Brian Whitaker writes:

Hundreds of people died — many of them in their sleep — when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin struck Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital early one morning in August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s.

Considering that Ghouta was under fire from the Assad regime’s forces at the time, that the casualties were on the rebels’ side and that the regime had previously admitted possessing chemical weapons, there was one obvious suspect. The regime, however, insisted it was not responsible.

Russia, as its chief ally, weighed in with vigorous support and so too did a number of small groups and individuals in the West — apparently sincere people who convinced themselves that one of the Middle East’s most oppressive regimes was the innocent victim of a plot to discredit it. Among them were an assortment of university professors, retired spies, “independent” journalists, “anti-imperialists” and more than a few habitual conspiracy theorists.

Under international pressure following the Ghouta attack, Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, but that did not put an end to chemical attacks. During the next few years dozens more were reported, mostly involving chlorine but sometimes sarin. The deniers, eager to blame someone other than the Assad regime, claimed rebels were faking the attacks in an effort to falsely incriminate the regime and thus create a pretext for full-scale military intervention by Western powers.

The claims were not supported by credible evidence, but the deniers pointed to confirmed examples from the past where deception had been used in warfare. One that resonated particularly with the public was the way false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been used to build public support for the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Constantly citing the deception over Iraq, the deniers suggested the reports of chemical attacks in Syria were a similar deception, for similar purposes. It was an argument that could be made to sound plausible, and the deniers exploited it relentlessly. Paradoxically, the people most likely to be fooled by it were those most anxious not to be fooled. Their resentment at the known deception over Iraq made them less willing to doubt claims of deception in Syria. [Continue reading…]