Motus Mentis

Here’s a disturbing pattern:

1) We lean toward a stand-down in Syria.

2) Spooks and hawks object.

3) A chemical-weapons attack is reported. It is blamed, on scant evidence, or no evidence at all, on Assad and the Russians.

4) Women and other tender-hearted types throughout the West weep over looping news footage of suffering children. (Spooks and hawks cackle, their eyes aglint.)

5) The cry echoes from on high: “Something must be done! This cannot stand!”

6) Presto! We attack!

It is happening again. I am dismayed. I wish more people were.

Here is some commentary from the strategic-security analyst John McCreary’s NightWatch bulletin over the past two days.

Yesterday:

Before rushing to judgment about this alleged Syrian attack, astute Readers will recall that the militant extremists have performed false flag chemical attacks in the past. Just after the US announced its intention to withdraw from Syria, it is in danger of being drawn back in. Nothing suggests the Syrians or Russians want that outcome. At this point, the judgments of Syrian culpability constitute evidence free analysis.

Chemical attack on 7 April. Syrian doctors and rescue workers said on 8 April that at least 40 people died from an apparent chemical attack on the night of 7 April in the city of Douma.

Comment: Pro-extremist press analysis judged that the attack appeared to force the start of a final withdrawal of hardline rebels from one of the last districts under opposition control in Douma. An agreement allowing them to pull out was announced by the Russian military command in Syria. They and their families are heading for Jarabulus in the Turkish zone.

The on-site reporting sources on chemical weapons attacks are biased beyond credibility. In the past, the Islamists posted images that purported to show youthful victims of a chemical attack in a hospital in Syria. However, an astute observer reported that the hospital was Egyptian, and he had been there and recognized the pale green tile. The images were photo-shopped.

Special comment: What is irreducible is that chemical attacks drag the US back into the conflict. One web site posted an analysis that showed a correlation between two past chemical attacks in Syria and US announcements of its intention to end its involvement in the Syrian civil war. A few days after a US withdrawal announcement, a chemical weapons attack occurred, according to this analysis. Of course, correlation is not causation, but it deserves attention when it starts to create a pattern.

A second point that also is irreducible is the Russians have no reason to want the US dragged back into the conflict. Last week, Foreign Minister Lavrov once again encouraged the US to leave, as it keeps promising to do, he said.

The Syrians have no interest in dragging the US back into the conflict and had won the battle for eastern Ghouta.

Russian aircraft technicians are essential to the operational capabilities of Syrian combat aircraft. As in past attacks, it is a simple process to determine whose aircraft, if any, were over Douma at the time of the attack. The Russians know the payloads.

The Russians stand with the Syrians. On 8 April, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a press release on its web site that the reports of a chemical attack by the Syrian forces on the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta were “planted”.

“Information continues to be planted about the use of chlorine or other toxic agents by the Syrian government forces. More of this fabricated information about a chemical attack that has supposedly taken place in Douma appeared yesterday”¦ The White Helmets, a volunteer rescue force that has reported a chemical attack, have been “repeatedly exposed over their links with terrorists”, the ministry added.

“We have warned of this kind of dangerous provocation more than once lately. The purpose of these mendacious conjectures, which are without any basis, is to shield the terrorists and the irreconcilable radical opposition, which rejects a political settlement, while at the same time trying to justify possible external use of force.’

“It is necessary once again to warn that military intervention under far-fetched and fabricated pretexts in Syria, where there are Russian service personnel at the request of the legitimate government, is absolutely unacceptable and can lead to the gravest of consequences,” the ministry said.

Comment: The Russians warned several times in the past two weeks, most recently on 6 April, that ultra-extreme Islamist groups were preparing chemicals to stage an attack in Douma.

Russian defense spokesman Major General Yevtushenko said, “The ringleaders of Jabhat al-Nusra (the al-Nusra Front) and the Free Syrian Army, which are acting together, are plotting explosions of makeshift chemical charges containing chlorine in a number of areas under their control, including Al Balad in Daraa,” he said.

As for the so-called White Hats independent journalists have confirmed they act as a mouthpiece for the extremists.

Today (I have emphasized some passages):

The Russians continue to defend Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on 9 April that the Russian military in Syria have repeatedly warned of provocations aimed at blaming Damascus for the use of chemical weapons.

The Russian Centre for Reconciliation in Syria said Russian specialists inspected the site of the alleged chemical attack on the 9th and said there was no trace of chemical agents.

The Syrian Red Crescent also issued a statement on 9 April that its medical personnel in Douma had found no evidence that a chemical attack had taken place. The Red Crescent runs a hospital in Douma. It received no patients that were exposed to chemical agents over the weekend, despite claims by the White Helmets that hundreds were wounded from exposure to chemicals.

Comment: This is the first report that Russian specialists already visited the site. The Russian visit will change no minds. Many will doubt anything the Russians claim. But unlike the western powers, the Russians at least said they tried get evidence.

Western states have not even done that much.

If the site is accessible to the Russian specialists and to the Red Crescent, it ought to be accessible to western specialists. The Syrians intend to declare Douma a terror-free zone.

We repeat our warning that we judge the Russians are serious about the threat of “grave consequences’ if the US attacks Syrian forces. The Israeli attack has deprived the US of the benefit of whatever reluctance the Russians might have had.

In other words: we have no conclusive evidence, beyond the highly questionable authority of the “White Hats”, that a chemical attack even occurred, let alone that it was mounted by Assad and the Russians. (There was good reason to think that the last one wasn’t.) Against that allegation we must weigh the facts that (a) there was no tactical reason whatsoever, in war-fighting terms, to use chemical weapons, and (b) for Assad or Putin to do so would be an utterly incomprehensible strategic blunder.

What have we to gain by escalating against the Russians in Syria? (Keep in mind also that war with the Russians would quickly spill far beyond Syria’s frontiers.) What U.S. interest does it serve? Say we advance with real power, and topple Assad. What then? Have we learned nothing in our futile decades of nation-building in Mideastern snakepits?