PRESS RELEASE
U.S. Journalist Pillories Anti-Russia, Pro-Terrorist Setup in Presidential Debate as Threat to Planet
Oct. 11, 2016 (EIRNS)—ABC News’s Martha Raddatz’s question to Hillary Clinton about a no-fly zone over Syria in Sunday night’s debate, exemplifies how mainstream U.S. news media has become "a threat to the future of the planet," an actual U.S. journalist, Robert Parry, wrote in Consortium News today.
Raddatz asked:
"Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its ally, Russia, for their bombardment of Aleppo.... If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn’t it a lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped?"
Parry raised the question: What if Raddatz had asked Hillary the following, more honest question:
"The situation in Aleppo presents a heart-rending and nettlesome concern. Al Qaeda fighters and their rebel allies, including some who have been armed by the United States, are holed up in some neighborhoods of eastern Aleppo. They’ve been firing rockets into the center and western sections of Aleppo and they have shot civilians seeking to leave east Aleppo through humanitarian corridors.
"These terrorists and their moderate rebel allies seem to be using the tens of thousands of civilians still in east Aleppo as human shields in order to create sympathy from Western audiences when the Syrian government seeks to root the terrorists and other insurgents from these neighborhoods with airstrikes that have killed both armed fighters and civilians. In such a circumstance, what should the U.S. role be, and was it a terrible mistake to supply these fighters with sophisticated rockets and other weapons, given that these weapons have helped Al Qaeda in seizing and holding territory?"
If Hillary had called for a no-fly zone in answer to that question, Parry went on, the obvious follow-up questions would be:
"Wouldn’t such a military intervention constitute aggressive war against Syria in violation of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg principles?
"And wouldn’t such a strategy risk tipping the military balance inside Syria in favor of Al Qaeda and its jihadist allies, possibly even its spinoff terror group, the Islamic State? And what would the United States do then, if its destruction of the Syrian air force led to the black flag of jihadist terror flying over Damascus as well as all of Aleppo? Would a Clinton-45 administration send in U.S. troops to stop the likely massacre of Christians, Alawites, Shiites, secular Sunnis and other heretics?...
"Would your no-fly zone include shooting down Russian aircraft that are flying inside Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government? Might such a clash provoke a superpower escalation, possibly even invite nuclear war?"
