Mint Press Exposed
In the days after the Sarin gas attack in the Damascus Suburbs in August 2013, a news story began making the rounds of the Internet that the chemical weapons attack had been an accidental release of chemical weapons by the rebels. This story was picked up by ZeroHedge, a website frequented by economically-minded paleo-conservatives, isolationist libertarians, and anarchists.
The story was sourced from Mint Press and written by Dale Gavlak, an Associated Press stringer and NPR correspondent. It claimed the chemical weapons were provided by the Saudis and that the release of the chemical weapons was accidental:
“Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack. “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
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“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.
The story was widely quoted, and passed quickly through the anti-war groups naturally suspicious of false flag operations that could lead to western involvement in Syria. The problem for these groups is that the facts in the story were not corroborated by other news organizations, are likely fictions spread by the Iranian sympathizing owners of Mint Press. BuzzFeed covers the scandal here in its piece “The Inside Story of One Website’s Defense of Assad”.
It’s relatively easy to take down an outfit like Mint Press. It’s much more difficult to prove propaganda charges spread by the likes of the Washington Post, New York Times and NBC News. Nevertheless these organizations are just as slanted in their reporting in support of Democrat administrations and antagonistic to Republican ones. The only real difference between them and Mint Press is their size.
Hat-tip: SimplyJews
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