The Syrian cover-up

There’s something about the very existence of a large government-run crematorium just outside the once-civilized Syrian capital of Damascus that is enough to send shivers through the conscience of the civilized world.

Yesterday the U.S. State Department confirmed that such a thing exists, and that it has been used to dispose of the bodies of an estimated 50 prisoners a day, hanged at the nearby Saydnaya military prison.

“We believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place,” said Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs. He accused the Syrian government of sinking “to a new level of depravity.”

The civil war in Syria that has gone on since 2011 has claimed more than 400,000 lives and displaced millions of civilians. The world once again looked on in horror when last month a chemical attack killed at least 80 civilians, many of them children.

The Syrian military got a U.S. missile bombardment at a nearby airfield in response. But clearly one missile attack does not a foreign policy make, and so on the eve of President Trump’s first Mideast visit later this week clearly some State Department folks are doing their homework.

“We are appalled by the atrocities that have been carried out by the Syrian regime and these atrocities have been carried out seemingly with the unconditional support from Russia and Iran,” Jones said.

He added that in view of the new information on mass killings, Russia’s calls for “de-escalation zones” in Syria should be met with “skepticism.”

After all, wasn’t it Russia that vouched for Syria’s alleged “disposal” of its chemical weapons?

Yesterday’s disclosures amount to a very public rebuke of Russia, which surely must know of the mass atrocities being committed by its client state just as it knew about the existence of chemical weapons.