you don’t like Western policy in Syria specifically, and don’t like Western interventions around the world generally, you seek to blacken the West whenever an opportunity presents itself. In other words, it appears to me that you’re looking at Houla through ideological spectacles.
        
        Let me stress that this is my IMPRESSION from reading the piece; perhaps I’m wrong. In any case I believe the author has the right to the last word, and I look forward to any reply you may care to make.
      - Jeremy R. Hammond
        
        June 11, 2012 at 12:51 am
        
        Ok. If you weren’t arguing that the regime and its supporters are irrational, then I don’t understand what your point was. You are being very confusing and contradictory. You say, “I tried to make plain that we don’t know for sure what happeneded in Houla and at the other massacre sites.” That is exactly the point my articles have emphasized.
        
        Yet then you say: “However, in your piece I think you’re saying, or at least strongly implying, that opponents of the regime quite possibly carried out the Houla killings. My objection to stating that is that the evidence for it is extremely thin.” So you reject the possibility that regime opponents carried out the massacre? Doesn’t it follow that you think that pro-regime forces carried it out, even though the evidence for that is equally thin or thinner? Isn’t that really the same thing as saying, then, that we know for sure what happened in Houla? I mean, if you reject the only alternative possibility, how are you not contradicting yourself here? So if I am saying we should wait for the evidence and examine the facts objectively, and you are really saying, as best as I can tell, that it must have been the regime, then which one of us is “looking at Houla through ideological spectacles”?
- Mike Thompson
  
  June 11, 2012 at 1:20 pm
  
  Jon, you appear to be that rare American that thinks about situations rather than just accept the US political line. That said your opinions will have been “conditioned”, to some effect,over years of a US anti Arab stance. There was an example in last Sundays UK newspaper “The Mail on Sunday”, in which the correspondent Peter Hitchens wrote about a group of western women, living in Syria, who contacted him objecting to the western distortion of events in Syria. They were critical of the Syrian regime, but pointed out the unreported involvement of armed “activists” who are Salafis, ultra puritan Muslems who are influenced by Saudi teachings, who loath and threaten Syria`s minority Christian and Alawites. Many of these “activists” are armed from abroad (unreported in the UN). These Western ladies gave examples of BBC televised reports purporting to be “opposition” rallies but were in fact pro-Government rallies and reports supposedly from the green and fertile north which showed desert conditions that simply don`t exist in the north at that time of the year. When I went on line to The Mail on Sunday, there was no evidence of the Peter Hitchens story, I wonder why, but it`s not at all unusual. There also seems to be little western reporting of “unrest” in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, or of the very recent Human Rights Watch report of Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, I wonder why? It`s very difficult for any thinking person to reach a truly balanced opinion, but you have my admiration for trying.
a free bird

June 9, 2012 at 4:41 pm

Thank you for your work. This is an excellent article to present the facts on the ground, not propaganda that spread by the war criminals in Washington for ‘regime change’.

Unfortunately, the “progressives” are working with the war criminals again with Washington against Syria like they did in the case of Libya. Cockburn, Richard Falk, Robert Fisk and many more are few to mention here. Some sites, wrongly, present Russia and China as ‘victims’ and against ‘regime change’. This is not TRUE. Both countries similar to Libya case are working hand in hand with Washington. First they say NO to fool the public and negotiate for better concessions but always they stab these countries on their back.

Russians, according to their officials, say THEY HAVE AN EXCELLENT RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL. So, The Russians always have sided with Israel agenda against Muslims and Iran. The criminal Russia and China already sold Syria when Russia announced that they can agree with a model like ‘Yemen’. China never presented any objection to anything. We have already seen the BETRAYAL OF CHINA AND RUSSIA AGAINST LIBYA AND IRAN. The criminal China and Russia have voted at least 4 times against legal enrichment program of Iran and have collected many concessions and they have enriched themselves on Iranian people dead bodies.
Also thanks for exposing the media that is complicit in Washington’s crimes against humanity, but you didn’t expose Richard Falk, supporter of ‘world government’ who hold Assad responsible without any evidence like Cockburn and other agents. No one trust Richard Falk, a front for US government among “the progressives”. He is member of the council on foreign relations.

Richard Falk is also working with Payam Akhavan, the empire’s lawyer and a Zionist working closely with CIA (NED) and Rights and democracy in Canada and Freedom House.

He has established a document center along with other CIA agents, against Iran where is funded by the CIA $$$$ to convict Iran on phony charge of “crimes against humanity” but Payam Akhavan has not objections against United States and Israel where they have wrongfully framed Muslims and have killed millions of Muslims and continue to kill more Muslims with drone. Akhavan has said no word about all these killings where his country, CANADA, is involved in, but he dares to go after Iran and Richard Falk from Council on foreign relations gives him a helping hand.
Shame on both, hypocrite, when they claim they are working for justices.
a free bird

June 9, 2012 at 6:00 pm

I forgot to say that Payam Akhavan connected Bashar Assad to Al Huola genocide without any credible evidence, like the war criminals in Washington. However, Mr. Payam Akhavan has never accused the real war criminals in Washington, Canada, Britain, Tel Aviv, and Saudi Arabia of ‘crimes against humanity.

Payam Akhavan who received funding from the CIA, was involved with ‘Save Darfur’, Israel front
,
http://blackagendareport.com/content/save-dafur%E2%80%99s-miing-million-israeli-connection

against Al Bashir to indict him with phony charge of ‘genocide in Darfur’ through a brothel house, ICC, to partition Sudan for the interest of Zionism and imperialism.

Mahmud Mamdani, Columbia University Professor
used state department’s data to show that Payam Akhavan is a LIAR when he says there was ‘genocide’. The charge was fabricated to bring down the government of Al Bashir and ICC based on this fabricated charge indict Al Bashir and issued a warrant for his arrest, but all the western war criminals still at large and Payam Akhavan HAS NO ISSUE WITH IT.

http://www.david-kilgour.com/2007/Aug_23_2007_04.htm

Now, to indict Iran with the fabricated charge ‘crimes against humanity’, these lawyers including Richard Falk who have never sit in a committee to convict the war criminals in Washington, Tel Aviv, London, France or Saudi Arabia and even Turkey for their repeated ‘crimes against humanity’ want to do it in case of Iran for ‘regime change’. Both Richard Falk and Payam Akhavan spread the 2009 Iranian election ‘fraud’ HOAX for regime change to serve the empire.

Akhavan with Shirin Ebadi who like Obama has been awarded, a ‘Nobel Peace Prize’, in “the globe and mail” on June 5, 2012 wrote:

{The massacre of 108 civilians in Houla on May 25 is but one instance of a wider Syrian policy of terror that has claimed more than 10,000 innocent lives. It is the tragic but predictable response of a tyrannical regime that will stop at nothing to stay in power. For Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, any compromise is a sign of weakness. Instead, his reply to the legitimate demands of Syrian citizens is systematic violence.}

This hypocrite was involved against Al Bashir, like in the case against Malevich in Yugoslavia, on behalf of the US/Israel/Canada.
SnakeArbusto

June 10, 2012 at 12:40 pm

“Personally, my greatest concern is avoiding U.S. involvement on the ground in Syria. That said, I wouldn’t spend time trying to, in effect, defend the Assad regime. That’s not likely to influence the debate, to say the least.”

Of course the US is also trying to avoid (or hide) involvement on the ground. The alternative is to back rebel groups, the down side of which is that they tend to commit atrocities.
No one in their right mind wants to defend the Assad regime, any more than anyone in their right mind wanted to defend the Ghaddafi regime. And that of course is the Manichean dynamic the US/NATO is using to advance its program.
Of course the Russians have interests and a propaganda arm of their own – though I don’t think it could be claimed that it’s having a lot of success lately. But at least the Russians are insisting on some kind of negotiation, whereas the US is openly insisting on “regime change”, exactly as it did in Libya and exactly as it did in Iraq, and of course as it intends to do in Iran.
If there is a truth behind all of this that we can rely on, it is that the West has been intervening, whether on the ground or via other means, in this part of the world since at least the end of WW II, and that the West must take some of the responsibility for what is going on there now. Then we need to look at the reasons for that intervention, and decide whether the interests at stake are really those of the majority of Western citizens. Another thing that is certain is that they are not those of the people of the region.
- SnakeArbusto
  
  June 10, 2012 at 12:50 pm
  
  I’m replying to myself in order to correct my e-mail. Apologies.
  
  Let me just add that I agree that countering the _cui bono_ argument by saying that the Assad regime is simply insane just won’t stand up. Of course we heard the same argument used against Saddam and Ghaddafi, and we’re hearing it used against the Mullahs. Its logical conclusion is that anyone who counters the US/NATO’s stated goal of “full-spectrum domination” has to be insane, and there is no chance that they might actually have the interests of their countries’ people as one of their motivations. In the case of Ghaddafi, at least, that argument simply does not hold up. It’s like arguing that because Bush, Jr. was a certifiable nincompoop, all of the US’s domestic and foreign policy under him was wrong…
  - Edward
    
    June 11, 2012 at 11:23 am
    
    “No one in their right mind wants to defend the Assad regime, any more than anyone in their right mind wanted to defend the Ghaddafi regime.”
    They have represented the legitimate governments of their countries for decades. You’re obviously not in a fit state of mind to make rational decisions.
    - SnakeArbusto
      
      June 12, 2012 at 4:32 am
      
      Would you prefer to let the US and its allies make the decisions?
- Jon Harrison
  
  June 10, 2012 at 2:51 pm
  
  I don’t disagree with what you say. There’s no question that US/Western policy since 1945, and especially the events of 1948 and 1953, have warped the Middle East and done bad things to everyone concerned, including the American people. The United States is an empire and its imperial ways do more harm than good. As an American I wish we had never gone the route of replacing the British Empire with one of our own, for the selfish reason that it has harmed my country in every way. I do what I can (admittedly, it’s not much) to combat US interventionism around the world, and especially in the Middle East.
  
  I didn’t say that the Assad regime is insane. In any case, that has little or nothing to do with the point I actually raised — which was that there is very little evidence for rebel involvement at Houla or the other massacre sites. I will say again that I don’t know, any more than any of you do, who perpetrated these massacres. But the evidence for rebel involvement is, so far at least, tissue-thin. What I at least found in Jeremy’s piece was a strong presumption of rebel/Western involvement in the massacres. All I’m saying is that as of now the evidence for that is almost non-existent.
  - Jon Harrison
    
    June 10, 2012 at 3:07 pm
    
    I’m going to add one further point to my reply above. It’s a general observation. The views I hold on US foreign policy are out of the mainstream. That also applies, for the most part, to the other writers and commenters who publish and post at FPJ. The question for each of us is: do we express our views in extreme form, sometimes going beyond known facts, because we believe strongly in them, or because we find it emotionally satisfying to lash out at our opponents? In other words, do you want to try to effect the debate, or do you just want read your own words and feel self-satisfied? If the latter, well, fine. But if you want to try to make a difference, to try to effect the debate, you have to establish some boundaries. For example, don’t take your advocacy beyond the known facts. When you do this, the only thing you accomplish is the marginalization of your argument, and indeed yourself. And by marginalizing yourself you make it virtually impossible for anyone except those who already agree with you to even consider your arguments.
    - Jeremy R. Hammond
      
      June 11, 2012 at 1:06 am
      
      Who is taking their “advocacy beyond the known facts”, Jon? What are you talking about and to whom are you referring?
  - Jeremy R. Hammond
    
    June 11, 2012 at 1:05 am
    
    “I didn’t say that the Assad regime is insane.” But that is the corollary of your apparent criticism that I presume the regime is not so. It’s really not clear what, exactly, you are saying when you contradict yourself so. I don’t know how carefully you read my article, but I don’t presume anti-regime forces were responsible. I just don’t presume pro-regime forces were like just about every so-called “journalist” in the mainstream media who writes on it is doing. The point here is that we do not know and should wait for and consider all of the available evidence. If you read my previous writings on this (find the links in the first two paragraphs), you’ll find the same theme. Nowhere in any report I’ve written do I state as fact that the rebels did it, unlike the mainstream media which constantly reports as fact that the regime did it.
a free bird

June 10, 2012 at 1:31 pm

This article has not been written based on Ideological make up rather is based on facts on the ground and the history of US foreign policy in the region. People who think otherwise are better to read Introduction to history of the middle east and US foreign policy 101.

The propagandists are trying to present the US government innocent in Syria and blame the ‘dictator’, like what they did in Libya or Iraq.
The regime change project is well and in progress for many years now and Syria is one of the targeted countries. Why are people trying to ignore the facts to protect their own ideological make up that present the United States as savior and innocent war crimes charges where the opposite of that is true according to historical facts?

The world knows that The US government has committed crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Syria, and Libya….

I am sorry I am running out of ink. I will be back with more countries subjected to US war crime activities that left millions of victims behind. The victims are waiting to see the war criminals to be arrested and put on trial like African leaders who were framed with fabricated charges, and put them in jail for life. The ICC Jail is BLACK.

Majority of the people around the world think ICC is another tool of the West to use against weaker states and has nothing to do with punishing the real war criminals.
Ron

June 11, 2012 at 4:30 am

Fact the media keeps parroting that the Bashar is fanning sectarian violence when it is not in the interest of Bashar (belonging to the Alawite minority) to do so. The Salafist ideology comes from Saudi Arabia a nation that has no interest or allegiance to Democracy. The entire thing is media driven and is ACT II to Libya …the play being Illiberal Democracies aiding and abetting Islamo-fascists.
Usul

June 12, 2012 at 12:42 pm

Very good piece of analysis. Thank you.