A counter-productive and murderous gesture: Tillerson’s and McMaster’s reason for missile strike

By ALEXANDER MERCOURIS

"US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Trump’s National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster in their joint news conference essentially confirmed it was no more than a reprisal raid" 

12 hours ago 34  822

Tillerson and McMaster explain missile strike as a gesture, which however is more likely to enrage and provoke Moscow than deter Damascus.

The US missile strike on Syria’s Sharyat air base provides a good opportunity to compare the sharply different approaches the US and the Russia have to the use of force.

The Russians use force sparingly as an instrument of state policy to advance what they see as their national interests.  Every Russian military endeavour since the end of the Second Word War has been judged and carried out to further some concrete objective of the Russian state.

The Russian intervention in Syria is a case in point.  The Russians intervened in Syria legally – upon the invitation of the legitimate government – and with a clear objective: to preserve the Syrian state and to defeat the various Jihadi terrorist groups operating in Syria.  It is precisely because the Russian intervention in Syria is carefully judged and carried out to further a specific objective that it has up to now been so successful.

By contrast the US all too often seems to undertake military action for frivolous reasons, without thinking through its implications, and without any clear objective other than a desire to look ‘strong’ and ‘tough’.  This happens all the time and the missile strike on Sharyat air base is simply a case in point.

That this so is shown by the inability of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Trump’s National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster in their joint news conference after the missile strike to come up with any coherent explanation of what it was supposed to achieve.  Essentially they confirmed it was no more than a reprisal raid for the alleged Syrian chemical weapon attack on Khan Sheikhoun, even though no international investigation has established Syria’s guilt, and even though the US was not itself a target of that attack.

In trying to explain the reasons for the raid the best Tillerson could come up with was this

I think the other thing that’s important to recognize — that as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response — no response from the international community — that he, in effect, is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which then may be adopted by others.  So it’s important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that these chemical weapons continue to be a violation of international norms.

I think it’s also important to recognize, as I think everyone does, the chaotic circumstances that exist on the ground in Syria, with the presence of a battle underway to defeat ISIS, the presence of al Qaeda elements inside of Syria, and a civil war that is underway.  So, clearly, one of the existential threats we see on the ground in Syria is if there are weapons of this nature available in Syria, the ability to secure those weapons and not have them fall into the hands of those who would bring those weapons to our shores to harm American citizens.

So there are a number of elements that, in our view, called for this action and which we feel was appropriate.  We feel the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack

When Tillerson was challenged directly to explain the reasoning more clearly, the result was this chaotic exchange

Q    Can I ask H.R. — sorry — both the Secretary and H.R. McMaster — what is the overriding message here?  Is it that — this is not clearly a declaration of war, but is it that for President Trump and this administration the credible threat of military force is back on the table?  Was this articulated or explained in any way to President Xi prior to the President’s remarks?  And do you see this as in any way sending a message more broadly on your policy towards North Korea that the President is willing to take decisive action?  If both of you would weigh in.

SECRETARY TILLERSON:  Well, I think as you just stated, this clearly indicates the President is willing to take decisive action when called for.  And I think in this particular case, the use of prohibited chemical weapons, which violates a number of international norms and violates existing agreements, called for this type of a response, which is a kinetic military response.

I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.  There’s been no change in that status.  But I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line, and cross the line on violating commitments they have made and cross the line in the most heinous of ways.  I think it is clear that President Trump has made that statement to the world tonight.

Deciphering this muddled language, the attack – which changes nothing in the overall balance of the fighting in Syria, with even the Western media now admitting that the Syrian air force is not only continuing to operate from Sharyat air base but is continuing to bomb Khan Sheikhoun – is being justified as nothing more than a ‘signal’ or ‘gesture’ to President Assad of President Trump’s ‘resolve’ and ‘toughness’ and of his ‘determination’ to stop the Syrians using chemical weapons.  This before any formal investigation has even established that the Syrians have in fact used chemical weapons.

Taking military action to send out a ‘signal’ is just about the worst possible reason to take military action.  Essentially it amounts to taking military action simply as a gesture and because one can.

If the US wanted to send a ‘signal’ to Syria to prevent it using chemical weapons then the first thing it should have done was agree at the UN Security Council a proper international investigation of the Khan Sheikhoun incident to find out whether Syrian really has been using chemical weapons.  If such an investigation – conducted properly and impartially and without pressure – were to conclude that the Syrian military did indeed use chemical weapons during the Khan Sheikhoun attack, then the Russians – who have no interest in having Syria use chemical weapons – would have exercised their influence on Damascus to ensure this never happened again.

Needless to say a warning from Moscow to Damascus would have achieved precisely what is supposed to have been the purpose of the US missile strike – to stop Syria using chemical weapons – and no one need have been killed to achieve it. http://theduran.com/gesture-tillerson-mcmaster-missile-strike/

Instead by launching a missile strike the US has enraged the Russians and has ensured that instead of warning Damascus they will now take further action to support Syria.  That will of course make the conflict in Syria even more dangerous and more intractable.  It is difficult to see how that can possible serve any conceivable US interest.

This is what happens when military action is taken in such a frivolous and ill thought out way and with no clearly defined objective.  However it is how the US has long since been accustomed to behave, even though this is the primary reason why its various military interventions almost invariably end in failure.

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Donald Trump behauptet seine Autorität über seine Verbündeten von Thierry Meyssan

Lassen Sie sich nicht durch die diplomatischen Spiele und den Konformismus der mainstream-Medien täuschen. Was heute Morgen in Syrien passiert ist, hat nichts mit der Präsentation zu tun, die Ihnen gegeben wurde, noch mit den daraus gezogenen Schlussfolgerungen.

VOLTAIRE NETZWERK | DAMASKUS (SYRIEN) | 7. APRIL 2017 

FRANÇAIS  ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ  عربي  TÜRKÇE  ENGLISH  ESPAÑOL  فارسى  ITALIANO  РУССКИЙ  NORSK  

Diesen Morgen hätten die Vereinigten Staaten angeblich 59 Marschflugkörper vom Mittelmeer aus abgefeuert, um die syrische Luftwaffenbasis von Sha’irat zu zerstören. Es wäre eine einseitige Aktion, die einen Angriff mit chemischen Waffen sanktionieren sollte, den sie der syrischen arabischen Armee zuschreiben.

Erstaunt über das Ausmaß des amerikanischen Vorgehens, schließen alle Kommentatoren auf eine 180° Wende der Trump-Verwaltung in der Syrienfrage. Das Weiße Haus hätte endlich den Standpunkt der US-Opposition und seiner britischen und französischen Verbündeten eingenommen.

Wirklich?

Die Wirklichkeit entspricht nicht der Kommunikation

Amerikanische Marschflugzeuge haben ungehindert den durch die neue russische Waffe kontrollierten Bereich durchflogen, welche Waffe doch ermöglicht, die Kommunikationen und Befehle der NATO zunichte zu machen. Laut General Philip Breedlove, damals Oberbefehlshaber der NATO, hätte diese Waffe Russland erlaubt, die Vereinigten Staaten in konventioneller Kriegsführung zu übertreffen. Sie hätte die Leitsysteme dieser Raketen stören sollen. Sie tat es aber nicht, entweder weil das Pentagon inzwischen eine technische Antwort gefunden hat, oder weil sie durch Russland abgeschaltet wurde.

Die syrische Luftabwehr umfasst die von der syrischen arabischen Armee kontrollierten S-300 Boden-Luftabwehr-Raketen und die S-400, die durch die russische Armee bedient werden. Diese Waffen sollen Marschflugkörper abfangen können, obwohl diese Situation noch nie im Kampf stattgefunden hat. Es handelt sich natürlich um automatische Waffen. Sie haben auch nicht funktioniert. Keine einzige Anti-Raketen-Rakete wurde weder durch die russische Armee, noch durch die syrische Armee abgeschossen.

Als die US-Marschflugkörper ihr Ziel getroffen haben, fanden sie eine fast leere Militärbasis, die gerade evakuiert worden war. Sie hätten also die asphaltierte Laufbahn, die schon lange ausrangierten Radare und Flugzeuge und Hangars und Häuser zerstört. Sie haben aber ein Dutzend Opfer gefordert, von denen 6 verstorben sind.

Während kein einziger Marschflugkörper offiziell verloren oder zerstört wurde, schlugen jedoch nur 23 und nicht 59 in die Basis von Sha’irat ein.

Was bedeutet diese Inszenierung?

Präsident Trump versucht seit seinem Einzug ins Weiße Haus die Politik seines Landes zu ändern, und die laufenden Auseinandersetzungen durch Formen der Zusammenarbeit zu ersetzen. Zur Frage des "Erweiterten Nahostens" nahm er Stellung für die "Zerstörung" der Dschihad Organisationen (und nicht für ihre "Reduktion", wie es sein Vorgänger versprach).

In den letzten Tagen hat er die Legitimität der Arabischen Republik Syrien anerkannt und somit die Fortsetzung im Amt des demokratisch gewählten Präsidenten Baschar Al-Assad. Er empfing den ägyptischen Präsidenten, Feldmarschall Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, verbündet mit Syrien, und gratulierte ihm für seinen Kampf gegen die Dschihadisten. Er hat auch einen direkten Kommunikationskanal zwischen Washington und Damaskus restauriert.

Wie auch immer, das Problem des Präsidenten Trump war, seine Verbündeten zu überzeugen, seine Politik zu implementieren, unabhängig von ihren Investitionen, um die syrische arabische Republik zu stürzen.

Es ist sicherlich möglich, dass Präsident Trump beim bloßen Anblick eines Videos von YouTube in drei Tagen eine Wende von 180° gemacht hat, aber es ist wahrscheinlicher, dass die Militäraktionen von heute Morgen Teil der Logik seiner früheren diplomatischen Handlung ist.

Durch diesen Angriff befriedigte Präsident Trump seine Opposition, die sich nach der Operation gegen ihn nicht auflehnen können wird. Hillary Clinton forderte gestern, als Reaktion auf den angeblichen Chemiewaffen-Einsatz, Syrien zu bombardieren.

Donald Trump befahl den Abschuss von Marschflugkörpern auf eine fast leere Militärbasis, nachdem er die ganze Welt, einschließlich Russland und Syrien darüber informiert hatte.

Mit dem Verzicht von Damaskus auf diese Basis und das Leben von einigen Männern gewann er die Autorität, um eine breite Aktion gegen all jene zu führen, die chemische Waffen einsetzen. Also bislang sind die einzigen Benutzer dieser Waffen, die von den Vereinten Nationen identifiziert wurden: die Dschihadisten.

Daesh, das auch von dem US-Angriff informiert wurde (aber durch die britischen, französischen und deutschen Sponsoren), startete sofort einen Angriff auf Homs, das ja nun keinen Flugplatz mehr hat.

Wir werden in den nächsten Tagen sehen, wie Washington und seine Verbündeten auf den Vormarsch der Dschihadisten reagieren werden. Erst dann werden wir wissen, ob das Manöver von Donald Trump und die Wette von Wladimir Putin und Baschar Al-Assad aufgehen.

Thierry Meyssan

Übersetzung   http://www.voltairenet.org/article195899.html
Horst Frohlich

Now President Trump hands his enemies REAL grounds to impeach him

ALEXANDER MERCOURIS44 mins ago 3  99

Donald Trump acted illegally and unconstitutionally by ordering the missile strike on Syria giving his opponents legitimate grounds to impeach him. However they won't use them.

Ever since President Trump unexpectedly won the US Presidential election on 8th November 2016 he has faced a concerted attempt by his political opponents first to prevent him from being inaugurated as President and – since the inauguration – to remove him from the Presidency through attempts to impeach him.So far the campaign – though furiously and even hysterically conducted – has been a total failure.  This is because the charge which up to how has been made against the President – that he won the Presidency by colluding against Hillary Clinton with the Russians – is baseless and untrue.

President Trump’s opponents might however now care to note that through his attack on Syria President Trump has actually provided them with legitimate grounds to impeach him.

The attack on Syria was a gross violation of international law.  Chapter VII of the UN Charter makes it crystal clear that the only body authorised under international law to order the sort of attack the US launched on Sharyat base in Syria is the UN Security Council.  The only exception is the one provided under Article 51 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which permits a state or states which are under attack to take military action in self-defence.

There is no provision in any part of the UN Charter or in international law which permits the US or any other country to engage in a reprisal raid, which is what the US missile attack on Sharyat air base unquestionably was.

What makes the violation of international law in this case especially egregious is that at the US launched its missile attack when the UN Security Council was actually debating the setting up of an investigation to look into the circumstances of what happened during the alleged chemical attack on Khan Shekhoun.  At the time of the attack the UN Security Council actually had two draft Resolutions before it authorising the setting up of such investigation – one drafted by the Western powers, the other drafted by Russia – both of which were to be put to the vote.  In the event the vote which was expected late on Thursday never took place, with the Western powers postponing the discussion indefinitely, so that no decision about setting up an investigation could be taken before the attack on the following day.

Given that no less a person than the President of the United States has now publicly said who he says is the guilty party – President Assad – before the UN Security Council has had any opportunity to look into the issue and set up an investigation, and given that the President has ordered a missile strike on that basis, there would now seem to be no point in setting up an investigation, and I doubt one will be.

At this point I would say that the decision of the Western powers to postpone the UN Security Council vote which was due on Thursday strongly suggests (at least to me) that the heavily unbalanced Western draft Resolution was failing to gain support from the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, creating the hugely embarrassing possibility that it might have failed to win the necessary 9 votes to pass, in which case it would have failed to pass without Russia even needing to exercise a veto.

If so then that would have been something the Western powers would have wanted prevent at all costs. The decision not just to pull the Resolution and postpone the UN Security Council vote but to launch a missile strike on the following day before any vote in the UN Security Council could take place would in that case have been a case of the Western powers going for broke, and acting to close down the whole inquiry of who might actually have been responsible for the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun before it could take place.

Regardless, what is beyond question is that US missile strike which President Trump ordered was – as the Russians say – in legal terms a gross violation of international law and a usurpation of the powers the UN Charter vests exclusively in the UN Security Council.

The missile attack was not however merely a violation of international law.  It was also a violation of US law and of the US Constitution.

Firstly, the US is legally bound by the UN Charter, which is an international treaty (as it happens the single most important international treaty) which the US itself largely drafted.

More to the point, Article 11, Section 8 of the US Constitution vests in Congress not the President the power “to declare war”.

It is generally acknowledged that the President as commander in chief has the power to authorise military action where there is an armed attack on the US or a “clear and present danger” to the US.

Neither of these criteria remotely applies in this case despite the President’s attempt in his statement issued after the missile strike to argue otherwise.   Given that the President himself admitted in the same statement that the strike was intended as a reprisal raid for the alleged chemical weapons attack which he claims the Syrians carried out on their own people and on their own territory, it is impossible to see how the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons attack (if it even took place) could possibly constitute a threat to the US justifying immediate action without authorisation from Congress.

There is great uncertainty as to how exactly Congress is supposed to exercise its power “to declare war” so as to authorise military action.  However in this case there can be no doubt.  By his own admission the President not only failed to seek authorisation from Congress before carrying out the missile strike, but he did not even discuss the missile strike with any of the members of Congress before he ordered it.

In summary, given that the President in ordering the missile strike acted illegally and unconstitutionally the President’s opponents now have clearcut grounds to impeach him should they chose to use them.

Of course they won’t.  In the US no President risks impeachment by dealing out death and destruction overseas even if he acts illegally and unconstitutionally when he does it.  The case of the missile strike on Sharyat air base is no different.

In a sense this provides a good example of the warped and unhealthy state of current US politics.  A President and his administration can be put on the rack over entirely fictitious and evidence free allegations like those which have been made in the Russiagate scandal.  However he can violate the law and the Constitution and commit murder and havoc with complete impunity.  It is this fact more than any other which explains why the US political system has become simultaneously so completely dysfunctional and so extraordinarily dangerous to other peoples and countries. http://theduran.com/trump-hands-enemies-grounds-impeach/

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"Missile barrage was not just an assault on Syria but on reason and good sense" Daniel Lazare

Luring Trump into Mideast Wars

Source:https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/luring-trump-into-mideast-wars

April 8, 2017

Exclusive: After launching a missile strike on Syria, President Trump is basking in praise from his former critics – neocons, Democrats and mainstream media – who want to lure him into more Mideast wars, reports Daniel Lazare.

By Daniel Lazare

Donald Trump entered military terra incognita on Thursday by launching an illegal Tomahawk missile strike on an air base in eastern Syria. Beyond the clear violation of international law, the results are likely to be disastrous, drawing the U.S. deeper into the Syrian quagmire.

For years, near-total unanimity has reigned on Capitol Hill concerning America’s latest villains du jour, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Congressmen, senators, think-tank strategists, and op-ed analysts all have agreed that Putin and Assad are the prime enemies of “peace,” by which is meant global American hegemony, and that therefore the U.S. must stop at nothing to weaken or neutralize them or force them to exit the world stage.

Until recently, in fact, just about the only politically significant dissenter was Trump. Accusing reporters of twisting the news at a tumultuous press conference in late February, he told them, “Now tomorrow, you’ll say, ‘Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible.’ It’s not terrible. It’s good.”

But since getting along with Russia was terrible for America’s perpetually bellicose foreign-policy establishment, Official Washington declared war on Trump, building on Hillary Clinton’s charge during the last presidential debate that he was Putin’s “puppet.” It became the conventional wisdom that Trump was a “Siberian candidate” being inserted in the White House by a satanic Kremlin determined to bend freedom-loving Americans to its will.

As Inauguration Day approached, President Obama’s intelligence chiefs pulled out all stops to persuade the public that (a) Russian intelligence had engineered Clinton’s defeat by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and placing thousands of embarrassing emails in the hands of WikiLeaks and that (b) Trump was somehow complicit in the effort.

The campaign was highly effective. The alleged Putin-Trump relationship was a major feature at the anti-Trump protests surrounding his inauguration and the major U.S. news media pounded on the Russia “scandal” daily.

On Feb. 13, barely four weeks after taking office, Trump crumbled under a mounting barrage of political abuse and gave National Security Adviser Michael Flynn the boot after it was revealed that he had talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition, supposedly in violation of the 1799 Logan Act, an absurd piece of ancient legislation that even The New York Times referred to as “a dusty, old law” that should have been repealed generations ago.

Under Media Pressure

A day later, the administration reeled again when the Times charged in a front-page exposé that “members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”

The article provided no evidence and no names and said nothing about whether such contacts were knowing or unknowing, i.e., whether they involved a John le Carré-style midnight rendezvous or merely an exchange of pleasantries with someone who may or may not have been connected to the FSB, as Russia’s version of the CIA is known.

In a March 6 article entitled “Pause This Presidency,” Times columnist Charles M. Blow called for little less than a coup d’état: “The American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this ‘president’ until we can be assured that Russian efforts to hack our election … did not also include collusion with or cover-up by anyone involved in the Trump campaign and now administration.”

How “the American people” would demand such a cessation or who would provide such assurances was not specified.

On March 31, CNN quoted an unnamed senior administration official saying that Trump’s hopes of a rapprochement with Russia were fading because he “believes in the current atmosphere – with so much media scrutiny and ongoing probes into Trump-Russia ties and election meddling – that it won’t be possible to ‘make a deal.’”

Thus, Trump found himself increasingly boxed in by hostile forces. But he still tried to fulfill his promise to concentrate on defeating terrorists in Syria and Iraq. On March 30, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the U.S. administration “priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” but to concentrate on defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS instead.

But the more Trump contemplated his predicament in the following days, the more he realized how untenable it had come. Tuesday’s poison-gas incident in Idlib thus offered a way out regardless of who was actually responsible. The only way for Trump to make peace with the “deep state” in Washington was by waging war on Syria.

Finally, on Thursday, hours before Trump sent a volley of cruise missiles wafting towards Syria, Hillary Clinton taunted him by declaringthat America “should take out his [Assad’s] airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people.” The effect was to all but force Trump to show that he was every bit as macho as the former First Lady.

Frog-Marching Trump

Trump is certainly a fool for going ahead with such an attack in clear contravention of international law and entangling the United States more deeply into the complicated Syrian conflict. But the blame also should go to the people who frog-marched him to the precipice and then all but commanded him to step over the edge.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York 

Within hours, all the usual suspects were congratulating one of the most scorned U.S. presidents in history for taking the leap.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described Trump’s missile barrage as “a proportional response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons.”

Republican super-hawks Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, previously as anti-administration as any Democrat, issued a joint statement declaring that Trump “deserves the support of the American people,” while liberal heart-throb Sen. Elizabeth Warren also agreed that “the Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act.”

The Guardian, as fiercely anti-Trump as it is anti-Putin and anti-Assad, conceded that “Donald Trump has made his point” and that the next step would be up to Russia. All in all, Trump had never gotten such good press. It’s clear that Official Washington was pleased with Trump’s handiwork and was eager to encourage him to do more.

But the missile barrage was not just an assault on Syria but on reason and good sense, too. Although the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor tried to make it seem that the only critics of the missile barrage are members of the alt-right “known for espousing racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view,” the fact is that criticism flowed in from other quarters.

At Alternet, Vijay Prashad pointed out that there were few independent observers in Khan Shaykhun, the farming town where the April 4 incident occurred, to provide an accurate account. Eyewitnesses “with the densest relationship to the armed opposition,” he wrote, “are the first to claim that this attack was done by the government.”

Consortiumnews’ Robert Parry pointed out that rather than dropping the gas themselves, Syrian or Russian warplanes could well have triggered an outbreak by bombing a facility containing “chemicals that the rebels were planning to use in some future attack.” Parry also noted that Al Qaeda, which controls Idlib province, could have “staged the incident to elicit precisely the international outrage directed at Assad as has occurred.”

[Previously, United Nations investigators have received eyewitness testimony from Syrians about rebels staging an alleged chlorine-bomb attack so it would be pinned on the Assad regime.]

Something similar may well have occurred in August 2013, a sarin-gas missile attack on the outskirts of Damascus that killed hundreds and that appears to have been launched from a rebel-controlled area two kilometers away. The two incidents are curiously parallel.

The August 2013 incident, which horrified the world and brought the Obama administration to the brink of its own attack on the Syrian government, occurred just days after a U.N. team had arrived in Damascus to investigate an alleged chemical attack by rebels against Syrian government troops some four months earlier.

It made little sense for the Assad regime to have invited U.N. investigators in and then launch a more horrific chemical-weapons attack just miles from the investigators’ hotel. It would be a bit like someone inviting a police inspector to dinner and then committing a murder in full view.

Not Making Sense

As one independent analysis noted in 2013, the Assad regime would have to have decided to carry out a large-scale attack “despite (a) making steady gains against rebel positions, (b) receiving a direct threat from the US that the use of chemical weapons would trigger intervention, (c) having constantly assured their Russian allies that they will not use such weapons, (d) prior to the attack, only using non-lethal chemicals and only against military targets.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Assad government would also have had to decide “to (a) send forces into rebel-held area, where they are exposed to sniper fire from multiple directions, (b) use locally manufactured short-range rockets, instead of any of the long-range high quality chemical weapons in their arsenal, and (c) use low quality sarin.”

All of which seems supremely unlikely, but much of the mainstream U.S. media still treats the 2013 sarin-gas attack as the undeniable case of Assad crossing Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons. And the highly dubious 2013 incident is cited as a key reason to believe that Assad has done it again. [Recently, The New York Times has quietly backed off the 2013 claims although not explicitly retracting its earlier reporting blaming the attack on the Assad regime.]

Assad would have possibly even stronger reasons not to deploy sarin gas on April 4, 2017. He would have to make a conscious decision to court world opprobrium at a time when the tide of the war was finally turning in his favor with the liberation of Aleppo last December and with most world leaders having concluded that the Assad regime was here to stay.

To have produced and deployed a sarin bomb would have meant deliberately risking military intervention more than three years after Syria reached an agreement with the United Nations to destroy its entire chemical-weapons stockpile so as to avoid … military intervention.

All of which seems supremely unlikely as well. It would be an act of suicide – and after holding off a combined U.S., Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish assault for half a decade or more, one thing that Assad does not appear to be is suicidal.

Although Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “there is no doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for this horrific attack,” in reality there is plenty of doubt.

Nevertheless, Trump decided to fire away before the facts were in because the enemy he is most worried about is not the one half a world away in Syria, but the Democratic-neocon alliance in his own backyard. The political warfare in Washington is now generating more agony from real wars in the Middle East.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).

More strikes on Syria are coming (Video)

MUST WATCH: The hard truth about Trump’s attack on Syria. More strikes on Syria are coming (Video)  seehttp://theduran.com/must-watch-hard-truth-trumps-attack-syria-strikes-syria-coming-video/

The truth about Trump’s air strike on Syria.

LATEST, NEWS, VIDEO

ALEX CHRISTOFOROU1 HOUR AGO 0  99

Solidarite avec La Syrie

Merci cher ami Pierre Antoine

Cette épreuve qu'endure le peuple syrien depuis plus de 6 ans a démasqué tous les ennemies des peuples et leurs valets....quand les terroristes échouent, ou sont en difficulté,    ce sont leurs maitres qui reprennenet la main ....les USA, Israel et les pays occidentaux ...sont bel et bien les créateurs défenseurs et soutien de Daesh, Annosra et leurs pairs... ,sans parler de l'Arabie Saoudite ou de Qatar ...
Notre lutte  pour sauvegarder notre souveraineté continuera jusqu'au recouvrement du moindre cm2 de notre territoire ....Vive La Syrie 

On Apr 7, 2017 12:35 PM, "P-A Plaquevent" <pa.plaquevent@protonmail.com> wrote:

Chers amis, 

Soyez assuré de notre soutien dans l'épreuve qui s'ouvre pour vous et pour nous. Notre reportage réalisé il y a un mois montrait bien les prémices de ce qui se passe aujourd'hui. Nos moyens sont dérisoires à côté du rouleau compresseur de la machine adverse mais si nous pouvons vous aider au modeste niveau journalistique qui est le nôtre, nous continuerons à le faire.

J'avais fait diffuser notre reportage sur les deux gros sites de réinformation français.

https://www.tvlibertes.com/2017/04/03/16290/zoom-verite-syrie-tvl

http://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/La-guerre-en-Syrie-est-la-pire-catastrophe-depuis-la-Seconde-Guerre-mondiale-44987.html

Cordialement, 

Pierre-Antoine Plaquevent