Crass Propaganda on Idlib

A noxious example of propaganda appeared yesterday in the national edition of The New York Times. Penned by Edward Wong, "U.S. Says Assad May Be Using Chemical Weapons in Syria Again" revives calls for the United States to bomb Syria on behave of jihadists, to act as "Al Qaeda's air force."

Two things jump out about this article:

1) Nowhere in 18 paragraphs does Wong mention that Idlib Province is principally controlled by Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which is a re-branded Al Nusra Front, the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate. Last September in Sochi Syria, Russia and Turkey reached a a ceasefire agreement for Idlib, an agreement which excluded HTS/Nusra. Turkey was supposed to neutralize HTS/Nusra, but over the last year HTS/Nusra has gobbled up more territory in Idlib. There is not a hint of this in Wong's article. Instead the reader is presented with the old cartoon of a bloodthirsty tyrant whose main purpose in power is to bomb and gas helpless civilians.

2) Wong provides a recent history of chemical attacks in Syria; he refers to the Douma incident, saying 

In April 2018, Mr. Trump and European allies ordered limited airstrikes and missile attacks from warships after they concluded the Syrian military had carried out a chemical weapons attack near Damascus that killed at least 40 people.

No mention is made of the recently leaked OPCW engineering report which concluded that the Douma attacked was staged. (Even Bellingcat has been mum.)

It was frequently mentioned during the siege of Aleppo that the Western mainstream media had turned a corner from which there was no coming back, so extreme was the propaganda. I can see why.