I’m struggling to follow all the news from Syria this week.

It’s a given that the chemical attack triggering the US response was a false flag operation designed to make Russia look bad. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s all over Facebook, and that many people just can’t be wrong. Plus, you know the old saying: where there’s smoke there’s probably sarin gas and you should definitely get the fuck away from there.

But this is where it gets confusing. Who conducted this false-flag operation? It had to be the US, right? But isn’t Donald Trump a Putin puppet? Doesn’t Vlad control the US President? Why would Putin sanction an attack on his own Syrian allies?

Look, even if this was all just a US Deep State plot designed to push Trump into war with Assad, wouldn’t Assad’s ally Putin just say nyet? Surely the Don needs to get his permission before bombing Syria.

So not a lot of this makes sense. Unless …

Could it be that the whole thing is a dastardly plot by Vlad Putin? Think who benefits. Trump prematurely shoots off his load, embroiling the US in a conflict it can’t possibly win. Result: a crippling and never-ending conflict that weakens the US and its standing in the world.

But who else benefits from a weakened US? China. North Korea. Germany? We all know how Germany’s leader detests Donald Trump (he refused to shake her hand!), and the Germans know a thing or two about poisonous gas. Sorry, was that going too far? I was referring to the use of mustard gas in World War One, obviously. What did you think I meant?

So it’s really anyone’s guess. It may seem obvious to some people that Putin’s mate Assad used chemical weapons on civilians, and that an inexperienced US President and leadership team reacted prematurely and without really thinking through the potential consequences of their actions, and that there isn’t anything particularly conspiratorial about the whole thing. Just a combination of grotesque evil, bumbling incompetence and foreign policy incoherence. Sure, some people might think that.

But that’s not what my friends on Facebook are telling me. There has to be more to this!