Trump announces US military strikes in Syria
Fox News reports President Donald Trump on Friday night announced that he authorized military strikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The decision follows a chemical attack from the Assad military on a town near the Syrian capital last weekend.
The United States launched the response, along with assistance from France and the United Kingdom, Trump stated from the White House about 9 p.m. EDT.
“A short time ago, I ordered the United States armed forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Trump said from the White House. “A combined operation with the armed forces of France and the United Kingdom is now under way. We thank them both.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said the operation was targeting the “clandestine chemical arsenal” in Syria.
British Prime Minister Theresa May also issued a statement. “This evening I have authorized British armed forces to conduct coordinated and targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian Regime’s chemical weapons capability and deter their use,” May said.
Trump’s announcement was closely preceded by reports of explosions in Damascus, the Syrian capital. There have been multiple strikes against at least two sites, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, said.
“Important infrastructure was destroyed,” Dunford said, noting that sites associated with the Syrian chemical weapons program were both “targeted and destroyed.”
Trump said the U.S. is prepared to “sustain” pressure on Assad until he ends what the president called a criminal pattern of killing his own people with internationally banned chemical weapons.
But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis labeled the strikes “right now” as being “a one-time shot,” adding that no additional attacks are currently planned.
President Trump made it very clear this is not an escalation, but a harsh warning that the use of WMDs will never be accepted, and shamed the Russians and Iranians for being party their use. The talking heads will natter on, but the fact is Assad used chemical warfare against civilians again, and this time with US troops in the AO. That can not and will not be tolerated.
Category: Syria
Hold my beer
Hope our forces return safe.
I’m finding it interesting that when Syria last launched chemical weapons during Obama’s reign of terror and he responded with a strongly worded line in the sand nonsense then did nothing the left was all up in arms about how tough he was, how we couldn’t condone chemical weapons etc. Now when Assad did it again and President Trump actually did something the left is trying to criticize him without looking foolish and are twisting themselves into knots doing it.
The same reason they talked endlessly over every one of GW’s verbal foibles but completely ignored any by Obama.
Democrat = Responsible, reasonable, capable.
Republican = Moronic, bumbling, barely literate.
You have those descriptions backwards!!!
Send your sarco-meter to the cal lab, desert.
The Russkiis are claiming that their ADA worked this time (Need to know more intensifies).
The Russians also claimed that the British staged the chemical attack themselves, which is pretty funny.
Hard to blame a country that is banning “knives” and sending people to jail for defending their own house for using chemical weapons in another country and not look silly.
That’s a step up- just the other day they were saying it didn’t happen at all.
At the Pentagon presser this morning the Marine three star said all the Tomahawks reached their targets. Russia’s vaunted S-400 Growlers are looking pretty lame.
I’m good with that.
I watched the press “meet” with SecDef Mattis and GEN Dunsford. It was straightforward, no nonsense, and reporters don’t know how to ask a question properly these days. Reporters also need to learn to pay attention when someone is speaking.
The C-Span video has a sound issue but the sound starts at about 38 seconds.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?444080-1/secretary-mattis-confident-syria-responsible-chemical-attack
I bet I learned more about what happened there leaving it on Mute than the reporters did by asking questions and getting responses.
If Japan had given the US a few days warning in 1941, I suspect that they would have had a tough time locating the Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and the other US ships moored at Pearl Harbor on December 7th. But the Syria strike wasn’t so much about destroying anything as it was messaging. Some ka-booms and a mass of twisted steel and a mess of concrete piles beat banging a shoe on a table or drawing an imaginary red line. Speaking of messaging, Trump’s tweet still has me shaking my head. Dahell was he thinking?
And in a week we’ll be hearing about how these facilities being out of commission is killing thousands because all they made were pesticides and fertilizer and now their crops are dying.
Don’t pay attention to pesticides, being organophosphates, are essentially nerve agents.
That’s the problem with this stuff. Like the uranium enrichment facilities in Iran, it cane be used for both peaceful and weaponry uses.
It’s just bug spray.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Bhopal-disaster
See with Trump’s tweets you have to specify when you say something like that.
But I’m also guessing that Syria actually believed the Russians and Iranians would protect them and we wouldn’t attack them because of that.
Despite all the heads-up, macht nicht.
I am wondering if -that- was 100% intentional. Because that would be one heck of a message of “The Russians can’t protect you. Their gear can’t protect you. If we want to hit you, you’re gonna got hit.”
The russian ships left harbor, to no effect. -That- will now look like “running away”.
Trump -humiliated- them. They will certainly seek payback. But they will have to do so knowing that we just demonstrated a capability they probably did not believe. And thier customers and clients will know it too. This falls on the heels of Russia losing several hundred folks in a rather badly lopsided engagement a little while back.
Even if the whole thing was sheer dumb luck, it still worked.
Their response will likely be information war or espionage related. Or, funding a proxy, who hates our guts, to attack us.
Their economy is fragile, depending on petroleum extraction for most of their major revenue. That stuff is very fragile, and hard to rebuild quickly. And it is very, very combustible.
He was smart to bring in allies on the strikes.
Would it be appropriate to say that this was done to prevent a real war, as well as a warning to Assad?
And to show the resolve of three members of the UN Security Council.
I just can’t figure out why, since the US had announced we were leaving ASAP, Assad would use chemical weapons against a civilian population, in a civil war he had almost won.
That doesn’t make alot of sense to me.
It’s because the US announced it was leaving, Uncle.
the US leaving the AO is just what he would want. And the number one guaranteed way to keep us there is to use WMDs.
Thats where the disconnect is for me. I doesn’t make sense. Unless Syria is acting solely as a foil by proxy for Russia.
And that would raise the question for me of just what kind of control Putin has over Assad that he could essentially order his suicide and get compliance.
Aha! The perfect ploy for Putin, making Assad his puppet to gain control of that part of the world – almost the plot of a really intricately woven spy novel… except that there is more than just one person involved.
The backside of it is that the Russians pulled their ships out when the looming bombardment was announced.
Note that many of the powers in that region make seemingly dumb decisions, again and again.
Israel on the brink of conceding major territory and agreeing to a Palestinian state alongside Israel? Reject the offer of 99% of your demands and start an Intifada, ensuring maximum targeting of civilians.
USA making serious noises about WMDs and making serious threats to return to Iraq and finish what started in 91? Screw aroud with a shell-game over WMDs and piss them off until they decide to go all-in and finish the job.
Those are not exceptional cases.
The attack was staged to keep the US tied up and wasting money in Syria. Would have been more appropriate to hit Soros mansion.
not to mention that I don’t see the moral difference between killing 1000 with Sarin vs. Killing them with bullets or bombs.
If the humanitarian crises of killing 1000 people was the deciding factor in the US response what did it matter what weapon was used?
In one respect there is no moral difference. Dead is dead.
However, use of WMD (chem/bio/nuke/rad) is generally regarded as a huge escalation in the scale of conflict. Most nations would prefer to see that genie remain in his bottle with the cork fully in place.
I suspect this latter is why the POTUS chose – unlike his feckless predecessor – to actually do something when faced with documented Syrian WMD use.
Gassing civilians directly or gassing military forces near civilians,
Versus targeting military facilities where few civilians would be expected to be present.
We did not carpet-bomb a neighborhood. It would have been much cheaper and easier to have done so.
Obviously they have never been at Austin’s Joe Bob’s Burrito Heaven Days when you get a three lb beef and bean burrito for ten bucks !!!
Eat one day and gas the population for the next three days !!!
“…and this time with US troops in the AO>
You mean in Syria?
That’s where we’re hunting what’s left of ISIS.
I do not believe morality, while frequently invoked in any discussion about the use of chemical weapons, is at issue. Gas is not an effective military weapon. It is an effective weapon of terror when used against those w/o protection from it. Against modern armies its power is mainly psychological. It is opposed, I believe, b/c its acceptance portends its use against unprotected populations on a greater scale than we have seen thus far. People are rightly afraid of gas and the Syrian strike repeats the message that if gas is used somewhere, it can be used any where, and we are opposed to that. Consequently, if gas is used, the retribution will be swift even if we cannot say with certainty who used it and how.
Actually, some chem weapons are hellishly effective military weapons as well. Not only are they quite lethal, but they also are effective at area denial.
Sarin is one such agent. One can be exposed via either absorption of the liquid form via the skin or inhalation of sarin vapor. It’s typically dispensed as an aerosol, so the droplets wet things – but has a high volatility as well. So it also produces lethal vapor that can permeate and accumulate on cloth, then expose others.
Sarin’s also fairly persistent; areas contaminated with sarin tend to stay contaminated for a while. This means operations in those areas have to be done in MOPP 4 – which truly sucks the Grand Wazoo.
Bottom line: for the US, there is huge military utility in strongly discouraging any use of chem/bio/rad/nuke weapons by potential future adversaries.
Historical anecdote: during the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein’s Iraq had extensive stocks of chem (sarin) and biological weapons. However, rumor has it there was a damn good reason that Hussein never made much if any use of chem/bio. As I heard it, we discretely advised Iraq through 3rd party diplomatic channels that if they used chem or bio, we’d go nuclear shortly afterwards.
That I do believe.
I distinctly remember Bush 1 saying that if he used chemical weapons the resulting strike would be totally catastrophic for him and his entire country.
He used them on the Kurds!
Just like Miss Muffet……Saddam also had Kurds in his way 😉
Hondo,
I remember being told that Sarin (AKA “GB”) is a fairly non-persistent agent at above-freezing temperatures. It is reactive and breaks down readily. It is used for attacks where threat forces will attack through the gassed area in the near future. Fuzzy memory, but 15 minutes to an hour is what I recall.
VX is persistent, very much so, especially in any low area, area lacking airflow, and/or area lacking sunlight. Like weeks to months or more. This is used for area denial, against key nuclear weapon storage areas, command and control centers, etc.
So far it seems that the strikes had the intended consequence and that those in on the decision properly anticipated the likely outcomes. It sure is nice to have adults in charge again.
Sparks fly at the UN.
Nikki Haley
That’ll leave a mark, Barry!
That’s gotta just infuriate the oblowme clown to no end to hear President Trump continue to point out the difference between a head up the ass liberal with a pussy where his balls should be and a leader with a pair of cojones…
2012
“What if I…no, what happens when…no, what about…no, no, and no. Damn. This is so hard.”
“Sir, what if you just talk about doing something?”
“Go on. I’m all ears…Dahell are you smiling about? If that’s a reaction to my ears….”
“(Cough) As I was saying, sir, you can go on a friendly news show–say, 60 Minutes–and talk about Assad, that he has to go.”
“I like it. Go on.”
“You can mention a red line–that use of bio or chem weapons would be our red line. Again, it would sound tough but you wouldn’t have to do anything.”
“Dammit. That’s initiative! Let’s get it!”
2013: Assad’s regime kills 1400 people using chemical weapons
“Where’s that idiot?”
“Which one. sir?”
“The one who gave me that red line idea!”
“He’s no longer with us, sir. I think he’s teaching at Harvard.”
There you have it. I’m reasonably certain that is how it all went down.
Much thanks goes to Germany for their invaluable contributions !