Breaking: Trump orders Syrian missile strikes

[parabelum]

I normally detest Geraldo, but this morning he had one good point. If we notified Russians beforehand, knowing they have anti missle defense capability, why didn't they bring tomahawks down? Surely they could have said it's to protect Russian forces on the ground.
And for Assad to do this now, makes no sense at all.
One can only speculate at this time.

[ScottDLS]

I normally detest Geraldo, but this morning he had one good point. If we notified Russians beforehand, knowing they have anti missle defense capability, why didn't they bring tomahawks down? Surely they could have said it's to protect Russian forces on the ground.
And for Assad to do this now, makes no sense at all.
One can only speculate at this time.

It's very difficult to bring down cruise missiles with SAM's or other air defenses. They fly to low get caught in ground clutter on radar, and are very maneuverable. The down side is they don't carry much ordnance and they're very expensive. Think $60 million plus for 60 missiles. Better though than giving the bad guys the propaganda value of shooting down a US aircraft and pilot.

[Abraham]

Why didn't the Russians warn Assad's guys so they could've gotten their jets into the air before the missiles hit?

Supposedly, one news source said the Russians were given an hour warning before the missiles hit, which was enough time to get Assad's jets out of harm's way...why would the Russians keep mum...?

Anyone know?

[TVGuy]

Why didn't the Russians warn Assad's guys so they could've gotten their jets into the air before the missiles hit?

Supposedly, one news source said the Russians were given an hour warning before the missiles hit, which was enough time to get Assad's jets out of harm's way...why would the Russians keep mum...?

Anyone know?

My understanding was that the Russians did warn Syria and they did scramble jets, but not all of them.

[Abraham]

TVGuy,

Thanks!

According to the news I heard/read is that we damaged, if not outright destroyed 20 Syrian jets still on the ground...has that news now been amended, do you know?

[TVGuy]

TVGuy,

Thanks!

According to the news I heard/read is that we damaged, if not outright destroyed 20 Syrian jets still on the ground...has that news now been amended, do you know?

That's the same number I'm seeing from my sources as well. I've heard that many made it into the air before the strike and flew to other bases. That would make sense considering the limited number of Syrian casualties.

[Keith B]

You beat me to it, I was curious to know where that info came from because everything I am reading says the exact opposite.

Must have been fake Russian news....

[The Annoyed Man]

Russia Ministry of Defense suspends the deconfliction channel between itself and the US as of tomorrow.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201704 ... nel-syria/

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Russia-US deconfliction mechanism aimed to avoid aerial incidents over Syria will be suspended from April 8.

The ministry said that it had summoned a US military attache in Moscow to confirm the suspension of a memoransum on flight safety in Syria.
Moreover, the Russian Ministry of Defense sent a note on the issue to Washington.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow has suspended its memorandum of understanding on air safety over Syria with the United States following the deadly US missile attack on the Sha'irat airfield.

So now the risk of armed conflict between Russian and US fighter/bomber aircraft has just escalated.

There is no clean answer here. Frankly, some of the Syrian rebels hate democratically elected secular gov't as much as Assad does. I don't think that waging an undeclared war against a Russian surrogate - particularly one which, by now, the Russians have invested billions of $$ in propping up - is in the United States' best interests. The region is extremely volatile. The Russians are ruthless, and entirely willing to do the things we are NOT willing to do in order to accomplish their objectives in the ME. For better or for worse, we are NOT as ruthless, nor as willing politically to accomplish OUR objectives in the ME. I'm not even convinced that most people in our gov't have any clear consensus on what exactly our purposes in the ME are, or should be.

UNTIL:

1. the legislative and executive branches of our gov't arrives at a consensus of purpose that is accepted by the majority in both parties;
2. this consensus of purpose is codified in a formal declaration, acknowledging the probable human cost, and with a full commitment to nothing less than victory;
3. the funding for the effort is arrived at by first reallocating CURRENT spending (in a hyper war economy, there will be lots of jobs, so cutting off entitlements to the shiftless is a win/win situation);
4. the reinstitution of a military draft, with NO student or other draft deferments ...... unless the individual is deemed a critical (unreplaceable) employee of a defense contractor, whose skills are absolutely indespensable to the war effort; and NO deferments for the sons and daughters of the super wealthy either;
5. the US spends not. one. more. dollar. on ME oil and removes the barriers against the exploitation of our own petroleum resources; and (most importantly)
6. "The People" commit to the social and lifestyle changes - i.e. war bond drives, rationing, victory gardens, collection and recycling of resources (rubber, steel, etc.), to name just a few - to make sure that, in a wartime footing, American industry has all the materiel it needs to bring weapons, food, medical supplies, and other materiél to the battlefield......

.....without the above kind of commitment, the US has no business engaging in any more war in the ME. It's not about the differences between their dominant religion and ours. It is that culturally, those people don't know how to stop killing one another. Trying to stop them from killing one another only accomplishes a couple of things, neither of which are good for the US:

1. it merely gets a lot of American men and women killed; and
2. it merely increases the hatred that some of them already feel toward the US.....and adds new haters to the list.

Let the Russians have at it, trying to control the ME all they want. All it will do is bleed them dry......just like Afghanistan did.....which will destabilize Russia, and sap their ability to make mischief in other parts of the world. Putin is not a fool. There is only one reason that Russia has committed to propping up the Assad regime, and that is the preservation of Russia's ONLY naval base in the Mediterranean, at Tartus......without which Russia's navy can be easily bottled up on the Black Sea by closing off the Dardanelles straights. THAT is why Syria has been a client state of Russia's and the USSR's since forever. Tartus was built in 1971. The wiki page linked above says:

The Russian naval facility in Tartus is a leased military installation of the Russian Navy located in the port of the city of Tartus, Syria. Russian official usage classifies the installation as a Material-Technical Support Point (Russian: Пункт материально-технического обеспечения, ПМТО) and not a "base". Tartus is the Russian Navy's only Mediterranean repair and replenishment spot, sparing Russia’s warships the trip back to their Black Sea bases through the Turkish Straits.[3]

Tartus hosts a Soviet-era naval supply and maintenance facility, under a 1971 agreement with Ba'athist Syria, which was—until the second year of the Syrian Civil War—staffed by Russian naval personnel. Most recently, the facility hosts the Amur class floating workshop PM-138, capable of providing technical maintenance to Russian warships deployed in the Mediterranean.[4]

The Tartus facility can accommodate four medium-sized vessels only if both of its 100 m floating piers, inside of the northern breakwater, are operational. It is not capable of hosting any of the Russian Navy's current major warships which range in length from the 129 m Neustrashimyy class frigate through the 163 m Udaloy class destroyer, much less cruisers such as the 186.4 m Slava class and the 252 m Kirov class, or the 305 m Kuznetsov class aircraft carrier.

In January 2017, Russia and Syria signed agreements to extend Russia's control of its facility for 49 years and give it sovereignty over the territory. It allows Russia to dredge, install floating berths, and carry out repair works to expand its capacity to 11 warships, including nuclear-powered ships.[5][6]

Frankly, I don't blame Putin for wanting to hold onto Tartus, no matter the cost. Losing it places Russia in an untenable position.

If Trump commits us to a war to oust Assad, Russia will do whatever it must in order to hold onto its critical assets at Tartus. That will end in an armed confrontation with Russia. I don't believe that most Americans have the stomach for something like that.

[Jusme]

TAM, I usually agree with you, and all of your cognitive points are valid, but, I believe that Putin is more sensitive to world opinion than previous leaders. Putin is trying to continue his colonization initiatives he started In the Ukraine. He has been testing the US for several years, and with the previous administration, he got a good idea of the, diaper wetting responses every time he crossed a "RED LINE"

I may be way off base, but the fact that Assad, made the mistake of killing women and children, when it could be documented by the media, will make it difficult for Putin, to stand behind him. Genocide, is not abhorrent to the Russian government, but when the images have been broadcast so massively, it puts him and the Russian people under too much scrutiny.


He could have prepared the missile defense system and deployed anti missile defensive if that was his prerogative.

Syria, provides neither him, nor the Russians any strategic advantage. Allowing Assad to be defeated, won't cause him, any major world defeat.
I think his whole support of Syria's government, was a test for us, BHO failed the test, but Trump has passed. I won't be surprised to hear that Russia will condemn the chemical weapons attack, and withdraw support from Syria.

I may have pie in the sky vision, but I am unanimous in my opinion.

[The Annoyed Man]

......I am unanimous in my opinion.

Well that's good to know!

I agree that Putin has a PR problem, but that problem didn't keep him from invading Georgia or the Ukraine. And to lose Tartus would hamstring his navy in the Mediterranean. If Assad is ousted, given that Putin supported him against the rebels, it is very unlikely that the rebels would allow Russia to keep Tartus - forcing him to either abandon it, OR invade Syria to defend it.

The thing is, I actually have a lot of respect for Putin. Not LOVE, but RESPECT. After 8 years of Obama, I can appreciate a foreign leader who is not the least bit apologetic about putting his own nation's interests first, and calling bull on his critics and rejecting their arguments as either wrong or irrelevant.

[The Annoyed Man]

Another angle: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231970

The salient question is this: Who actually used these weapons and where did they come from?

Let me remind you of a few other facts:

1. Assad is winning against the "rebels"; why would he use chemical weapons in a war he is winning when he knows that will bring immediate and serious problems for him? Assad is a five-alarm bastard but he is not stupid.

2. The "rebels" contain a very large contingent of ISIS backed or affiliated terrorists.

3. The "rebels" would love to see the US come blast their opponent who is beating them in their civil war. There's nothing like getting someone else to come blow up the guys who are trying to kill you, especially when you're losing!

4. The "rebels" don't give a damn about international law either (terrorists, remember, generally could give a crap about what anyone else thinks.)

The manifest weight of the publicly-visible evidence is that the rebels had motive and perhaps opportunity. Assad had no motive; he was winning and, according to Susan Rice as recently as January he had no opportunity either.

How do you use something you don't have?

So on a first-blush look I got two negative factors on one side and one positive and one neutral on the other. Without some pretty firm evidence I'd say the odds are far higher than the "rebels" used the chems than Assad did, but I don't have access to classified intelligence.

[carlson1]

Assad is a definite phsyciopath and that is why I believe he used the chemical weapons. I would also not think that the rebels or ISIS has access to jets. This is not an educated guess because I don't have the facts just an assumption.

[stroo]

I have no problems with this strike by Trump but regime change in Syria now is as much a fool's errand as regime change in Libya was. There are no good alternatives; all of them are bad. So I hope we aren't going to do anything else unless Russia, Iran and/or Assad press our hand.

[Abraham]

...and, wait for it, some dizzy democrats are now complaining about the name of the missiles (Tomahawk) which, according to them is offensive to Native Americans.

Oh brother...

[parabelum]

Doesn't surprise me from the demented leftists.

We should not meddle in Syria. This whole thing stinks and I don't even have confidence that actual Sarin gas was used. Maybe phosgene or some other chlorine based gas. Look up how Sarin gas works, then view the on-scene video of victims and how first responders handled the victims. It doesn't add.

Now, that fat little mental basket in North Korea, he is well overdue for his present from US.