Western Propaganda Method: Claim Dead Terrorists As Dead Civilians

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Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
August 24, 2015

By now, the propaganda coming from the US State Department and the United Nations as well as their media mouthpieces should be familiar. According to these institutions, the Assad government is evil, illegitimate, and it intentionally massacres civilians. These claims are easily proven false and have been proven false in the past. Indeed, I have discussed these types of claims at length in my own articles and exposed them for being nothing more than weak attempts to convince Western peoples that Assad is a butcher and the terrorist are democracy-loving freedom fighters.

Such can be seen in the recent attempt to portray the Syrian Air Force as wantonly murdering civilians with “barrel bombs” in places like Doumaa.

Surrounding an incident in which the SAAF dropped a barrel bomb on a marketplace in Doumaa, the site of an intense battle between terrorists and the Syrian government forces, the jihadist-friendly Syrian Observatory for Human Rights joined forces yet again with the US State Department in its claims that Assad had ordered a massacre of innocent civilians who were merely shopping in a marketplace.

Consider the State Department’s response to the incident which read that “The United States condemns, in the strongest terms, the recent deadly airstrikes this week on a market in the Damascus suburb of Douma that killed more than 100 people and injured hundreds including innocent women and children.”

National Security Council Spokesman, Ned Price stated,

This latest tragedy is just another reminder of the inhumane acts perpetrated daily by the Asad regime against the Syrian people. The regime is responsible for killing thousands of innocent Syrian civilians and destroying entire towns and cities, historical sites, schools, mosques, markets, and hospitals. These abhorrent actions underscore that the Asad regime has lost legitimacy and that the international community must do more to enable a genuine political transition.

State Department Spokesman John Kirby echoed Price’s statement when he said that the,

airstrikes, following its [the Syrian government’s]other recent market bombings and attacks on medical facilities, demonstrate the regime’s disregard for human life. As we have said, Assad has no legitimacy to lead the Syrian people. The United States is working with our partners toward a genuine, negotiated political transition away from Assad that brings an end to such attacks and leads to a future that fulfills Syrians’ aspirations for freedom and dignity.

Of course, Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and hero to the Humanitarian Bomber and R2P crowd of pro-jihadist and pro-war officials, could not contain herself. She added that,

Since the first week of July, the regime has dropped over 2,000 barrel bombs throughout Syria, with particularly high concentrations in Darayya and Zabadani…The Assad regime has apparently grown reliant on the repugnant use of barrel bombs as an instrument of terror against innocent Syrian civilians.

. . . . .

The regime’s use of barrel bombs is widely and vigilantly documented by independent sources and in open source media…It is long past time for the international community to come together to end the deplorable use of barrel bombs and all other forms of attacks against civilians in Syria.

Note that, far from the “collateral damage” argument or the justification of “sometimes in war, you just make unfortunate mistakes” that is used in the innumerable instances in which US forces kill civilians, the State Department attempts to portray the bombing as an intentional attempt to murder civilians in some type of bizarre intimidation tactic.

Notice also that the State Department and all of its officials repeat the claim that the bombing was responsible for killing hundreds of people, with the insinuation that all of them were innocent bystanders, particularly the women and children.

This type of propaganda narrative has become incredibly common amongst Western presentations of the results of battle on the ground in Syria. Whenever assessing the civilian casualties in clashes between government forces and “rebels,” it should be remembered that many civilians have often fled the areas where terrorists have fully taken over and exerted governing control over the town. Thus, as is the case with many of these incidents blamed on the Syrian government, the civilian population has often fled.

Of course, this is not to minimize the extraordinary loss of life taking place in Syria. Civilians murdered by Western-backed terrorists and those caught in the crossfire between jihadists and the SAA represent a staggering and tragic aspect of the war.

However, to illustrate how Western nations and their propaganda mouthpieces distort facts to promote an agenda, the bombing of Doumaa, supposedly an intentional murder of women and children by the SAA, is a perfect example.

In Doumaa, the number of those killed in the marketplace was approximately 102. In this instance, all the names were published by the terrorist outfit known as the Doumaa Coordinating Committee. The names were translated and reposted by Ziad Fadel of Syrian Perspective and reveal that out of 102 dead, only three might have female. The rest were male.

So what kind of bomb detonates at a marketplace and only kills men? And only kills adults?

What kind of marketplace only has adult men as customers and vendors?

The truth is that the marketplace was bombed because it was being held by terrorist factions. Is it not possible that the men killed in this bombing raid were not civilians but terrorist fighters?

Indeed, we have seen this type of propaganda blitz by the Western press time and time again during the Syrian crisis.

As Ziad Fadel of Syrian Perspective writes,

What an amazing feat by the Syrian Air Force! Could it be the Russians have given the Syrian military a weapon capable of only killing men? Could we have developed a new weapon which largely ignored females? Or could it be that SOHR, HRW (A Soros whorehouse) or AI are just lying as usual? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. After all, this was a marketplace where people were shopping, right? And there are only a possible 3 women among the 99 men? Wow. That’s just so incredible.

These Western claims are truly incredible in the very real sense of the word.

Still, don’t expect the propaganda to stop anytime soon. After all, Syria is still on the chopping block.

Regardless, the Western public must bear in mind the tremendous amount of falsehood is contained with the pages of any given Western media outlet. They must realize that events both foreign and domestic are often 180 degrees different from what they are told by the corporate outlets. For Syria and for the rest of the world, they’d better start realizing this soon.

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Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.