Taboo Truths by Jason Zenith: Russia Outdoes U.S. Five-Fold In Bombing Hospitals

Russia is smoking hot in the war crimes category! In just a few days they've already managed to bomb five- count 'em, five!- hospitals in Syria in order to keep Bashar "Barrel Bomb" al-Assad in power. That's five times more hospitals than the U.S. has bombed this year. The U.S. has merely bombed one hospital year- to-date, the trauma center run by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in Kunduz, Afghanistan. So the U.S. has some catching-up to do. (Although if you go back to the record books, the U.S. bombed hospitals in Vietnam, "North" Vietnam in particular. And of course plenty of hospitals were caught in area bombing of cities in World War II. But that was just "collateral damage." No harm, no foul, using U.S. military accounting standards.) [1]

But Putin looks positively like a punk compared to Assad himself. The hospital Russia most recently bombed, in Idlib, Syria, has previously been bombed seventeen times by Assad the Sadistic Slayer. And Assad would be slacking off if that were the only hospital he bombed. But to be fair, Assad has been at it for over four years, so Russia shouldn't be counted out yet. It still has a shot at closing the gap and coming from behind to"win." [2]

The Russian warplanes used a classic "double-tap" attack, bombing the hospital twice, the strikes hitting ten minutes apart. This is the same technique French navy frogmen used when they planted two bombs on the hull of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, to keep Greenpeace from interfering with a French nuclear bomb "test" in the Pacific Ocean. The second explosion sealed the doom of Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese photographer and father of young children. The CIA did the same in a murderous attack on a ship moored in the Havana, Cuba, harbor. And the U.S. routinely does it in drone attacks in Pakistan, for example, waiting for rescue workers and neighbors to start digging out the rubble to blow them up too. [3]

Today we learned there's a new contestant in the Who Can Bomb The Most Hospitals Sweepstakes: Saudi Arabia. They just demolished a hospital in Yemen. And the icing on the cake is that it was another Médecins Sans Frontières hospital! How exciting is that! That's worth Bonus Points. Apparently the Saudis took inspiration from the U.S. attack on the MSF trauma center in Kunduz, Afghanistan, at the beginning of October. [4]

This follows the Saudi bombing of two wedding parties in less than a week, killing over 160 people. And numerous aerial attacks on mosques, marketplaces, apartment buildings and homes, all designed to reinstall the ousted "president" and successor to long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, on the seat of government. (If Yemen can even be said to have a government, which is doubtful.)

The U.S. and Western governments and media generally have been supportive or neutral about the Saudi crimes, with no outrage at all, whereas they have waxed indignant over Russian airstrikes killing Syrian civilians (dozens so far vs. several thousand Yemenis killed by the Saudis with their U.S.-bought aircraft and cluster bombs). I guess I'm going to sound like a broken record (you're not too young to know what a "record" is, or what happens when they "skip," are you?) but here goes: Man, the U.S. and its lackeys sure are hypocritical, criticizing others for doing what they do, applying double-standards and bloviating in trumped-up "moral outrage."

There, I said it. Just for the record.

1] The hospital the U.S. bombed on October 3rd, the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan, was the only trauma center in that entire region of Afghanistan. Now, thanks to an hour long assault on it by a U.S. aerial gunship, it is closed. Thus is the U.S. "nation-building" in Afghanistan. See my four previous essays on the matter between October 5th and October 9th, below.

2] According to an interview with a doctor at the Idlib hospital this morning on the U.S. government domestic radio propaganda network NPR, on the program "Morning Edition," the Idlib hospital has now been bombed a total of eighteen times. I'm presuming for now the person really was a doctor from the hospital, not an actor or liar. Given the long history of U.S. government and media deceptions, and media complicity with CIA disinformation, perhaps there should be an asterisk here. On the other hand, the nature and practices of the Assad regime give great credence to the story.

Here's something you probably forgot. When the protests first started, one of the first victims of Assad's regime was a teenager seized for painting anti-regime graffiti. He was tortured for a week or so, including having holes drilled in his kneecaps and his penis hacked off. When his mutilated corpse was returned to his family, they were warned to keep it secret, or else. But they defied the terror regime.

We also know that drilling holes in people's bones is a favorite technique of the torturers employed by Assad the Sadistic Slayer.

3] Last month the commander of the French state terrorist team that blew up the Rainbow Warrior "apologized" for murdering Pereira, which he insists, against all the evidence, was an "accident." Now he expects to be forgiven by his victim's family, to whom he addressed his "apology" through a media interview. (Not "man" enough to speak to them directly, it seems, or even write a letter. Classy, Bub.)

The terrorist, Jean-Luc Kister, said “I have the blood of an innocent man on my conscience, and that weighs on me.” On the other hand, he still justifies his terrorist attack 30 years later: “We had to obey orders, we were soldiers.” (Ever hear of a Nazi murderer who didn't say the same?)

Unsurprisingly selfish, he seeks absolution from his victims so his conscience will stop bothering him. Dishonestly, he's still pretending there was no lethal intent- even though the boat was full of people as the French well knew when they bombed it. The Greenpeace people rejected his "apology."

The French secret police planted a spy in Greenpeace's New Zealand office ahead of the terrorist attack. See "The Bombing of the Rainbow Warrior," by Greenpeace. Greenpeace says the bombs were plastic explosives wrapped in plastic, whereas Wikipedia says limpet mines, which are magnetic anti-ship mines. The Wikipedia article is more detailed than the Greenpeace description, with many footnotes and links. Read the Greenpeace description first, to get the general picture. There are also more details by Greenpeace at "The crew then and now." For details of the terrorists and French secret police infiltrators, see "A beret, a bottle of Beaujolais and a baguette," Greenpeace.

The second explosion came 7 minutes after the first. Naturally, the crew didn't think there would be a second bomb, so they didn't immediately evacuate after the first blast.

Here's a fact that proves the French had lethal intent: If the French didn't want anyone to be hurt, the way to go would be to call in a warning that bombs on the hull were going off in ten minutes. That's what people who truly want to avoid injuring people do, like the despised Weather Underground and other demonized left-wing groups did.

But then, people motivated by values of fighting injustice and oppression operate by different principles than professional killers do.

4] The BBC reported the Saudi atrocity this morning. Tactfully omitted by the BBC were the facts that the Saudis used their U.S.-made warplanes and their U.S.-made bombs in the attack. And that the U.S. is backing the 6-month-long Saudi aerial terror campaign against Yemen, the poorest country in the region. But the "United Kingdom" always goes easy on Saudi atrocities- and backs the U.S. too of course. They've been loyal lackeys of the U.S. since World War II. And as for Saudi Arabia, there's oil under that sand, Guv'nor!

Murderer Francois Mitterrand, former French president and international gangster, ordered the terrorist bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. (He was also a bigamist, with a "secret" second family the French press was forbidden by law from mentioning. Just saying...)