Please Mainstream Media: 'Please engage your brain.'

Jonathan Cook, journalist

Well worth taking six minutes to listen to Peter Ford, another former British ambassador (to Syria, in his case), prepared to raise his head above the parapet to warn us that we are being herded into another war of aggression – this time over a supposed chemical weapons attack being blamed on Syria's Bashar Assad. 

As Ford notes, there is (yet again) no independent evidence for the claims being made, and what evidence there is has been provided by the Islamic jihadists who would be the main beneficiaries of deeper western "intervention" (aka war crimes). 

What is most surprising is that Ford has been given a chance to challenge the official narrative by the BBC - even if it is Radio Scotland rather than the Six O'Clock News. 

It is revealing to hear host Gary Robertson's shocked incredulity at being exposed to Ford's counter-narrative (I suspect Ford was canny enough not to warn them beforehand of what he intended to say). The suggestion that the jihadists might mock up scenes to look like a chemical weapons attack is greeted with the interruption from Robertson: "This is a lot of effort to discredit Assad..." 

That comment left even a hardened media critic like me open-jawed. As though, staging scenes on Youtube to deepen US involvement on the jihadists' side is more "effort" than the jihadists having to actually fight a war! 

Robertson then asks in apparent disbelief: what possible motive could the jihadists have had in mocking up an attack? 

Ford replies: "Is that not obvious? A child can see that the intention was to produce the hysteria and now the military action that we are on the point of taking, risking our own safety."

Later, as Robertson struggles to believe what he is hearing, Ford suggests: "Please engage your brain." Little hope of that from the BBC.