US Bombs Syria

[David Guyatt]

More and more reports are emerging that the Trump authorised strike on the Syrian airbase was purely symbolic and that Putin and Assad went along with it.

The conclusion is that the strike was just PR to get the neocons off his [Trump's] back, to grab some favourable headlines for a change and perhaps, as Thierry Meyssan suggests was aimed at silencing his international allies. It suggest to me that a concluence of all these factors, and probably others too, made the decision easy to reach. It was a win-win for everyone.

The first report came out two days ago when Pepe Escobar, who has excellent contacts in Russia, posted on his Facebook page that all the main players, the US, Russia and Syria, had agreed to a secret deal about the strike.



This was followed by Robert Parry's article at Consortium yesterday that reported that Director of CIA, Mike Pompeo was absent from the crucial meeting where the decision was made to proceed with the cruise missile strike. Apparently, Pompeo had previously told Trump that Assad was not responsible for the chemical weapon "incident". This suggests that the incident was either the result of an accident when bombs hit a facility storing Jihadi chemicals - as has been asserted by a number of others --- or was a false flag in the same manner as the 2013 Ghouta Sarin gas affair.

The story is now gaining ground among US media outlets that more or less now confirms Pepe Escobar's FB post above:

ABC Breaks Syria Exclusive Assad Knew Of Attack Bombs Were For Show


By Lauren Kathleen - April 7, 2017

It has been confirmed by U.S officials late Thursday that Russia had been informed about the plan that was in action to attack Syria, and it seems that they used this knowledge to warn Syria. The base Trump attacked in Syria was essentially empty.


Thursday night's raid on Syrian airbase Shayrat seems to have been anticipated by Syrian military officials, as they evacuated personnel and were seen moving equipment ahead of the strike, according to an eyewitness. This tells you everything you need to know.


According the same eyewitness, it is believed that human casualties, at least civilians, were minimal, because there did not seem to be any traffic heading toward to local hospital.


This leaves us to ask the question, what was the point of this attack? It seems that the point was for Trump to flex his power and show it off to world leaders. Unfortunately for Trump most world leaders already know that Trump is a joke, and one of the most disastrous presidents there has ever been. It is likely that the world leaders know, just like the American people, know not to buy into President Trumps scare tactics, leaving us to wonder what the repercussions of this attack will be.


Former National Security Adviser Richard Clarke told ABC News:


"This attack on one air base seems more symbolic. I think Secretary of Defense General James Mattis gave the president a list of options, this being the smallest. It was a targeted attack not designed to overwhelm the Syrian military … I think the president was trying to differentiate himself from his predecessor."


Trump has turned to putting the blame on Obama, of course, calling him out for his weakness, and trying to say that is the reason for the violence escalating is Syria. It is not a surprise that he has turned this around on Obama, he does it quite often. It is quite humorous to say the least because Trump himself had tweeted many times during Obamas presidency telling him that we needed to stay out of Syria all together, and focus on America.


To add upon this many Trump supporters had used the term "warmonger" to describe Hilary Clinton, using this as their reason not to vote for her during the 2016 election. Funnily enough the Trump supporters are now cheering on Trump as he does exactly what they chastised Clinton repeatedly for wanting to do.


Trump has been using images of dead Syrian children who were needlessly killed, during the chemical attacks that occurred this past Tuesday as a way to rationalize his decision to suddenly attack, which is downright disturbing of him. It is quite possible these children would have been alive today if Trump had helped them escape, but clearly this isn't a thought that crossed his mind.


Trump hasn't had any twitter rants on this topic thus far, but sit tight, I'm sure they're coming.

Source


Go directly to 6:20:



Then there's this:

Where Was CIA's Pompeo on Syria?
April 8, 2017

Exclusive: As President Trump was launching his missile strike against Syria, CIA Director Pompeo and other intelligence officials weren't at the table, suggesting their doubts about Bashar al-Assad's guilt, reports Robert Parry.




By Robert Parry


There is a dark mystery behind the White House-released photo showing President Trump and more than a dozen advisers meeting at his estate in Mar-a-Lago after his decision to strike Syria with Tomahawk missiles: Where is CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other top intelligence officials?




The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria.


Before the photo was released on Friday, a source told me that Pompeo had personally briefed Trump on April 6 about the CIA's belief that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was likely not responsible for the lethal poison-gas incident in northern Syria two days earlier and thus Pompeo was excluded from the larger meeting as Trump reached a contrary decision.


At the time, I found the information dubious since Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other senior U.S. officials were declaring quite confidently that Assad was at fault. Given that apparent confidence, I assumed that Pompeo and the CIA must have signed off on the conclusion of Assad's guilt even though I knew that some U.S. intelligence analysts had contrary opinions, that they viewed the incident as either an accidental release of chemicals or an intentional ploy by Al Qaeda rebels to sucker the U.S. into attacking Syria.


As strange as the Trump administration has been in its early months, it was hard for me to believe that Trump would have listened to the CIA's views and then shooed the director away from the larger meeting before launching a military strike against a country not threatening America.


After the strike against Syria by 59 Tomahawk missiles, which Syrian officials said killed seven people including four children, Trump gave a speech to the American people declaring flatly:


"On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror."


As much as Trump stood to benefit politically by acting aggressively in attacking Syria and thus winning praise even from his harshest critics the idea that he would ignore the views of the U.S. intelligence community on an issue of war or peace was something that I found hard to believe.


So, I put aside what I had heard from the source about the discordant Pompeo-Trump meeting as the sort of tidbit that may come from someone who lacks first-hand knowledge and doesn't get all the details right.


After all, in almost every similar situation that I had covered over decades, the CIA Director or the Director of National Intelligence has played a prominent role in decisions that depend heavily on the intelligence community's assessments and actions.




President Barack Obama and his national security team monitor the Special Operations raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. (White House photo by Pete Souza)


For instance, in the famous photo of President Obama and his team waiting out the results of the 2011 raid to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, CIA Director Leon Panetta is the one on the conference screen that everyone is looking at.


Even when the U.S. government is presenting false information, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 speech laying out the bogus evidence of Iraq hiding WMDs, CIA Director George Tenet was seated behind Powell to lend credibility to the falsehoods.


At the Table


But in the photo of Trump and his advisers, no one from the intelligence community is in the frame. You see Trump, Secretary of State Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, strategic adviser Steve Bannon, son-in-law Jared Kushner and a variety of other officials, including some economic advisers who were at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.


However, you don't see Pompeo or Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats or any other intelligence official. Even The New York Times noted the oddity in its Saturday editions, writing: "If there were C.I.A. and other intelligence briefers around, … they are not in the picture."


That made me wonder whether perhaps my original source did know something. The claim was that CIA Director Pompeo had briefed Trump personally on the analysts' assessment that Assad's forces were not responsible, but then with Pompeo sidelined Trump conveyed his own version of the intelligence to his senior staff.


In other words, the other officials didn't get the direct word from Pompeo but rather received a second-hand account from the President, the source said. Did Trump choose to rely on the smug certainty from the TV shows and the mainstream news media that Assad was guilty, rather than the contrary view of U.S. intelligence analysts?


After the attack, Secretary of State Tillerson, who is not an institutional intelligence official and has little experience with the subtleties of intelligence, was the one to claim that the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a "high degree of confidence" that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.


While Tillerson's comment meshed with Official Washington's hastily formed groupthink of Assad's guilt, it is hard to believe that CIA analysts would have settled on such a firm conclusion so quickly, especially given the remote location of the incident and the fact that the initial information was coming from pro-rebel (or Al Qaeda) sources.


Thus, a serious question arises whether President Trump did receive that "high degree of confidence" assessment from the intelligence community or whether he shunted Pompeo aside to eliminate an obstacle to his desire to launch the April 6 rocket attack.


If so, such a dangerous deception more than anything else we've seen in the first two-plus months of the Trump administration would be grounds for impeachment ignoring the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community so the President could carry out a politically popular (albeit illegal) missile strike that killed Syrians.
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Source

And now Voltaire's Thierry Meyssan has joined the growing number of those who have been informed the cruise missile strike was just theatre.

[quote]

Donald Trump asserts his authority over his allies

by Thierry Meyssan

Don't be confused by the diplomatic games and the Pied Piperism of the major medias. What happened this morning in Syria has no connection with the story you are being told about it, nor the conclusions which are being drawn for you.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 7 APRIL 2017 FRANÇAIS ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ DEUTSCH عربي TÜRKÇE ESPAÑOL فارسى ITALIANO РУССКИЙ NORSK

This morning, the United States are said to have fired 59 cruise missiles from the Mediterranean in order to destroy the Syrian military air base at Sha'irat. The attack was intended as a unilateral action aimed at punishing the chemical weapons attack which the US attributes to the Syrian Arab Army.Stunned by the amplitude of the reaction by the US, all commentators concluded that the Trump administration had made a 180° turn concerning the Syrian question. The White House was claimed to have finally adopted the position of its US opposition and its British, French and German allies.Really?

The reality does not correspond to the story

Without hindrance, the US cruise missiles crossed the zone controlled by the new Russian weapon which inhibits NATO communications and commands. According to General Philip Breedlove, ex-Supreme Commander of NATO, this weapon enabled Russia to gain the advantage over the United States in terms of conventional warfare. It should normally have upset the guidance systems of these missiles, but apparently did not function. This indicates either that the Pentagon has finally found a technical riposte, or that the weapon had been de-activated by the Russians.The Syrian anti-air defence system includes S-300's controlled by the Syrian Arab Army and S-400's served by the Russian army. These weapons are supposed to be capable of intercepting cruise missiles, although the situation has never yet presented itself in combat conditions. They are, of course, triggered automatically, but they did not function either. Therefore no anti-missile missiles were fired, neither by the Russian army, nor by the Syrian army.When the US cruise missiles hit their targets, they landed on a military base which was almost deserted, having been evacuated only a short time before. Therefore, the missiles destroyed the tarmac, the radar equipment and a number of aircraft which had long been out of service, some hangars and living quarters. They nonetheless caused a dozen victims, six of whom died.Although no cruise missile was officially tracked as off-course or destroyed, only 23 and not 59 hit the base at Sha'irat.

What does this masquerade mean?

Since he acceded to the White House, President Trump has been trying to change his country's policies, to substitute cooperation for the current confrontational system. On the question of the « Greater Middle East », he took position for the « destruction » of jihadist organisations (and not for their « reduction », as his predecessor claimed).Over the last few days, Trump has recognised the legitimacy of the Syrian Arab Republic, and thus the maintenance in power of the democratically-elected President, Bachar el-Assad. He received the Egyptian President, Marshall Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, an ally of Syria, and congratulated him for his fight against the jihadists. He has re-established a direct communications channels between Washington and Damascus.In any case, President Trump's problem was to convince his allies to apply his policies whatever the investment they had made to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic.It is of course possible that President Trump made his about-face in three days simply because he saw a video broadcast on YouTube, but it is more probable that this morning's military action is the continuation of his previous diplomatic actions.By attacking,President Trump satisfied his opposition, so they will be unable to oppose the next phase of operations. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton called for the bombing of Syria in a riposte to the alleged use of chemical weapons.Donald Trump ordered his troops to fire cruise missiles on an almost empty base, after having given advance notice to the whole world, including Russia and Syria.Damascus, by sacrificing this base and the lives of a few men, gave him the authority to carry out a vast action against anyone who uses chemical weapons. But so far, the only people who actually use these weapons, and have been identified by the United Nations for doing so, are the jihadists.Daesh, which had also been warned of the US attack (but by its British, French and German commanders), immediately launched an attack on Homs, which is now deprived of an air base.We shall see in the next few days how Washington and its allies will react to the jihadist advance. It will only be at that moment that we shall know if Donald Trump's manœuvre and the gamble by Vladimir Putin and Bachar el-Assad has worked.

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