When asked by newscaster Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News if the Assad regime accepted the U.S administration’s expression of "regret" for the "unintentional loss of life", Shaaban said “No” because they believed the aggression of the US warplanes on the “Syrian Arab Army” positions in Deir ez-Zor was pre-planned.
In an interview with Russia Today (RT), Shaaban declared that claims by Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, that the attack was an unintentional error were untrue.
Shaaban attempted to justify her accusations by saying that the U.S. planes stopped bombing the area after ISIS terrorists were able to take control over the position and said that their actions did not reflect an error was made by the US aircraft involved.
The U.S. claims that coalition forces believed they were striking an ISIS fighting position they had been tracking for a significant amount of time before the strike and that the bombing of the area was halted immediately when coalition officials were informed by Russian officials that it was possible the personnel and vehicles being targeted were part of the Assad military.
Shaaban also made claims that the US-led coalition had not targeted ISIS positions before the Russian intervention last year, but instead had assisted the terrorist group in spreading all over Syria — a farfetched statement considering it was while Assad alone claimed to be fighting ISIS that the group managed to spread in Syria and Iraq.
When Newman asked Shaaban why aid was not being delivered to the starving civilians in the besieged areas of Aleppo, as one of the conditions of the temporary truce called for, Shaaban answered by saying that all of Syria was receiving deliveries of aid.
Perhaps she should deliver that message personally to the drivers of the trucks who have been sitting at the Turkish border waiting for a week for the regime’s permission to move.
According to her all Syrians are already being taken care of by the regime.
But we already know that when Shaaban and her boss refer to “Syrians” the group of which they speak only contains those who support or tolerate Assad and his corrupt and brutal regime.
Every Syrian who falls outside of those narrow parameters belongs to the much larger group Assad and his mouthpiece refer to as “terrorists” — including children who by virtue of their current location may possibly grow up to oppose him someday.
To those whose priority is maintaining the “sovereignty” of Assad’s dictatorship, even the babies born in Syria are expendable.
But the interview really began to go south when Newman started asking Shaaban about the Syrian regime’s use of chlorine gas on Syrian children.
As the devil’s mouthpiece began her typically evasive verbal bobbing and weaving, she responded to Newman by saying, “You know, excuse me, I am the one who is living in Syria, I don’t care about false reports.”
She changed the subject to talk about how 800 Syrians were killed in six cities in Syria the previous week by terrorist explosions and how “Not a single condemnation came from western countries, or from western governments.”
When asked again “Have you used chlorine gas on your own people?” Shaaban answered, “We, you know, we are Syrian and we have been fighting with our people, against terrorists and against all the regional and international powers supporting terrorists.”
“But these children are not terrorists,” Newman countered.
“These children are not terrorists. The doctor I spoke to a few days ago, the teacher I spoke to yesterday, who’s coming under attack. These are not terrorists. And you can’t deny that you have used chlorine gas attacks, because you have!”
“Excuse me, if you insist on asking accusatory questions, it is your problem. Our children are taken care of by our government,” Shaaban said. “Your reports are irrelevant to our reality.”
And therein lays the real problem in Assad’s version of Syria.
It is not the reports that are irrelevant, because the reports are coming from those inside Syria who are living the reality of Assad’s war against the Syrian people.
It is the actual reality that is irrelevant to the regime’s version of a perceived reality which has little to do with facts on the ground — like the barrel bombs that have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and chlorine gas that is dropped on innocent children and starvation sieges imposed on areas they are trying to empty of every form of life that does not support Assad.
When pressed to answer the legitimate questions being asked of her, Shaaban once again evaded the questions by accusing Newman of “rehashing what I’ve heard a thousand times on your media” and then pointing her finger at everyone else but the Assad regime.
In Shaaban’s version of “reality” it is the world’s conspirators who are responsible for destroying the majority of Syria’s infrastructure, killing hundreds of thousands who conveniently once again become Assad’s “Syrians” once they are dead and driving millions to become homeless refugees who Assad insists still love and support him and are always welcome to come back home.
When Shaaban says “Excuse me, I am the one living in Syria” from her isolated bubble of privilege in Damascus, she totally dismisses the millions of Syrians whose experiences of living outside of Assad’s parameters have been a literal hell on earth.
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