Here are 10 of the worst lies that have been peddled by the West regarding Syria, with the aim of giving people living in Western countries an entirely false view of the conflict that has been raging in the Middle East country since 2011.

As in the case of previous US-led wars against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya the lies told in relation to the ongoing conflict in Syria have been quite outrageous.

1. The West has failed to intervene in Syria - and that's been the problem

This oft-repeated claim (only last week the Washington Post was lamenting "the disastrous non-intervention in Syria") is a complete inversion of the truth.

Even without directly bombing the Syrian government in 2013 (as the uber-hawks wanted), the west has intervened massively in Syria, by funding, supporting and training violent anti-government "rebels," many of whose weapons just happened to end up in the hands of ISIS. The west not only ignited this conflict (see here), they've also helped to keep it stoked for over five years.

Brendan O'Neill had the perfect riposte to the neocon/faux-left "If only we'd intervened in Syria" brigade:

Western intervention is the ultimate author of the nightmare in northern Iraq and Syria. Do something? You already did something; you did this, you made this horror.

2. The conflict is the fault of wicked Assad (and Russia for supporting him)

The dominant western narrative says that the conflict was started by Assad after the "evil dictator" clamped down on peaceful protests against his rule in March 2011. The reality is that peaceful pro-democracy protests were hijacked at a very early stage by those determined to provoke a violent response from the Syrian authorities. In the border city of Daraa, where the conflict effectively began, seven police officers were killed and the Ba'ath Party headquarters and a courthouse were torched.

In the first month of hostilities, no fewer than eighty-eight soldiers were killed.

Assad was faced with a violent insurrection against the Syrian state - by terrorists - many of whom came from outside the country. Was he expected simply to allow these "rebels" take power (as the west was demanding) even though there was no evidence they had widespread popular support? The question we need to ask is what would the US government do if faced by a violent insurrection by foreign-backed "rebels" who were killing officials of the US State and blowing up government buildings. Its response would, I'm sure, be even more ruthless than the Syrian government's has been.

3.President Assad enjoys little support in Syria

Whenever a country is targeted for regime change by the US Empire, its leader is de-legitimised. We're told that said leader has no popular support and only remains in power because he's a "brutal dictator." But there's plenty of evidence that Assad, whatever western elites may think of him, has considerable support in his country. In early 2012, a poll showed 55 percent of Syrians wanted their President to stay. When the Guardian's veteran foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele - a man who knows Syria very well - wrote a piece about this entitled "Most Syrians back President Assad, but you'd never know this from western media," he was attacked by Imperial Truth Enforcers.

In 2014, Assad won a landslide victory in the country's first multi-party Presidential election for fifty years.

Again, this wasn't given much, if any, coverage in the west. Neither was a poll in July 2015 showing that 47 percent of Syrians thought Assad had a positive influence on matters in Syria compared to 35 percent thinking the same about the western-backed Free Syrian Army and 26 percent about the Syrian Opposition Coalition.

The further proof that Assad has widespread support is that he's still in power after five and a half years of war. Should we really be surprised that millions of Syrians prefer his secular rule - in which the rights of women and all religious minorities are respected - to that of the medieval head-choppers of ISIS and fanatical jihadists?

Of course, for the west's faux-democrats, the views of Syrians who do support their President are ignored. They're regarded as "un-people" because they have the "wrong" opinions. The only views that count in Syria are those that chime with western regime changers.

4. Assad has made no concessions and isn't interested in peace and reconciliation

In fact, Assad and the Syrian government have repeatedly shown a desire to make concessions to try and end the conflict. In 2012, a new constitution, which ended the Ba'ath Party's decades-old monopoly of political power, was put to the Syrian people, who endorsed it with an 89.42 percent vote. Article 8 of the new constitution states: "The political system of the state shall be based on the principle of political pluralism, and exercising power democratically through the ballot box."

Again, little if any coverage of this significant reform was reported in the western media. Neither has there been much coverage of the various amnesties Assad has granted to "rebels" (the latest in July this year) or of the government's National Reconciliation Programme. This wouldn't fit the "official narrative" of an uncompromising President, only interested in "killing his own people."

5. Syria's conflict is simply sectarian

This "Its Sunni versus Shia/Alawite" narrative ignores the fact that Sunnis not only serve (in large numbers), but also hold key positions in the Syrian Arab Army. Sunnis also hold important positions in the Syrian government, as National Interest details here.