ONE MUTED CHEER FOR FISK

Robert Fisk redeems himself a little today, by introducing another spin on the massacre at Darayya, but still finds time to blame the Syrian government and use the term terrorist in quotation marks, i.e. "terrorist", as if they aren't.

The new spin on the massacre is that the rebs had taken civilian hostages in Darayya and demanded the release of their brothers-in-terrorism held prisoner by the Syrian military. Negotitations had been ongoing but the talks got nowhere so the Syrian military entered the town. And the implication is that is when the killing started.

The massacre town of Daraya is a place of ghosts and questions. It echoed with the roar of mortar explosions and the crackle of gunfire yesterday, its few returning citizens talking of death, assault, foreign "terrorists", and its cemetery of slaughter haunted by snipers.

[source : Robert Fisk: Inside Daraya - how a failed prisoner swap turned into a massacre, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-inside-daraya--how-a-failed-prisoner-swap-turned-into-a-massacre-8084727.html, 2/08/2012]

However Fisk supplies one witness who said the killing occured before the Syrian military had entered the town.

One woman, who gave her name as Leena, said she was travelling through the town in a car and saw at least 10 male bodies lying on the road near her home. "We carried on driving past, we did not dare to stop, we just saw these bodies in the street," she said, adding that Syrian troops had not yet entered Daraya.

Other witnesses say the rebs broke into and trashed their homes and property, while others say most of the dead were Army conscripts or were, or were related to, government workers. The conscripts would of course be the men of fighting age reported in most media reports.

From this article it would appear that the rebs killed civilians, but Fisk's spin is that this only occured when the Syrian military entered the town, and that contrary to my first conclusion most of the dead are not terrorists but were civilians or captured Army conscripts.

On this evidence alone, how Fisk can use the word terrorist with quotation marks, i.e. "terrorist", is beyond me.

If only Fisk was aware of The Redirection or the speeches and books of General Wesley Clark exposing the plan for war on seven nations in five years that was enabled by the inside job 9/11, he would then be able to explain the presence and purpose of such "terrorists" in Syria...

But I am an independent blogger, not a journalist for The Independent.