Saturday, September 07, 2013

IS RIGHT-WING CHEMICAL WEAPONS TRUTHERISM ABOUT TO GO MAINSTREAM?

This morning, Real Clear Politics posts a video from a town hall meeting that took place last night, in which one of John McCain's constituents accused him of treason. Nothing surprising about that, I guess -- but please notice the sentence I've put in bold below:




"We the people want you to be representative of the people and for this great nation, but for far too long now on the rest of Congress, including the executive branch of government, along with the judicial and legislative have turned your back on the American people and their core values and principles. I can say with great confidence and speak on behalf of all Americans that your actions against this country are treasonous. All of you -- against the will of the American people -- have aided and abetted the enemy," said the town hall attendee.

"You and the rest of Congress, including the president of the United States have went against the will your people in Syria regardless of your position and vote, whether it is a yes or no is still a political smokescreen," the town hall attendee said to an irritated McCain. "I believe wholeheartedly you do not care about the will and well-being of America or its people. You lied the American people about the chemical attacks in Syria. The American people know that it was our government that is most likely responsible. There is strong evidence, including video, that these attacks were carried out by al Qaeda and you advocate starting a war, even maybe World War, by taking the same attack and blaming it on Assad."
We know that a lot of people on the right think it was the Syrian opposition that used chemical weapons (and, of course, doubt about the official story is not limited to the right) -- but what's this about "our government" being "most likely responsible"? In the next sentence, the man blames Al Qaeda. Was blaming the U.S. a slip of the tongue?

No. The right has a new narrative of the chemical weapons attack, and it's perfect, because it's Obama's fault. Let Kevin Drum explain:
... There have long been mutterings that the chemical attack in Ghouta was a false-flag operation. That is, the Syrian opposition actually carried out the attack, hoping that Bashar al-Assad would get blamed and President Obama would retaliate with a huge bombing campaign. But it's just been mutterings. Today [Tuesday], though, Rush Limbaugh upped the ante, jabbering on air about an article by Yossef Bodansky titled "Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?"

... Bodansky, an Assad sympathizer who has previously suggested that the 1995 Oklahoma bombing was orchestrated by Iran and that Saddam's WMDs all ended up in Syria, tells a simple story. Starting on August 13, at a meeting between Syrian opposition leaders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US intelligence, senior opposition commanders told everyone to expect "a war-changing development" which would soon lead to a U.S. bombing campaign in Syria. Shortly afterward, a huge cache of weapons was released to the rebels under the supervision of US intelligence, and they were told to get ready to use them. Sure enough, a few days later a major chemical attack took place and Assad got the blame....
This sinister plan was supposed to give the U.S. a pretext for starting a bombing campaign on August 29. (Funny how Obama was sociopathic enough to help plan a huge chemical attack yet too timid to follow up.)

Limbaugh's monologue is transcribed here. I also see Pam Geller banging this drum. And Pajamas Media. And, naturally, Alex Jones.

Bodansky has some mainstream credentials -- as Wikipedia notes, he
served as Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US House of Representatives from 1988 to 2004.... He is also Director of Research of the International Strategic Studies Association and has been a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In the 1980s, he served as a senior consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State.
But Kevin Drum is right -- in the course of that seemingly impressive career, Bodansky did argue that the Iranians were behind the OKC bombing and that Saddam dispersed his chemical weapons capabilities to Syria (and Libya and Iran) in the 1990s. In fact, he's sufficiently nutso that Glenn Beck's Blaze, of all sites, portrays him as a reclusive, eccentric "mystery man."

But he says Obama is pure evil. And that could be good enough to turn this into conventional wisdom, at least among the lumpen right.

9 comments:

Ten Bears said...

Israel, the terrorist state, the mother of all terrorist states, the utterly foreign occupier perpetrating an Amercan taxpayer financed and morally sanctioned genocide upon not just the indegenous descendants of the biblical "Hebrew" but all of their semite cousins, who has no "right" to exist and this world will never no Peace until it does not, wags this dog.

No fear.

Victor said...

I see that someone, somewhere, is wielding pharmaceutical weapons of mental destruction, and putting LSD in the drinking water in Red States, and other places where Conservatives gather.

So, Reich-Wing Super-geniuses, EEEEEEEBIL MOOZLIM Obama used chemical weapons in Syria so he could help Al Qaeda win, but Pussy Obama didn't fire missiles in, and instead, went to Congress.

The Conservative World:
Abandon logic, all ye who enter.

Kathy said...

It's not in the water, Victor. I know; I've been drinking it a lot of years. It's the Kool-Aid. I stay away from that stuff. :-)

Tom Hilton said...

Ha! These simpletons have no idea how vast and far-reaching the conspiracy really is. The reality is that the entire Middle East and everything that happens there is one enormous false-flag operation.

Joseph Nobles said...

This CT is trying to gell over at Democratic Underground too. It's sad to watch.

Examinator said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Examinator said...

I'm no fan of Assad or his iniquitous tribal regime, nor do I believe the irrational mental masturbations of the rabid right.
Notwithstanding, American Presidents have been known to run arcane plots with even stranger co conspiritors.

Krazy Kennedy's 'Bay of pigs', Raving Ronny's Iran Contra affair, and Shrub's mystical Iraqi WMD hunt.

As TB implied Israel has a long long history of false flag lunacy and lethal adventurism. Often ending with oops and or 'well, it seemed like a good idea at the time'

Then again a closer examination of the "opposition" to Assad reveals an almost obscene example of VERY strange bedfellows. All of whom have their own rationales (ranging from reasonable to the utterly bizarre) for their part in a 'civil(?)war that gives new meaning to the military term 'asymmetric'.

Given the absence of real conclusive proof of who is to blame ...almost anything is possible...but probable?

Philo Vaihinger said...

They have painted O as an al-Qaeda enabler for a long time, now.

The New York Crank said...

Somehow this whole paranoid whatever-it-is reminds me of the story of the two business rivals who meet by accident in an airport lounge

"Where are you going?" asks the first.

"To Chicago," answers the second.

"You damned stinking liar!" says the first. "Can't you just once in your life tell the truth? I know what you're up to. You're telling me you're going to Chicago because you want me to think you're going to Los Angeles. But I happened to see you buying your ticket — you twisted forked tongued bastard! — and i happen to know you're really going to Chicago!

Very crankily yours,
The New York Crank