And So They Lied

Peter Hitchens writes:

When Vladimir Putin pointed out that our supposed allies in Syria include people who cut their dead foes open and bite into their entrails, many media organisations treated this as an allegation or rumour, using words such as ‘reportedly’.

Why? Existence of a film of the event was first reported by Time magazine on May 12. Time interviewed two colleagues of the man involved, whose name is Khalid Hamad and who also calls himself Abu Sakkar. They confirmed the story.

Then Abu Sakkar was interviewed on video. Far from denying the action, he tried to justify it by saying he had found pictures of atrocities on the dead Syrian soldier’s phone. The organisation Human Rights Watch is also reliably reported  to have authenticated the film.

Sakkar belongs to the Farouq Brigades, a so-called ‘moderate Islamist’ group of the type David Cameron wants to arm. So, as Mrs Merton might ask, why do the largely pro-intervention British media hesitate to accept that the story is true?

And:

As we are now going to talk to the Taliban, will all those who incited, supported and demanded the continuation of a war we were bound to lose please apologise to the families of the dead – especially the families of the British servicemen and women, lions sent by donkeys into pointless danger?

Talks were available from the start, but George W. Bush and the Blair creature (donkeys if ever I saw them) were too anxious to conceal their own weakness and ignorance of international affairs to listen.

These men should be living out the rest of their lives in penitential Trappist monasteries, praying for  forgiveness and cleaning lavatories.

Yet they still dare to show their faces in public (and in the case of Blair, are paid for it). They would not dig. They dared not rob. And so they lied to please the mob.