Ghouta Chemical Attack Showed How West 'Will Do Everything' to Disrupt Others
Ten years ago, anti-government militants in Syria staged a deadly "false flag" attack that nearly led to a US invasion. | On August 21, 2013, Syrian militants fighting against the government of Bashar Assad used shells loaded with sarin to attack Eastern Ghouta, a densely populated area located on the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus. The attack, which claimed somewhere between 300 and 1,700 lives, took place after then-US President Barack Obama swiftly labeled any potential use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government as a "red line" for the United States. Western powers were quick to blame the attack on the Syrian government, with the United States even openly mulling an invasion of the Middle Eastern country. ● The ensuing crisis was brought to a peaceful resolution thanks to a deal brokered with the help of Russia, which involved the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons under the supervision by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This last-minute reversal of Obama's red-line policy on chemical weapons in Syria was apparently caused by several factors, according to Vanessa Beeley, an independent investigative journalist who specializes in Middle Eastern affairs.
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