Would They Lie to Us about Ukraine?

As journalist Abby Martin recently observed, “For my entire life I’ve watched the corporate media sell us war after war… every single time it turns out they lied”. What unwarranted cynicism! I mean, it’s not like they lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction, or Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of humidicribs, or even about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident…

Oh, well, OK… they lied about all of those. But they’re telling the truth this time!

And don’t you doubt otherwise — even though we already know they’ve lied about everything from the so-called “Ghost of Kyiv” to the existence of U.S. biolabs.

As for chemical weapons, if those are used in the Ukraine, it’s Russia who’ll use them, but they’ll pull off a “false flag operation” and blame it on Ukraine. That’s right, the fiendish Russkies are getting ready to use chemical weapons, but they’re going to make it look like it was really Ukraine, but we’ll know it was really Russia because it actually looks like Ukraine, but it was actually Russia, because Russia lies and we don’t. Trust us.

Anyone who says different is clearly peddling dangerous misinformation.

The Washington Post has a new article out titled “Intelligence points to heightened risk of Russian chemical attack in Ukraine, officials say,” and I challenge you to find me any Russian state media with two opening paragraphs that are more brazenly propagandistic and bereft of journalistic ethics than these:

“The United States and its allies have intelligence that Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons against Ukraine, U.S. and European officials said Friday, as Moscow sought to invigorate its faltering military offensive through increasingly brutal assaults across multiple Ukrainian cities.

“Security officials and diplomats said the intelligence, which they declined to detail, pointed to possible preparations by Russia for deploying chemical munitions, and warned the Kremlin may seek to carry out a ‘false-flag’ attack that attempts to pin the blame on Ukrainians, or perhaps Western governments. The officials, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter.”

So Russia is preparing to stage a chemical attack, and also the Russian chemical attack might look like Ukrainians or western governments committing a chemical attack, and also the evidence for this is secret, and also the details are secret, and also the government officials advancing this claim are secret, and also Russia’s military offensive is faltering. Gotcha.

Now, only a cynic or a conspiracy theorist would think that this state propaganda pre-preparing the ground for an official narrative that’s just a web of lies.

Because, as everyone knows, Western media and politicians never, ever lie. Especially not in the last five years.

“The accusations surfaced as Russia repeated claims that the United States and Ukraine were operating secret biological weapons labs in Eastern Europe — an allegation that the Biden administration dismissed as ‘total nonsense’ and ‘outright lies.’”

This paragraph is awesome in two different ways. First, it’s awesome because The Washington Post goes out of its way to inform readers that Russia’s claims have been dismissed as “total nonsense” and “outright lies” after having literally just reported completely unevidenced claims by anonymous government officials with no criticism or scrutiny of any kind. Secondly, it’s awesome because at no point during the rest of the article is any mention made of Victoria Nuland’s incendiary admission before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” that the US is “quite concerned” might end up “falling into the hands of Russian forces”.

Caitlyn Johnstone

Of course it would be a “false flag operation”, just like the widely-circulated videos of Russian prisoners of war being dragged from vans and shot in the legs. That has to be “false flag”: Ukrainian officials say so.

And it’s not like they’d have any reason to lie.

(To forestall the obvious whataboutism: no, I am not saying that Russian media and politicians aren’t lying through their teeth as well. Of course they are: but if you think “our side” are all honest brokers, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.)