US missiles blast Syria; Trump demands 'end the slaughter'

[Ethan]

PALM BEACH, Fla. — The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria."

It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid.

Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens.

"Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared.

The U.S. strikes — 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter — hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said.

The attack killed some Syrians and wounded others, Talal Barazi, the governor of Syria's Homs province, told The Associated Press. He didn't give precise numbers.


Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. U.S. officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities.

Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression."

The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines."


U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, one of Syria's most important benefactors. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed in living up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles.

"Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said.

The U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday.

The USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday, April 7, 2017, from the Mediterranean Sea.
Photo Credit: DoD

The strike came as Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way.

"This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said.

Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II.


U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict.

"The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman. "It will be the regime's choice if there's any more, and it will be based upon their conduct going forward."

Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation.

Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him.

Shayrat Airfield
Photo Credit: DoD

Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces.

Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise."

The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes.

President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians.
Photo Credit: Alex Brandon/AP

Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan.

He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles.


The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders.

Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen."

The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority — arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here.


Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition.

Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Tillerson said of Assad, "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people."
http://www.militarytimes.com/articl...missiles-after-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack

 

[Ethan]

.I can't wait until I see a video documenting the murder of the criminal of the age

 

[Ethan]

Congressional leaders urge Trump for broader Syria strategy

WASHINGTON — In the wake of President Trump’s strike on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for deadly chemical weapons attacks, U.S. lawmakers want the commander-in-chief to spell out his broader strategy in Syria, and soon.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said he believes the airstrike on the Shayrat air base near Homs was a one-off. And yet, he said an extended effort against Syrian President Bashar Assad would require Trump to work closer with Congress.

“Definitely, and today is the beginning of that consultation, although I have had conversations throughout the night and this morning with them,” Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters on Friday afternoon. “If there’s going to be something more extensive occurring, they will be consulting with Congress.”

Corker, once considered for Trump’s secretary of state, said he received several calls from the administration during the course of the day Thursday, before and after Trump signed off on the strike at 4 p.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called Corker beforehand, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called in the middle, and Trump called afterward.

Trump's decision to strike Assad was a stark shift for a president who blasted intervention in Syria as hastening World War III, and he has been criticized for making an emotional decision to strike without a broader strategy. Even Corker, who praised the decision, described in emotional terms Trump’s public condemnation in the Rose Garden Thursday of the April 4 chemical attacks.

“It reflected that emotional connection that all of us have had to the people of Syria, the people we’ve seen in refugee camps, and the rebels we’ve met, and to me it was transformative, and I told him how proud I was of him and our country last night,” Corker said. “He shared with me how he shared it with the premier of China, and I think it was a pretty good moment.”

The Obama administration missed the opportunity to mount such a strike in 2013, he said.

On Thursday, Tillerson said “steps are underway” for the U.S. to do what Obama could not: organize a coalition to remove Assad. But the Syrian civil war is a complicated and bloody tangle of state and non-state actors, which would require Trump find a winning path where the Obama administration foundered.

Adding to the urgent need for a strategy, Tillerson visits Moscow next week, originally billed as a trip to heal U.S.-Russia relations. Shortly after the strikes were announced, Tillerson said Russia — whose military has been propping up Assad — had “failed in its responsibility” to deliver on a 2013 deal it helped broker to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

Of the visit, Corker said, “The table is set for a much more fruitful discussion next week.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said Trump now owes Congress a strategy to remove and indict Assad as a war criminal, and to bring the various parties together to end the six-year-old Syrian civil war. While there is no strategy now, Trump was justified in using military force to respond to an atrocity—and to that end, Cardin said, he was willing to overlook Trump’s rapid about-face.

“I look at what he did, and what was happening in Syria, so I understand the response,” Cardin said of Trump. “We need a coordinated strategy articulated by Mr. Trump as to what our policy is in Syria.”

As the strike took place, Cardin said a member of the National Security Council called to notify him and said there would be no intent to conduct further strikes.

“If there’s any continuing military operations, he doesn’t have any congressional authority to do what he did, so he needs to consult and submit to Congress,” Cardin said of Trump.

After senators exited a brief by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford on Capitol Hill on Friday afternoon, some were frustrated the presentation offered little in the way of next steps or a broader plan.

“There was some fairly important information in that briefing, but it was limited to the logistics of the attack itself,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., adding that Dunford punted on the question of whether Congress should have authorized the strike.

“Congress needs to authorize the strike, it’s our constitutional responsibility,” Murphy said.

While lawmakers voiced opposing views about whether Trump needed Congress to pass an AUMF covering strikes against Assad, Corker and a number of Republicans said there is no need to seek an AUMF.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the strike was justified to deter a regime willing to use chemical weapons while U.S. troops are fighting in Syria. Corker said an AUMF wasn’t needed because the strike was limited to respond to “the atrocities that were committed,” in the chemical attacks.

“I don’t think there’s an intent to carry this further,” Corker said. “They’ve got options, should Assad’s behavior continue to be as it is. I don’t think there’s an intent to escalate this.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voiced support, saying it demonstrates to the world America is leading again. Vice President Mike Pence called him Thursday night to explain the attack was related specifically to Assad’s use of chemical weapons.

“I think it was not only an important message to Assad, but to everybody else who may be wondering just what this new administration's going to be like,” McConnell said.

“If I were one of our Sunni Arab allies watching this, I'd be encouraged that America was back in the business of being more assertive, less passive. That does not mean you are going to send in the troops every time there is a skirmish somewhere, but I thought it was very reassuring.”

While McConnell described the strike in narrow terms, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have called for further military action to neutralize Assad’s air power.

Rubio said he was open to more extensive military action, but the administration’s “tactics have to be in furtherance of a strategy.”

“The events of April 4 were unforeseen, they happened and they had to be addressed, but the work of [drafting] a more comprehensive process continues and will be complete in short order,” Rubio said. “I would like there to be a strategy whose goal it is to remove Assad and defeat radical Islam in that region—and they’re interrelated.”
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/congressional-leaders-urge-trump-for-broader-syria-strategy

 

[Ethan]

Mattis offers blurred line on chemical weapons in Syria

WASHINGTON — Future use of chemical weapons in Syria will trigger a strong response from the United States, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said today — but just what constitutes a “chemical weapon” is unclear.

Mattis, making his first appearance in the Pentagon briefing room since taking the top job at the Department of Defense, offered strong words against the decision by the Assad government to use chemical weapons in an April 4 attack, saying there is “no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself.”

“I trust [Assad] regrets it now, considering the damage done to his air force, but he should think long and hard” before using such chemical weapons again, Mattis said.

In January 2016, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) declared that all of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile had been destroyed. But the U.S. has concluded the April 4 attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun involved the use of a nerve agent similar to sarin gas.

In response, the U.S. launched a series of Tomahawk missiles at the airfield from which the Syrian planes used in that bombing raid had taken off, a move officials have described as a proportional response designed to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again in the future.

Asked about previous uses of chlorine by the Assad government, Mattis acknowledged that has happened, but stressed that “this time it was not chlorine, quite clearly, and we know that for certain. There is no doubt. This is a medical fact.”

Pressed if a barrel bomb attack involving chlorine constitutes a chemical weapon attack, the secretary dodged, “I just want to say very clearly that the use of chemical weapons — contrary to the Genera Convention that Syria signed up for, using chemical weapons that Syria agreed under U.N. pressure to remove from their arsenal, the chemical weapons the Russians certified were gone — that if they use chemical weapons they are going to pay a very, very stiff price.”

Then, when asked after the presser to clarify how chlorine fits into the definition of chemical weapons, Mattis told reporters that “I really don’t want to” clear up the issue.
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/mattis-offers-blurred-line-on-chemical-weapons-in-syria

 

[Ethan]

McCain, Graham urge Trump to take 'greater military action' in Syria

WASHINGTON — Hawkish Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are pressing the Trump administration to escalate military efforts to protect the Syrian people against President Bashar Assad.

"As part of a broader strategy, we urge the President to take greater military action to achieve our objectives, including grounding the Syrian air force and establishing safe havens inside Syria to protect Syrians,” the senators said in a joint statement Tuesday.

“There will never be a diplomatic solution as long as Assad dominates the battlefield,” according to McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, and Graham, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said earlier in the day the airstrike was meant to deter the use of chemical weapons, and that while there is “no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible” for an attack last week, America’s priority in Syria is the fight against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

Mattis acknowledged the option of safe zones or no-fly zones is available to President Donald Trump, but said the purpose was singular. It was “not a statement that we could enter full fledged, full bore into the most complex civil war probably raging on the planet at this time.”

On April 6, a U.S. strike targeted Syria’s Shayrat airfield, equipment and chemical weapons in response to an April 4 chemical weapons attack the U.S. government has attributed to the Assad regime. The attack reportedly killed 89 people.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov began a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday warning the U.S. not to strike the Syrian regime again. Tillerson has said Russia must end its support for Assad, while the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has said Assad should have no future in Syria.

U.S. lawmakers, primarily Democrats, have urged Trump to share its strategy in Syria, while Republicans have been divided on whether to escalate militarily against Assad.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters last week Vice President Mike Pence told him after the U.S. airstrike that it was related specifically to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said his caucus is worried Trump’s actions in Syria could lead to another open-ended major military fight for U.S. troops in the region and that “any further action should come to Congress” for approval.

“There should be a defined strategy,” Schumer said. “And I, for one, am really, really wary and worried about getting committed to another land war and making the same mistake that we did in Iraq."

On CNN on Tuesday, the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, of Washington, said that while Assad is not the legitimate leader of Syria, and although ISIS will not be defeated as long as Assad is in charge, Smith was “not a fan of regime change.”

“I want to make sure that we don't overreact in the U.S. and think that there is some military solution and think that we can go in there and go to war, not just with Syria but with Russia and Iran and not cause even more damage than is currently being caused,” Smith said.

Smith called the images of chemical attack victims said to have spurred Trump to order the airstrike “horrific,” but cautioned: “We also have to be mindful of our limitations, and I think in the past, certainly in the case of Iraq, we overthought what he could do.”

McCain and Graham have urged the Trump administration for a more muscular approach on behalf of the Syrian people, and a strategy that "secures U.S. and allied interests in Syria — ending the conflict, dealing a sustainable defeat to ISIL and Al-Qaeda, and beginning to repatriate Syrian refugees to their homes.”
http://www.defensenews.com/articles...rump-to-take-greater-military-action-in-syria