The British media has been caught yet again with its pants down in the effort to promote a NATO-led assault on Syria, with the revelation that BBC News used a years-old photo of dead Iraqi children to depict victims of an alleged government assault on the town of Houla.

In a report issued hrs after the massacre, the BBC utilised a picture that was first published over nine years ago and taken in Al Mussayyib, Iraq. The picture exhibits a little one skipping over the dead bodies of hundreds of Iraqi children who have been transported from a mass grave to be identified.

The caption utilized by the BBC to describe the image stated that the image was offered by an activist and “believed to show the bodies of youngsters in Houla awaiting burial”. After the “mistake” was exposed, the BBC altered their unique article but did not concern a retraction.

The photographer who took the unique image, Marco Di Lauro, posted on his Facebook web page, “Somebody is making use of my images as a propaganda against the Syrian government to demonstrate the massacre.” Di Lauro told the London Telegraph he was “astonished” the BBC had failed to check out to authenticity of the image.

“What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn’t check the sources and it is prepared to publish any picture sent it by any person: activist, citizen journalist or no matter what. That is all,” mentioned Di Lauro.

Info surrounding the massacre at Houla clearly suggests that the murders have been carried out by death squads and not shelling by government tanks. Video footage of the child victims (warning – graphic) seems to show gunshot wounds to the face and stab wounds. None of the victims seem to have lost any limbs.

As RT reports, “Many of the victims have been executed at point blank-range,” a simple fact inconsistent with the explanation that tank shelling was responsible for the bloodshed. It is equally as probable that terrorist death squads, responsible for quite a few deadly bombings in Syria that have killed scores of individuals, have been accountable for the massacre.

As Tony Cartalucci writes, “Why on earth would the Syrian Government want to kill Syrian young children? And even if for some purpose they did – why would they do so in a way much more or much less guaranteed to attract international condemnation and renewed calls for intervention? In other words, ‘cui bono‘?

“Who really advantages from this atrocity – and who does not? Certainly the insurgents and their foreign backers advantage. and the Syrian Government most surely does not! Given that latest bomb atrocities in Damascus have been blamed – virtually universally – on extremist opponents of the Assad Government, isn’t it at least plausible they’re also behind this most recent horror?”

No matter what the truth behind events over the weekend, the mass media has the moment once again prostrated itself as a rolling propaganda mouthpiece for the claims of dubious anonymous “activists” who have confirmed to be adept at staging propaganda time and time again.

This is by no means the first time the British media has salaciously claimed that Assad’s forces are indiscriminately killing babies and youngsters.

Back in February, the London Independent reported, “President Assad’s security forces have indiscriminately killed scores of newborn babies in Homs this week.”

As we documented, the resource for this claim did not originate in Syria but in London, from an organization known as Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which is minor a lot more than a lobbying group with intimate ties to the UK Foreign Office.

The propaganda instrument of falsely accusing governments of killing infants and youngsters is not new to the middle east. Prior to the first Gulf War, then largest public relations firm in the world Hill & Knowlton crafted a hoax centered close to the lie that Saddam Hussein’s troops have been ransacking hospitals in Kuwait and throwing babies out of incubators. Despite later on being verified to be a comprehensive fabrication, George H.W. Bush administration aggressively pushed the story as component of their develop-up to war.

Sources and more information:

• Lizzie Phelan: BBC illegally uses image of Iraqi victims as propaganda against the Syrian government

• Oops, BBC: Iraq photo to illustrate Houla massacre?

• Russian arms shipment en route to Syria..Syria condemned for Houla massacre

• Syrian rebels share Houla blame, says Russia – BBC News