Established on August 22, 2011, around six months after US launched aggression on the country, the so-called “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (COI)” is mandated to investigate war-related human rights abuses.

Instead, it produced over 20 propaganda reports and periodic updates, largely blaming Syria and its allies for crimes of war and against humanity committed against the nation and its people by the US, its imperial partners, and jihadist foot soldiers.

Blaming victims is longstanding US, NATO, Israeli policy, the Big Lie supported by establishment media, most people none the wiser about the deception.

Syria’s UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari earlier slammed the COI, saying the following:

It’s “deliberately blowing things out of proportion when displaying its findings, also fully disregarding or downplaying core issues,” adding:

“There are blood-curdling scenes that flagrantly contravene the Syrians’ dignity and human rights regarding the crimes of the armed terrorist groups…”

They “rang(e) from eating human flesh, cutting throats, mutilating bodies, beheadings on sectarian and confessional grounds, throwing bodies from rooftops to committing hundreds of suicide bombings using car bombs in populated areas, recruiting children, abducting and slaughtering clergymen, assassinating scholars in mosques, issuing instigative fatwas on ‘sexual jihad,’ killing children on the charges of infidelity, robbing factories and transporting them to Turkey.”

For over eight years, COI reports gave these atrocities scant coverage, focusing attention on vilifying Assad, wrongfully blaming his forces and allies for high crimes and other human rights abuses committed by the US, its imperial allies, and terrorist proxies.

COI reports are based on interviews with anti-Assad sources in neighboring countries, “photographs, video recordings, satellite imagery, forensic and medical reports” from nations and NGO’s hostile to Damascus, along with so-called “academic analyses” and other UN misinformation.

On Wednesday, the COI issued its latest report on Syria. Covering the first six months of 2019, it followed the pattern of earlier ones, largely blaming Syria and allied forces for US-led imperial crimes on the country and its people.

While acknowledging al-Nusra attacks on government forces and civilians in northern Syria, the COI failed to explain that its fighters are armed, funded and directed by the Pentagon, the CIA, and US imperial allies, including Israel.

“(P)ro-government forces” were falsely accused of “destroying infrastructure essential to the survival of the civilian population, including hospitals, markets, educational facilities and agricultural resources, and forcing almost half a million civilians to flee” from Idlib province and surrounding areas.

At the same time, the COI admitted that “large-scale operations by the US-led international coalition and (Pentagon supported) Syrian Democratic Forces caus(ed) widespread destruction of towns and villages in” Deir Ezzor province and elsewhere.

Around 70,000 Syrian refugees are located in the Al Hol camp, enduring “deplorable and inhumane conditions,” said the COI, omitting what Russian National Defense Management Center General Mikhail Mizintsev explained earlier, saying:

“All fundamental norms of international law are violated in (camps) controlled by the US. The situation at…Rukban and Al-Hol (is) critical.”

“By artificially creating inhuman conditions at the refugee camps on the illegally occupied territories in Syria, the US is creating a basis for the return of terror organizations with the goal of maintaining instability in the country and the region.”

Head of Russia’s reconciliation center in Syria General Viktor Kupchishin added the following;

Conditions in refugee camps controlled by the US are responsible for “10 (to) 20 people dy(ing) each day” because of lack of food, medical care, and overall inhumane conditions.

The COI report falsely said

“(i)n areas controlled by the government, civilians, including recent returnees, were arbitrarily arrested by the state or abducted by pro-government militias” — a tactic used by US-supported jihadists, not Damascus.

At the same time, it admitted that “the US-led international coalition…left essential infrastructure obliterated, civilians killed, maimed, and uprooted, and communities in ‘near complete destruction,’ ” — a rare acknowledgment of devastation by the Pentagon and allied forces.

Citing an incident in Hajin, Syria, part of the al-Jazeera Storm campaign in Deir Ezzor province, the COI said attacks by coalition forces may have “amount(ed) to a war crime in cases in which such attacks are conducted recklessly.”

There’s no ambiguity about US-led high crimes of war and against humanity throughout years of naked aggression in Syria.

Examples are endless, including CW incidents staged by US-supported jihadists, falsely blamed on government forces, destruction of vital infrastructure by Pentagon-led terror-bombing, and notably the rape and destruction of Raqqa in 2017.

Most of the city was turned to rubble, countless thousands of civilians massacred, a thriving metropolis transformed into a wasteland — on the phony pretext of combatting ISIS the US created and supports.

None of the above was included in COI reports — nor did they explain that there’s nothing civil about endless US aggression in Syria.

Wherever the US shows up, mass slaughter, vast destruction, and human misery follow.

WikiLeaks earlier released an email from Hillary Clinton when serving as Obama regime secretary of state, saying the following:

“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability (sic) is to help the people of Syria overthrow…Bashar Assad,” adding:

“Negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear program will not solve Israel’s security dilemma (sic). Nor will they stop Iran from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program (sic).”

No such program exists, not then, earlier, or now. Israel’s only security threats are invented. No real ones exist, the same true for the US and its other imperial allies.

Hillary’s mail added that Israel fears loss of its regional “nuclear monopoly,” admitting its open secret.

She failed to explain that Iran and Syria threaten no other nations. The US, NATO, and Israel threaten humanity.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.