Theresa May, Star of Stage, Screen and Parliament

Image: This is what "bringing democracy to Syria" looks like.

Readers, please do not mistake the levity in this post to mean that I see the whole Syria issue as trivial, but some of the players, particularly the UK, are coming across as ridiculously overacting their parts, and my funny bone picks it up like radar.

In a dramatic speech to the OPCW, PM May's mouthpiece lays it on too thick, and Shakespeare would certainly have mocked that "she protesteth too much":

• "... shocking violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention in Syria...despicable and barbaric ...the Syrian Regime has an abhorrent record of using chemical weapons against its own people...This is shameful ..."

"Against his own people" has become a useless mantra that merely harkens back to the proven lies of the Bush administration about Saddam Hussein. Why do they persist in reminding us of that particular fabrication when they want us to believe them now?

And then another big lie:

• "It was not about interfering in a civil war. And it was not about regime change."

Well, maybe it isn't anymore, but it certainly was about fomenting civil war and it was about regime change - carried over from the failed effort of the Obama regime. But when failure becomes so obvious, I guess it's necessary to change the story on that too.

And especially to tell the OPCW specifically what to see and what to believe:

• "Allies identified a specific and limited set of targets. They were:
•     a chemical weapons storage and production facility
•     a key chemical weapons research centre and
•     a military bunker involved in chemical weapons attacks ...

Oh gee, I wish the speech hadn't been closed with "Too many duck the responsibility ..." I tried so hard to move past the use of the word "despicable", though I could hear Daffy Duck so very clearly.  I've placed the YouTube video at the bottom of this page in case you don't know what I'm referring to.

What the UK wants us to believe is that Syria's military are so stupid that they don't know how to hide their chemical weapons stashes. They put them right out there where they could be made a record of, and so that the enemy would know exactly where to strike. Amazing!

But Assad has never struck me as being stupid.

Now here's the kicker: Trump has announced he wants out. So let's think about that.

If the US had planned to get out, and if the US-supported terror groups had stockpiles of chemical weapons, identifiable as coming from the US, France or Britain, what's the one thing they would want to do before signing off on Syria?

CNN: Chemical weapons experts blocked from Syrian attack site, UK says

CNN implies that Syria and Russia wouldn't let the OPCW in before now. But later on reports:

• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the OPCW team's arrival was hampered by the weekend airstrikes, state media RIA Novosti reported. 

Which sounds much more plausible since they couldn't go in while France, England and the US  were bombarding the area.
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The CNN videos fail to demonstrate the effects of any chemical attack; instead they show laughing, playing children while all the drama exudes from the TV talking heads. Those women can join May in auditions for the next big Hollywood blockbuster.

Adding to the (intended?) confusion, CNN admits in yet another article that:

• Syria's ambassador to the United Nations told a UN Security Council meeting Tuesday that the OPCW team could travel to Douma on Wednesday if a UN security team there determines that it's safe to do so. Ambassador Bashar Jaafari said a UN security team had entered Douma Tuesday afternoon.

Maybe some perspective on the "chemical attack" can be found in an article by Robert Fisk who was himself on the scene: 
Exclusive: Robert Fisk visits the Syria clinic at the centre of a global crisis
The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack