By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 18 -- The schizophrenia in Washington about Syria and its rebels was displayed by Senator John McCain on Tuesday night at the Council on Foreign Relations.
On the one hand Senator McCain called the Syrian conflict a "growth hormone for Al Qaeda." Minutes later he said that Saudi weapons don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda and the Al Nusra Front. How can he know that?
McCain said he's been to Syria, he's met them. How many? Did he go to Raqqa? To Jarabulus where ISIS threatened to kill international humanitarians if they didn't leave?
To his credit, McCain while claiming that with earlier assistance to the Free Syrian Army it "would have been over" for Assad admitted that it is more complex now. Yes.
By contrast to Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- pronounced Cutter -- McCain mocked US assistance, which he said amounts so far to Meals Ready to Eat with expiration dates unknown.
On the UN, McCain said the General Assembly should condemn Russia, whose asylum grant to whistleblower Edward Snowden McCain called just a "sign of disrespect by Russia."
Intriguingly, McCain said the "French Ambassador told me" that one hundred people from France have done to Syria for jihad. Which French Ambassador?
Reuters in a long-read propaganda piece datelined Washington and Paris has French Ambassador to the UN Gerard Araud on an unnamed day in Spring 2013 telling an unnamed Russian diplomat (Churkin? Pankin?) France would come out with a show of Assad use of chemical weapons.
The point of the Reuters piece seems to be that France was much more central to the drive toward military threats than was previously known. But in the Kerry - Lavrov endgame in Geneva, Ban Ki-moon calling Sellstrom's report "overwhelming" before he saw it did not come up, as it did in the Washington Post's insider piece.
What about Ban's faux flashing of the first page of the report, which Reuters and others liked so much? It's a team effort: these reporters, at least one of whom has been shown to spy for the UN, are just cogs in a wheel of propaganda. Watch this site.
