Robert Mackey of The Intercept is a Spook

Proof that The Intercept, funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and featuring the work of Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, is a platform for government-sponsored chicanery can be found in Robert Mackey's "Russia Says It Has 'Irrefutable Evidence' U.K. Staged Chemical Attack in Syria. Let’s See It."

Mackey is a spook along the lines of Eliot Higgins (whom Mackey admiringly quotes in the story), a cyber-savvy sleuth of social media who works to uphold Langley's world view. Mackey asserts that

Russian diplomats and pundits on state-controlled news outlets have, for years, promoted unverified conspiracy theories about the White Helmets working with Islamic extremists and foreign intelligence agencies. Attempting to discredit the rescue workers, who often film in the immediate aftermath of bombings by government forces or Russian jets, has been a central concern for supporters of the Syrian government since the protest movement of 2011 turned into an armed conflict.

What will Mackey say of Robert Fisk's exclusive from Douma "The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack"?

Mackey alleges that  

Given that Douma is now under the control of the Assad government, Russia’s ally, and thus off-limits to independent journalists, the Russian claims are impossible to verify or debunk — a situation Russian and Syrian officials have taken advantage of throughout the war to cast doubt on claims that atrocities have been committed by forces loyal to Assad.

Well, debunk Fisk does, not only that there was a chemical weapons attack in Douma, but that the White Helmets are legitimate, independent rescue workers. As Fisk notes

The White Helmets – the medical first responders already legendary in the West but with some interesting corners to their own story – played a familiar role during the battles. They are partly funded by the Foreign Office and most of the local offices were staffed by Douma men. I found their wrecked offices not far from Dr Rahaibani’s clinic. A gas mask had been left outside a food container with one eye-piece pierced and a pile of dirty military camouflage uniforms lay inside one room. Planted, I asked myself? I doubt it. The place was heaped with capsules, broken medical equipment and files, bedding and mattresses.

Of course we must hear their side of the story, but it will not happen here: a woman told us that every member of the White Helmets in Douma abandoned their main headquarters and chose to take the government-organised and Russian-protected buses to the rebel province of Idlib with the armed groups when the final truce was agreed. 

The Intercept should disavow Mackey's story, or at least request that Mackey write another one, explaining some of Fisk's revelations. Are all the people Fiske spoke to Russian plants? Are the White Helmets not associated with Jaysh al-Islam?

Craig Murray's "The Rush to War"

Trump of course has a way out of his self-imposed deadline to attack Syria. He could declare the chemical attack in Douma a fraud staged by Jaysh al-Islam. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a reliably anti-Assad intelligence bureau headquartered in the UK, sees no evidence of chemical attack in Douma; rather "the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside them."

Trump will make no such bold declaration. It's a near certainty that he will order an attack. The question now is one of scale, as Peter Baker notes in "After Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria, Trump Weighs Retaliation":

The president now faces a challenge in creating a response to the chemical attack that will be more effective than the missile strike he ordered last year after a similar assault on civilians that he attributed to the Assad government. While only days ago Mr. Trump said he wanted to pull American troops out of Syria and “let the other people take care of it now,” which would effectively mean Russia and Iran, his comments on Monday suggested that he was prepared to take them on.

For a bird's-eye view of the insanity unfolding there is yesterday's post by Craig Murray, "The Rush to War":

I have never ruled out the possibility that Russia is responsible for the attack in Salisbury, amongst other possibilities. But I do rule out the possibility that Assad is dropping chemical weapons in Ghouta. In this extraordinary war, where Saudi-funded jihadist head choppers have Israeli air support and US and UK military “advisers”, every time the Syrian army is about to take complete control of a major jihadist enclave, at the last moment when victory is in their grasp, the Syrian Army allegedly attacks children with chemical weapons, for no military reason at all. We have been fed this narrative again and again and again.

We then face a propaganda onslaught from neo-con politicians, think tanks and “charities” urging a great rain of Western bombs and missiles, and are accused of callousness towards suffering children if we demur. This despite the certain knowledge that Western military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have had consequences which remain to this day utterly disastrous.

I fear that the massive orchestration of Russophobia over the last two years is intended to prepare public opinion for a wider military conflict centred on the Middle East, but likely to spread, and that we are approaching that endgame. The dislocation of the political and media class from the general population is such, that the levers for people of goodwill to prevent this are, as with Iraq, extremely few as politicians quake in the face of media jingoism. These feel like extremely dangerous times.

U.S./French Attack on Syria Likely in the Works

In the wake of Israel's bombing of a Syrian military airfield in Homs Province, which apparently killed a number of Iranians, we need to keep focused on the possibility of a double tap. The second strike would be delivered by France and/or the United States.

Macron and Trump conferred by phone prior to today's UNSC special meeting on the alleged chlorine attack in Douma. They will be united in opposition to whatever Russian position is put forward.

Is Trump foolish enough to have another go at a Tomahawk attack as he did last year in response to Khan Sheikhoun? How about Macron? He's facing an unwinnable situation with a calendar chock full of rolling strike dates. France will be largely paralyzed in April. What better way to look tough to the rail unions than bombing the Syrian Arab Army?

Trump will be happy to have Emmanuel Macron as a wing man. Say what you will about Trump, but he is generally a quick study. He knows by know that the Saudis and Israelis are running U.S. policy on Syria. 

Jaysh al-Islam is a Salafi terror group guided by Saudi Arabia. It staged the chlorine attack in Douma prior to agreeing to an evacuation. The Saudis have Trump in a box. They stage a chemical weapon attack and they know Trump has to respond.

The problem here is that Russia is going to respond sooner or later, and that response will be designed to bring us to the brink of nuclear confrontation.

Read the Saker's informative post, "Russia Is Ready for War -- Mood on Prime-Time TV Is Grim":

I just spend about 2 hour listening to a TV debate of Russian experts about what to do about the USA. Here are a few interesting interesting points.

1) They all agreed that the AngloZionist (of course, they used the words “USA” or “Western countries”) was only going to further escalate and that the only way to stop this is to deliberately bring the world right up to the point were a full-scale US-Russian war was imminent or even locally started. They said that it was fundamentally wrong for Russia to reply with just words against Western actions.

2) Interestingly, there also was a consensus that even a full-scale US attack on Syria would be too late to change the situation on the ground, that it was way too late for that.

3) Another interesting conclusion was that the only real question for Russia is whether Russia would be better off delaying this maximal crisis or accelerating the events and making everything happen sooner. There was no consensus on that.

4) Next, there was an consensus view that pleading, reasoning, asking for fairness or justice, or even for common sense, was futile. The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified. The authority of the so-called “western values” (democracy, rule of law, human rights, etc.) in Russia is now roadkill.

5) There was also a broad consensus that the US elites are not taking Russia seriously and that the current Russian diplomatic efforts are futile (especially towards the UK). The only way to change that would be with very harsh measures, including diplomatic and military ones. Everybody agreed that talking with Boris Johnson would be not only a total waste of time, but a huge mistake.

6) To my amazement, the notion that Russia might have to sink a few USN ships or use Kalibers on US forces in the Middle-East was viewed as a real, maybe inevitable, option. Really – nobody objected.

Reach your own conclusions. I will just say that none of the “experts” was representing, or working for, the Russian government. Government experts not only have better info, they also know that the lives of millions of people depend on their decisions, which is not the case for the so-called “experts”. Still, the words of these experts do reflect, I think, a growing popular consensus.