SYRIA UPDATE:   VETERAN JOURNALIST REPORTS  FROM 'CHEMICAL ATTACK' SITE WITH CONFLICTING INFO

Robert Fisk of the British "Independent" newpaper, a veteran of decades of reporting from the Middle East, made it to Douma, Syria and has sent back his report from there.

"This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks-and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world's most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There's even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the "gas" videotape which horrified the world-despite all the doubters-is perfectly genuine......"

But Fisk goes on to explain what the doctor added to that.

".......the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish filled tunnels and basements in which they live, on  a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm....."

The doctor, Assim Rahaibini, had more to say according to Fisk.

"he refers twice to the jihadi gunmen of Jaish el-Islam (the Army of Islam) in Douma as 'terrorists'-the regime's word for their enemies, and a term used by many people across Syria. Am I hearing this right?   Which version of events are we to believe?......"

Fisk is reporting that the inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are being prevented from getting to Douma 'ostensibly because they lacked the correct UN permits'.

Here's more of what he had to say about the situation in Douma following its retaking by Syrian government forces and their allies.

"There are many people I talked to amid the ruins of the town who said they had 'never believed in' gas stories-which were usually put about, they claimed, by the armed Islamist groups.  These particular jihadis survived under a blizzard of shellfire by living in other people's homes and in vast, wide underground roads carved through the living rock by prisoners with pick-axes on three levels beneath the town......"

"I walked across this town quite freely yesterday without soldier, policeman or minder to haunt my footsteps, just two Syrian friends, a camera and a notebook.  I sometimes had to clamber across 20-foot ramparts, up and down almost sheer walls of earth.   Happy to see foreigners among them, happier still that the siege is finally over,  they are mostly smiling, those whose faces you can see, of course, because a surprising number of Douma's women wear a full-length black hijab....."

There you have the story of what its like to be occupied by the 'rebels' in Syria.   Its like an Islamic state with women covered up and hidden.  All those gas attack videos feature young men carrying children, not women.

Talk about "Animal Assad" or "Monster Assad" all you want but there is your alternative that you would help with military action against Assad's government and his Iranian and Russian allies.

Link below with must reading to more fully understand Syria......

Robert Fisk Report From Syria-"The Independent" 4/17/2018

(EDITED AND EXPANDED TUESDAY AM)