The massive missile strikes the US and allies conducted against Syria actually benefit terrorist groups, and prevented inspectors from proving if chemical weapons were used in Douma, international analysts told RT.
Washington, London, and Paris used last week’s alleged chemical attack in Douma, near Damascus, as the pretext for an early morning missile attack on civilian and military targets in Syria.
The air invasion came just hours before a group of inspectors dispatched by the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was scheduled to visit Douma in order to find out if any chemical weapons were used there. This made the timing even more suspicious, experts say.
To Jim Jatras, a former US foreign service officer, “preventing a real investigation in Douma was one of the reasons for [the strike].”
“So, the big hurry here is, in my opinion, is that you’ve got [OPCW] inspectors on the ground in Damascus now, ready to go now and confirm… there wasn’t any attack.”
He called the alleged chemical incident in Douma “a false flag” operation, saying he expected US President Donald Trump to respond almost immediately in the way he acted last year after the alleged gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun. He said that “if you’re Al-Qaeda or its offshoot [in Syria], you’re going to be very happy tonight.” The problem with false flag operations “is that they work, especially when you have compliant media,” he stated.
“I don’t think that Syria has chemical weapons. I think that the Russian effort to get them out of there after what happened in Ghouta in 2013 was genuine and was certified as genuine by the OPCW.” Commenting on the justification for the strikes, he said “it’s a conscious transparent lie.”
The US is “acting as air force of all these jihadist terrorist [groups] – Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, and it’s really morally reprehensible,” Jatras said.
Richard Becker of the US-based anti-war ANSWER Coalition told RT he believes Britain and France are becoming “old colonizers of the Middle East back again, and the United States is more of a new colonizer.” He accused Washington of issuing “falsification after falsification” and fanning “war propaganda” to influence the American people when “it doesn’t want to go to war.”
Meanwhile, he said, radical terrorist groups fighting the Syrian government have “the material interest in having this happen.” What is happening at this stage in the Middle East “is the continuation of what we saw in Yugoslavia where we had a re-Balkanization of the Balkans,” adding that “now we’re seeing the Balkanization of Iraq.”
Joe Lauria, an independent journalist and previously a Wall Street Journal UN correspondent, said the US-led coalition violated international law, as it did not act in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which governs states’ right to self-defense, and had no authorization to use military force from the UN Security Council.
READ MORE: US-led strikes in Syria without UNSC mandate a violation of international law – Putin
Lauria said that Syria’s chemical weapons were handed over in 2013 to the US and Russia as part of a joint international deal, and were destroyed aboard an American naval vessel. However, even if the OPCW inspection proves there was no chemical attack in Douma, “you can be sure it won’t be broadcast or printed very much in the US media.”
Though the Pentagon said more attacks would follow should Damascus use chemical weapons again, the US may strike Syria at any time regardless of the circumstances. “In other words, they don’t need proof,” Lauria said. “They don’t need proof in accusing Russia of stealing an election, they didn’t need proof in accusing Russia of trying to kill the former double agent and his daughter.”
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