Which Chemical Gas Attack Would That Be?

"I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived."
"People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a 'White Helmet', shouted 'Gas!', and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning."
Dr. Assim Rahaibani, Douma, Syria   report by Robert Fisk, The Independent

Rubble fills a street in Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus (AP)

So there we have the truth. No chemical attack over Douma, nothing but the active imaginations of France, Britain and the United States, just looking for the opportunity to react to false information. To make themselves look good, as though they're invested in doing what they can for the good people of Syria under constant attack from the Baathist Alawite Shiite regime of Bashar al-Assad who took up the mantle worn so proudly by Saddam Hussein's Baathist Sunni regime as the 'Butcher of Baghdad' for his infamous chemical attacks on Iraqi Kurds.

That king of civilian butchery is now dead, fading from memory except by those whose human rights he violated, and the new king has ascended the throne of tyrannical slaughter of his own population. Helicopter gunships, barrel bombs, starvation sieges, chemical weapons, it's all the same to Assad whose focus is on wiping out any threats to his entitled reign over a Syria that he has pounded into near oblivion. The viciousness of his reaction to Syrian Sunnis asking for equality citizenship rights acted as an invitation to Sunni terrorist groups to flood into Syria, a new battle front.

Assad speaks only with the utmost contempt of Syrian Sunnis, instantly transformed into terrorists rather than rebels against tyranny. It is a distinction that served him well, since there is no need to treat terrorists as opponents with a legitimate grievance, so no need to make an effort to resolve those grievances. Terrorists deserve death, and Assad has gone out of his way on any and all occasions to deliver mass death to those he views as his opponents/terrorists. And he has had ample assistance from Iran's Republican Guard Corps, from Hezbollah and from Shiite militias and finally, Russia.

A video image provided by the Syrian Civil Defense, an aid group, of toddlers being treated by medical workers after a suspected chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Sunday. Credit Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, via Associated Press

The latest chemical gas attack on the people of Douma and the routing of the Syrian resistance resulted in an abhorrent attack on helpless civilians; videos of children suffering the effects of chemical poisoning persuaded the U.S. British and French administrations to deliver a puny, but telling rebuke in the form of a 90-minute aerial bombing attack by warplanes and ships sitting offshore that targeted a number of chemical production and storage facilities.

The medics who responded to the asphyxiating dying people on April 7 are now in the position of being intimidated by the regime's police, warned not to speak to anyone about the attack and one doctor who was not even close to the hospital where scores were rushed exhibiting the classic symptoms of asphyxia by poison gas, denies that any such event occurred. It was, he claims, a dust storm that had blown through the area.

The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations of Syria has warned that threats have been issued by the regime against any who might wish to discuss the event.

Regime forces and Russian military personnel had prevented the UN's Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons from entrance to Douma to fact-check. And while the combined airstrikes have been supported by the 28-member EU, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Japan, Australia, Bahrain and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, they are opposed by Russia, Iran, China, Hamas, Hezbollah, Venezuela and Assad. Oh yes, of course, British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, too.

Ah, and the veteran Arabophile Robert Fisk, the British reporter who writes for the Independent, and who would swoon with delight if he could accuse Israel of having dropped those barrel bombs filled with chemical weapons over the two Douma sites on April 7. As it is, he has written a long article casting aspersions on the very thought that the Syrian regime was involved in gassing its own people. It was, he claims, the Islamist 'terrorist' groups that Assad is battling who were responsible; they don't have planes at their disposal, let alone barrel bombs, but they did it to convince the West that Assad needed to be bombed.

A picture said to show victims of the attack in a building in Douma. Credit Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, via Associated Press