"No one makes money on peace," -Dennis Kucinich
That attack was launched by President Donald Trump Friday in response to a chemical gas attack in the northwestern Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun (roughly equidistant from Homs and Aleppo). Estimates vary, but at least 30 and perhaps more than 80 were killed in the gas attack. Images of suffering children there were said to have "shaken" Trump.
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, the ruler whom many regard as a tyrannical butcher, gave an interview with the wire service Agence France Presse (his first since the missile strike) in which he said that the chemical attack had been "100-percent fabricated" so that the U.S. would have an excuse to carry out their military operation.
Dennis Kucinich agrees — maybe not that the chemical attack had been "fabricated," but certainly that there was more to the story. He voiced his opposition to the missile strike on WKYC, and sat for an extended interview with The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill, on that publication's Intercepted podcast.
Kucinich said he believed the chemical attack that inspired the missile attack was not perpetrated by Bashar Al-Assad and the Syrian government.
"And here's why," he told Scahill. "Syria had been winning on the ground. They had a major battle that was a turnaround moment in Aleppo. It would go against everything that makes sense militarily and politically to engage in a chemical weapons attack."
Kucinich said he'd wanted an independent inquiry into the gas attack and suggested that the "absolute refusal" by the U.S. government to conduct one "raise[d] serious questions about whether or not there was an agenda."
Kucinich was careful to point out that he was not sure this was an instance of a "false flag attack," but said there were elements in Washington aware of the sensitivities of the American people, who have, in the past, relied upon the "big heart" of the United States to create a "wag the dog" scenario, drawing countries into a conflict based on an emotional response to a horrific act.
Kucinich likened the rapid, almost blind consensus-formation to the claims of WMDs in Iraq, and the virtually unanimous support for a war there among the nation's leaders.
"What we're looking at are pretexts," he said, "pretexts for running an agenda of regime change... You have to ask the question, then: What is America all about? Are we simply about imperium? Are we about expanding the reach of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex?"
And just because it's baseball season:
"When I was kid growing up in Cleveland," Kucinich continued, "I used to go to Cleveland Indians baseball games and there was a guy who would walk up and down the steps in the bleachers and go: 'Scorecard! Scorecard! You can't tell the players without a scorecard. Well, in Washington D.C. you need a scorecard which includes: Who are the defense contractors who benefit from this? Who's promoting this in the Pentagon? Who's promoting this in the State Department? Who's promoting it at the CIA? And once you have that, you kind of can figure out where this thing is going."
Kucinich's ultimate fear: World War III, something he won't be able to prevent even if he does saddle up and run for Governor.
You can listen to the full interview between Jeremy Scahill and Dennis Kucinich here.
Contact Senior Writer Sam Allard: sallard at clevescene dot com / @SceneSallard / (216) 802-7282.
