Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

A senior Rand analyst, inadvertently, gave the game away in a recent article inculpating Syrian President Bashar al Assad over the alleged toxic massacre of civilians on April 4. The Rand Corporation, a longtime conduit for CIA propaganda, wrote: «The use of chemical weapons today provokes international condemnation… Those who order their deployment risk being charged with war crimes».

The Western objective, as tacitly admitted above, is therefore to brand the Syrian leader and his government as depraved war criminals, deserving pariah status and excommunication by the «international community».

The alleged use of chemical weapons, a particularly odious weapon of mass destruction (WMD), serves as an effective prop to channel Western public outrage against Assad. Allegedly killing civilians with bullets and bombs just doesn’t have the same psychological power to incite public disgust. Poisoning little children with lethal chemicals is a more effective label with which to demonize the alleged perpetrator.

But the more pertinent WMD issue here is Weapon of Mass Disorientation. And in particular how Western governments, their servile corporate-controlled media, like the Rand Corp, New York Times, CNN, BBC, Guardian and France 24, and so on, and local proxy mercenaries inside Syria are covertly deploying deadly chemicals in a series of propaganda stunts. Not only deploying deadly chemicals against civilians in a most cynical and callous way, but getting away with their crimes of murder through an audacious distortion of reality. All made possible because of the West’s media weapon of mass disorientation.

By massive manipulation of facts and images, the Western public are disorientated to condone the wider criminal agenda that their governments are pushing – that of regime change. Part of that disorientation involves the Western public suspending critical thinking over what are otherwise highly dubious circumstances and claims; it also involves an abject manipulation of perception and emotions, whereby some victims of violence are the focus for Western public trauma, while many other victims in Syria and elsewhere are unseen or overlooked with callous indifference. Those anomalies surely speak of a phenomenal disorientation of Western public intelligence, emotion and morals.

Immediately following the incident in the militant-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, in northern Idlib Province, on April 4, Western governments and the corporate news media began accusing the Syrian leader of responsibility for a «chemical weapon attack». The US ambassador the UN Nikki Haley made a dramatic presentation at the Security Council on April 5, holding aloft enlarged photos purportedly of children dying from toxic exposure. Two days later, on April 7, US President Donald Trump ordered a full-scale barrage of cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase out of «revenge» for the murder of «beautiful babies».

Trump’s decision to attack Syria was reportedly prompted by his disgust at watching videos of the alleged victims, and by the emotional angst that his daughter and special advisor Ivanka Trump felt on also watching the same footage. The video and images were, by the way, released to the Western news media solely by militant-aligned sources, the so-called White Helmets, operating at the location of the alleged chemical weapon attack.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer later said that any one «who gases a baby» can expect more US military retribution. Spicer also made the crass claim that Syrian President Assad was «worse than Hitler» because of his alleged uniquely barbaric use of chemical weapons on civilians.

Meanwhile, US and British warplanes operating in Syria, Iraq and Yemen are slaughtering at the very same time hundreds of civilians. In Yemen, thousands of children are dying from starvation due to a US-backed blockade on that country by Saudi Arabia in its war for regime change there. Why aren’t Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and his spokesman Sean Spicer traumatized by these deaths? Why is the Western public also not outraged, traumatized?

In Syria, on Easter Saturday, April 15, busloads of civilians were murdered by terrorist suicide bombers, whom the Western governments and media refer to as «rebels». Over 120 civilians were massacred including 68 children. Where was the Western outrage at the images of charred children’s bodies hanging out of mangled buses? Indeed, the Western media coverage of that carnage was minimal and was downplayed with insidious words that the victims were «pro-regime supporters».

But the victims of the bus attacks were more numerous than those allegedly killed during the chemical weapons incident two weeks before at Khan Sheikhoun.

President Trump has condemned Syria’s Assad as an «animal» due to the alleged use of chemical weapons. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has also called Assad a «monster». Clearly, the image-projection here is aimed at demonizing and dehumanizing the Syrian leader. Once that image-making is «successful» – and the saturation pejorative Western media coverage is crucial to that success – then a moral, legalistic mandate is created which allows Washington and its allies to escalate their aggression against Syria. Either through diplomatic sanctions at the United Nations or by military means with direct military force, as seen with Trump’s cruise missile barrage on April 7, or with increased support to proxy militant groups inside Syria.

All the while that Western governments and media have been demonizing Syria over alleged chemical weapons, the political-media campaign has also been directed at smearing Russia for alleged complicity because of its alliance with Syria.

Britain’s Johnson said earlier this month that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had «toxified» Russia’s international reputation by its alliance with Syria. The British diplomat’s choice of words betrayed an overly contrived attempt to push the propaganda theme.

In what should be seen as a transparently crude effort, the Western governments tried to splice Russia’s support for Syria by hyping up the «horror» of chemical weapons. The Western political momentum has since dissipated somewhat, but there was an obvious bid by the West in the days following the incident at Khan Sheikhoun to force an ultimatum on Moscow to abandon the Assad government, and to in effect cede to Western demands for regime change in Damascus.

Russia seems to have succeeded in rebuffing this tawdry tactic by holding firm to principles of international law and objective facts.

Last week, the UN-affiliated Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued a statement claiming that there was «incontrovertible evidence» that the lethal chemical weapon sarin was used in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4.

The OPCW did not say who used the alleged sarin. But the inference pushed by Western media was that it was the Syrian government.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov deprecated the OPCW as «discrediting» itself. The supposedly neutral, scientific organization was basing its conclusions on samples supplied by illegally armed groups, in a dubious chain of «evidence» that is neither impartial nor verifiable.

The «sarin conclusion» announced by the OPCW is in accordance with the assertions made by the US, Britain, France and Turkey. They are not disinterested parties. They are protagonists for regime change and sponsors of a covert war against the Syrian government since March 2011. Yet, audaciously, their partisan claims are afforded credibility by Western media.

Russia’s call last week for an impartial, on-site investigation into what actually happened at Sheikhoun was rejected by the Western governments. Russia’s demand for an independent probe was also supported by Iran and the Syrian government.

As Sergey Lavrov noted: «The spreading of false information on the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is being used to move away from implementing UN resolutions on finding a peaceful settlement and instead to switch to the long-cherished objective of regime change».

There is abundant evidence that sarin was not the toxic agent used at Khan Sheikhoun on April 4. American MIT professor Theodore Postol, a highly accredited weapons expert, as well as neuroscientist Dr Denis O’Brien, are just two of many sources who have concluded from the observing the symptoms and circumstances that sarin could not have possibly been used.

There is abundant evidence too that the Western-backed regime-change militants in Syria have been involved in fabricating supposed «chemical weapons» incidents, creating media-ready videos which the Western news outlets have avidly disseminated and which Western governments have cited as «evidence» against Assad. That was the conclusion of the Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, among other reputable sources.

Considering that the only «evidence» for the latest chemical weapon incident on April 4 comes in the form of unverifiable videos supplied by terrorist-affiliated groups, it is highly plausible that the narrative put out by these groups, the Western governments and media is false. That narrative is that Syrian warplanes dropped chemical weapons on Khan Sheikhoun, killing over 80 civilians.

By contrast, it is plausible that the entire incident is an orchestrated fabrication. That is, that there was no chemical «weapon of mass destruction» used at Khan Sheikhoun. If a weapon of that sort were used, as alleged, then one would expect the death toll to be in the hundreds, if not thousands, as happened at Halabja in 1988 when up to 5,000 Kurdish civilians were massacred by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Instead, what likely happened in Syria was simply the murder by intoxication of civilians by militants using lethal chemicals, such as cyanide or chlorine. Why were the supposed aid responders of the White Helmets not also poisoned if highly toxic sarin had been used? Why do the «responders» seem too preoccupied with making videos instead of actually treating victims with due medical care? Why have no sarin antidotes or decontaminants been requested or sent to Khan Sheikhoun in the days and weeks following the alleged attack?

Thus the militants and their media-savvy agents in the White Helmets (who are funded by Western military intelligence) could very well have staged the poisoning of unwitting civilians. The despicable, cynical act of homicide may not have even happened on the alleged date of April 4, or even in the alleged location of Khan Sheikhoun.

Bear in mind that it has been reported in the past that US and other Western military forces have «trained» the so-called Syrian «rebels» (terrorists) on the handling of lethal chemicals. Those Western media reports mendaciously spun the notion that the «rebels» were being trained in the event of Assad’s «chemical weapons arsenal being unleashed».

The Syrian government has repeatedly and categorically denied that its forces used chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun earlier this month or in any other incident. It says that all its chemical weapons were destroyed back in 2014 under a Russian-brokered deal, a result that was confirmed at the time by the OPCW.

Tenuously, the US Secretary of Defense James Mattis claimed last week that the Syrian government cheated the OPCW and secretly kept a portion of chemical weapons in reserve.

The Western narrative of chemical weapons (sarin) used by the Syrian government is riven with anomalies if interrogated with critical thinking. Indeed, when looked at with due skepticism, it is apparent that the Western narrative is not merely a misinformed, erroneous perspective. The whole affair is a deliberate, carefully constructed and delivered Western psychological operation, a false-flag propaganda stunt, to demonize and dehumanize the Syrian government in order to propel the Western agenda of regime change. The American CIA and British MI6 have been trying to implement regime change in Syria since 1949 in on-off clandestine projects. The chemical weapon of mass destruction allegation is but the latest ploy in a long-running project.

Western governments, their military intelligence agencies and the propaganda service of the corporate media have been working on this particular psychological operation for several years in Syria, going back to the first major «chemical weapon» incident in East Ghouta, near Damascus, in August 2013. That stunt failed to effectively demonize the Assad government then. But the Western operation has continued and evolved over time until its latest episode at Khan Sheikhoun on April 4. The «chemical weapon» nomenclature is spurious from the nature of the injuries inflicted. It is more likely an incident of mass poisoning by militants carried out on hapless victims, which is conveniently broadcast around the world by Western governments and media as a «chemical weapon of mass destruction» used by the «Assad regime».

What is overlooked, however, is the WMD weapon of mass disorientation being used against Western public. The disorientation of critical thinking, emotions and moral standards is deployed in order to more easily manipulate public consent for the Western governments’ criminal enterprise of regime change in Syria.

There is an abominable charade taking place before our very eyes. A charade in which supposedly «moral», «law-abiding», «democratic» Western governments are colluding with the most vile terror groups using the most vile means of deception and murder. Why this simple glaring truth is not recognized more widely by the Western public is because their own governments have deployed weapons of mass disorientation through dutiful mass media purporting to act as «news services».