Publisher's Synopsis
Humanitarian outrage at alleged human rights violations in Syria has handed a mandate for war to hawks long pressing for regime change. Western and regional powers flooded Syria with arms and fighters while Western tax-payer funded propaganda has painted the lawful efforts of Bashar al-Assad to retake areas under Islamist control as 'war crimes'.
This book exposes every assumption made about the conflict, including the crucial propaganda role of the White Helmets.
With a Foreword by Peter Ford, former UK ambassador to Syria.
"This book is an important contribution to the growing body of literature that understands the war in Syria as neither popular uprising nor humanitarian intervention. ... Looking at questions of international law, the use of evidence and specific allegations such as those over chemical weapons, the book argues the case for western liberals, in particular, to 'rethink Assad'."
Tim Anderson (Dr), Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies
"I hope its powerful analysis will stimulate a more appropriate response by our Government and many others whose policies have often exacerbated the suffering of the Syrian people."
Baroness Cox, House of Lords
"This is the clearest and most comprehensive analysis of the way most mainstream Western journalists abandoned any pretence of objectivity over Syria and became one-sided promoters of Western and Gulf states' regime-change agenda, thereby prolonging the war and multiplying the Syrian people's suffering."
Jonathan Steele, former Chief Foreign Correspondent for the Guardian
"... it is powerful advocacy, expressing many points generally ignored and missed, drowned by the volume of comment and propaganda from Al Jazeera, White Helmets, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, etc."
Lord Hylton, House of Lords
"What wonderful work! I think your comparison and contrasting of International Humanitarian Law and the Law of War should be mandatory reading."
Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq
"... the research is impressive and I am sure it will become mandatory reading for historians of the Syrian conflict."
Major General (Rtd.) John Holmes, DSO, OBE, MC, former Director UK Special Forces
