Last night Donald Trump ordered an attack on Syria. In less than 100 days, Trump has taken more action against Assad than obama did in eight years. The attack was appropriate, measured and proportional. It sent a message.
To Assad and to North Korea.
Trump did not have to set a red line and then walk away from it.
President Obama’s decision to hold off on military action against the Assad regime after signaling that it was on the cards in response to last summer’s chemical weapons attack made the U.S. “appear weak,” former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said on Thursday.
“My raw emotion, watching it from the outside, was just embarrassment,” he said.
“Sometimes the certainty of an action is far more powerful than the severity of an action,” Hayden told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ annual forum in Washington.
“We’ve made everything uncertain, which actually makes you appear weak at some times, but also then demands that when you want to appear strong, you may have to be overly severe to overcome the uncertainty. It’s just bad all around.”
It seems the evidence was slam dunk. I watched retired Four Star general Jack Keane say we had military personnel on the ground who witnessed the aircraft drop the bomb and that we have radar tracking that traced the aircraft departure from and return to this targeted airfield. This is largely confirmed here.
Syrian fixed-wing aircraft dropped chemical weapons on civilians in Idlib earlier this week, two U.S. military officials told NBC News.
The U.S. military saw the aircraft on a radar and watched them drop the bombs, the officials said. The radar soon picked up the flashes and booms in the rebel-held area of Syria.
And from the NY Times
Witnesses described how Tuesday’s attack unfolded. That morning, a network of observers was, as usual, tracking the skies to warn residents and rescuers of possible airstrikes. They spotted Syrian aircraft and sent out warnings on walkie-talkies.
Syrian Su-22 aircraft were then seen circling above Khan Sheikhoun at 6:47 a.m. and again at 6:51 a.m. One of the observers — based on long experience — believed that the planes might be carrying a chemical payload.
“Guys, tell people to wear masks,” he warned.
It remains intriguing that Syria was able to mount a chemical weapon attack as both John Kerry and barack obama assured us that all chemical weapons had been removed from Syria.
Earlier in the day Secretary of State Tillerson hinted at this:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that “steps are underway” on an international coalition to pressure Bashar Assad from power, as President Trump was being briefed on military options for Syria – though what specific steps the U.S. and its allies might take in response to the latest deadly chemical weapons attack remained unclear.
America’s top diplomat addressed the Syria crisis a day after Trump declared in the Rose Garden that the chemical strike would not be tolerated. Tillerson pointedly said Russia should “consider carefully” its support for the Assad regime, while calling for an international effort to defeat ISIS in Syria, stabilize the country and ultimately work with partners through a political process that leads to Assad leaving power.
Asked if the U.S. would organize a coalition to remove Assad, Tillerson said: “Those steps are underway.”
One wonders where the chemical agents originated. It was suggested that Saddam moved his WMD’s to Syria– by Obama DNI James Clapper:
WASHINGTON — The director of a top U.S. spy agency said Tuesday that he believes that material from Iraq’s illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.
The official, James Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the U.S. invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq.
“I think people below the Saddam-Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse,” Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.
He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.”
A spokesman for Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.
Other U.S. intelligence officials said Clapper’s theory is among those being pursued in Iraq by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector who is leading the U.S. effort to uncover the weapons cited by the Bush administration as the major reason for going to war against Iraq.
Clapper’s comments came as the CIA prepared to defend its prewar assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and that it sought to reconstitute its nuclear program. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, has written a letter to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence saying the agency will be ready to provide an assessment by late November.
In the letter, the contents of which were described by several intelligence officials on Tuesday, Tenet proposed that a team headed by John McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, provide a briefing for the committee after Nov. 20, when the agency’s internal review is expected to be completed.
Clapper’s agency is responsible for interpreting satellite photographs and other imagery.
Especially as the sarin gas precursors were taken from Syria.
The Trump administration’s apparent acceptance of the Syrian regime may well have been another Trump ruse to inspire Assad to commit an act which necessitated a response.
An unhappy Russia has responded:
“President [Vladimir] Putin regards the US attacks on Syria as an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that,” Pesov told reporters.
Fox News just reported that Russia has also shut down the “deconfliction channel.”
If nothing else, this should put down once and for all the idiotic Trump-Russian collusion meme. There is a new sheriff in town.
Update:
For our liberal friends, Trump’s new theme song
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.