Can you imagine how the Daily Kos CT police squad would come down on a diary titled, "Why Did the 'rebels' use chemicals? We finally have an answer" and that answer was based on pure conjecture?
They would cry CT and rant and rave themselves into an angry frenzy so furious that they would short out their laptops, frothing at the mouth.
You see, the fact is that we do not know the full truth.
We do not know how the massacre came about and why. Therefore, saying that Assad did it is a theory, and saying that the Al Qaeda affiliated "rebels" our country is bizarrely backing in the Syria Invasion is equally a theory. However, since the Obama administration is pushing the theory that Assad is behind it, which conveniently fulfills his crossing the red line condition to go to war, the CT police will relax their standards and not say a peep. It's okay for Obama's most ardent supporters to claim a theory is proven fact. The CT police will let certain CT purveyors off the hook, just like Obama let war criminals off the hook who heinously started the horrific Iraq war with their mushroom clouds, yellow cake, and Saddam being involved in 9/11 conspiracy theories. Their CT has been proven false, but we must look forward, not back and never, never castigate CT that starts wars, only CT that could prevent wars by providing a theory that contradicts or is an alternative to the government sanctioned CT they want you to swallow as fact and as "incontrovertible" reasons to wage war.
CT police who allow Obama's most ardent supporters to state Assad was behind the chemical attack as fact, which it is not, would have kittens if anyone here wrote a diary even theorizing, not claiming it as fact, that this massacre was caused by the "rebels." They may even write the author a sternly written DailyKos-mail missive threatening to get them banned by reporting them to the admins.
That is how it is done. Hammering away at an unproven conspiracy theory: Assad ordered the chemical attack, which is treated as proven fact, and not allowing anyone to come up with another possibility by using the intimidating modern day McCarthyistic CT witch hunt. If anyone dares to come up with an alternative CT to the official government sanctioned propaganda CT, that person will be vilified as a mentally deranged tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. The people who support the government sanctioned propaganda CT, which may turn out to be all lies or cherry picked sketchy intel, are sane, patriotic citizens, even though they turn a blind eye to the war crimes of their own country, like "good, patriotic Americans," such as depleted uranium coated missiles that cause horrific birth defects and white phosphorous burning the flesh off innocent Iraqi children to the bone until they die. In this bizarro CT world, it's unAmerican and deranged to question our government's reasons to commit wars, even though our government has a solid track record of starting wars based on lies, and it's sane and patriotic to tacitly let our country slip down the moral abyss and commit atrocities unquestioningly like a herd of sheep based on government sanctioned CT.
Hitler used CT propaganda to control the minds of the good Germans, and look at the horror that mind control allowed to take place. It's mind boggling to contemplate how the Holocaust could have happened in a civilized country, but even the Holocaust is fair game for modern day warmongering propagandists to twist and exploit as a reason to repeat the mistake that "authorized" the Iraq War. We are told we must rush into Syria based on a conspiracy theory as opposed to previous UN investigations which found evidence implicating the "rebels," not the Syrian military, and that we do not have time to wait for evidence to be gathered and investigated by the present UN delegation OR ELSE we are falsely and ludicrously equivalent to the appeasers who allowed Hitler to commit genocide.
If we look back, instead of forward, as we are told to do, the view is bloody, cruel, and sadistic. Fallujah and Abu Graib were war crimes that should shame us into being more careful now.
A retired general theorizing that Assad was desperate to rid a Damascus suburb of "rebels" is not proof that Assad crossed Obama's red line, which would be suicide for him and his country and makes no sense. It's a theory. It's not proven by facts. It's a theory about a conspiracy. Assad conspired to rid a suburb of "rebels" by deploying chemical weapons is a conspiracy theory. Sorry, CT police, but the general was spouting CT. He doesn't know what Assad did or thought. He was theorizing a reason why Assad might have deployed chemical weapons ridiculously nearby the UN team who were at the time investigating previous attacks, not why Assad actually did this. Words matter. Boy, do words matter, and the propagandists know this.
Why is it okay to write a diary relating a retired General's theory about Assad's possible motive to do something that makes no sense for him to do and claim that Assad deployed the chemical weapons as fact, which it is not, whereas if a diarist were to write about a theory supporting why the "rebels" were to blame for the chemical event in Syria, he or she would be flamed? Why the double standard?
Okay, here is a possible scenario a diarist could propose that would get the diarist into CT hot water: Suppose a Saudi Arabian gave an Al Qaeda rebel the canister and the "rebel" brought it to his stronghold outside of Damascus and the weapon accidentally detonated there. That's a theory just as much as the general's musing about a possible motive Assad would have to gas his own people is a theory. They're both theories about an atrocious event. One theory supports the administration's CT for bombing Syria, the other casts doubt on the administration's assertion that Assad is the one and only suspect.
Okay, here's another theory that may get the diarist banned for life: Suppose a PNAC nutjob got someone to give the "rebel" the canister of nerve gas, and the Al Qaeda affiliated "rebel" brought the canister to his stronghold outside of Damascus. Suppose the PNAC nutjob had previously booby-trapped the canister to deliberately go off in "rebel" held land, so that the pledge the neoconster monsters had lobbied Obama to make about the red line would finally be fulfilled, even after the UN found evidence against the "rebels" on previous attempts to frame Assad. Now these neoconcreeps would have cornered Obama into invading Syria, which they openly wrote they wanted to have happen in a manifesto. That's also a theory.
It seems some theories are CT that could get you banned and other theories are permitted as fact. It's all according to the prejudices of the gatekeepers, who claim they are neutral or leaning toward peace or whatever fig leaf they can grab to hide the fact that they are censoring certain ideas from surfacing in public discourse, just like the MSM does.
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Updated this diary at 2:17 pm to correct 2 typos.
Updated again to make changes per suggestions of several commenters. Thank you all.
Updated again. Laptops!