{"id":33476,"date":"2018-04-17T07:19:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T12:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33476"},"modified":"2018-04-17T07:20:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T12:20:06","slug":"the-search-for-the-truth-in-douma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33476","title":{"rendered":"The Search for the Truth in Douma"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Search for the Truth in Douma<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks \u2013\u00a0and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world\u2019s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There\u2019s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the \u201cgas\u201d videotape which horrified the world \u2013 despite all the doubters \u2013 is perfectly genuine.<\/p>\n

War stories, however, have a habit of growing darker. For the same 58-year old senior Syrian doctor then adds something profoundly uncomfortable: the patients, he says, were overcome not by gas but by oxygen starvation in the rubbish-filled tunnels and basements in which they lived, on a night of wind and heavy shelling that stirred up a dust storm.<\/p>\n

As Dr Assim Rahaibani announces this extraordinary conclusion, it is worth observing that he is by his own admission not an eyewitness himself and, as he speaks good English, he refers twice to the jihadi gunmen of Jaish el-Islam [the Army of Islam] in Douma as \u201cterrorists\u201d \u2013 the regime\u2019s word for their enemies, and a term used by many people across Syria. Am I hearing this right? Which version of events are we to believe?<\/p>\n

By bad luck, too, the doctors who were on duty that night on 7 April were all in Damascus giving evidence to a chemical weapons enquiry, which will be attempting to provide a definitive answer to that question in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

France, meanwhile, has said it has \u201cproof\u201d chemical weapons were used, and US media have quoted sources saying urine and blood tests showed this too. The WHO has said its partners on the ground treated 500 patients \u201cexhibiting signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic chemicals\u201d.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Search for the Truth in Douma This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks \u2013\u00a0and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world\u2019s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There\u2019s even a friendly doctor in a green […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10180,5493,19772,1426,19511,655,9222,776,1250],"class_list":["post-33476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-chemical-attack","tag-counterpunch","tag-douma","tag-misinformation","tag-opcw","tag-propaganda","tag-robert-fisk","tag-syria","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33478,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33476\/revisions\/33478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}