PETER HITCHENS: Amid the bombs of Aleppo, all you can hear are the lies

[truth_seeker]

PETER HITCHENS: Amid the bombs of Aleppo, all you can hear are the lies

Updated: 02:32 EST, 18 December 2016

I am the opposite of a war junkie. I loathe the sound of fireworks because they remind me of a bloody night in Lithuania in January 1991, where I lay down in dirty snow to save my skin from Soviet bullets.

I was also frozen with fright in lawless, gang-ruled Mogadishu in December 1992, waiting for US marines to arrive.

In Bucharest at Christmas 1989, I crawled under the bed as tracer fire whizzed past my hotel-room window, and – because my long-delayed call home came through just then – I dictated my account of events to my wife. No heroics for me, thanks.

I was in all these dreadful places by accident. I never meant to be there. I take great care not to get caught in such things again.

But I learned a bit from it, mostly that the old cliche ‘the first casualty of war is truth’ is absolutely right, and should be displayed in letters of fire over every TV and newspaper report of conflict, for ever.

Almost nothing can be checked. You become totally reliant on the people you are with, and you identify with them.

If you can find a working phone, you will feel justified in shouting whatever you have got into the mouthpiece – as simple and unqualified as possible. And your office will feel justified in putting it on the front page (if you are lucky).

And that is when you are actually there, which is a sort of excuse for bending the rules.

In the past few days we have been bombarded with colourful reports of events in eastern Aleppo, written or transmitted by people in Beirut (180 miles away and in another country), or even London (2,105 miles away and in another world). There have, we are told, been massacres of women and children, people have been burned alive.

The sources for these reports are so-called ‘activists’. Who are they? As far as I know, there was not one single staff reporter for any Western news organisation in eastern Aleppo last week. Not one.

This is for the very good reason that they would have been kidnapped and probably murdered. The zone was ruled without mercy by heavily armed Osama Bin Laden sympathisers, who were bombarding the west of the city with powerful artillery (they frequently killed innocent civilians and struck hospitals, since you ask). That is why you never see pictures of armed males in eastern Aleppo, just beautifully composed photographs of handsome young unarmed men lifting wounded children from the rubble, with the light just right.

The women are all but invisible, segregated and shrouded in black, just as in the IS areas, as we saw when they let them out.

For reasons that I find it increasingly hard to understand or excuse, much of the British media refer to these Al Qaeda types coyly as ‘rebels’ (David Cameron used to call them ‘moderates’). But if they were in any other place in the world, including Birmingham or Belmarsh, they would call them extremists, jihadis, terrorists and fanatics. One of them, Abu Sakkar, famously cut out and sank his teeth into the heart of a fallen enemy, while his comrades cheered. This is a checked and verified fact, by the way.

snip

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4044792/PETER-HITCHENS-Amid-bombs-Aleppo-hear-lies.html

[TomSea]

Buses leaving are being attacked and set on fire, some reports say the Rebels are doing this.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38358177

Other reports say Al Qaeda- Al Nusra are doing this, I read in another mainstream press story; so it wasn't one of the lesser known sources. Al Sham are also a radical group.

But I don't know if that still applies to calling all Rebel groups such radicalized Jihadists.

So, we don't care to see a humanitarian catastrophe but we can't alone solve the world's problems.

[Sanguine]

Ah, yes, the "rebels" that we support.

[truth_seeker]

Canadian Journalist: “I’m Back From Syria. The Media Is Lying To You!”

This situation is yet another that demonstrates Obama supporting the muslim terrorist sides in these conflicts.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHniRRgOao

[TomSea]

Hezbollah themselves seemed to say the buses caught on fire due to one rebel group fighting the Al Qaeda affiliated branch in Aleppo.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group fighting alongside Syria’s government, said the buses were burned during fighting between the al-Qaeda-affiliated Fatah al-Sham Front and a rebel group that supported the evacuations.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/syria-militants-burn-evacuation-buses-activists-say-aleppo-deal-endangered/

[TomSea]

Canadian Journalist: “I’m Back From Syria. The Media Is Lying To You!”

This situation is yet another that demonstrates Obama supporting the muslim terrorist sides in these conflicts.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjHniRRgOao

This is also said on the Democracy Now radio programs.

Maybe not that Obama is doing it but that the CIA or US supported rebels are doing this.

Father Assad was implicated in the bombing of 250 marines in Lebanon and Israel is still in a state of war with Syria. I don't really trust them.

[Fishrrman]

Nothing there is worth Western lives.

Get the Christians out if possible.

Then let the muslims have at one another. If that means the death of every last man, woman, and child… so be it.