US manages American public opinion against Assad: Lawrence Davidson
Fri Jul 12, 2013 1:34PM GMT
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Interview with Lawrence Davidson
I mean essentially this sort of information that gets into the press, is a function of managing American public opinion and American public opinion has been managed to be against Assad..."
Press TV has conducted an interview with Lawrence Davidson, professor at West Chester University, about Russia accusing the United States and its Western allies of fabricating allegations over the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government.
What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: How do you feel about this entire chemical weapons issue? I know we have discussed this in the past but where does it stand at this point? Certainly it seems the US is trying to deny reality as said by Russian experts, as well as UN experts too?
Davidson: Well you know I think that the president gets weekly and sometimes daily security updates and what he gets is a function of investigations that as they work their way up the ladder become politically attuned to what's acceptable and what's not acceptable here in United States.
And this worked pretty well for Bush when it came to Iraq and it seems like the same procedure is going on for Obama in the case of Syria and elsewhere.
And so the intelligence information is skewed sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly in a direction of political acceptability. And that's really what you're seeing here. I mean so the White House can say the Syrian government is using sarin gas and now there is suspicion that no, it's not the government but it's the rebels, but the public if you went around and ask the American public about this, they would clearly have this notion of poison gas sort of connected now with Damascus.
Press TV: So then are you saying professor that in many ways the United States has done what it did before going to Iraq and has convinced people about WMDs of sorts?
Davidson: Sure. I mean essentially this sort of information that gets into the press, is a function of managing American public opinion and American public opinion has been managed to be against Assad and so of course Assad can be the only one who legitimately can be accused of using the gas.
AHK/KA