“WASHINGTON — An American fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane on Sunday after it dropped bombs near local ground forces supported by the United States, the first time the American military has downed a Syrian aircraft since the start of the civil war in 2011, officials said.
The confrontation represents a further escalation between forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the United States, which has been directing the military campaign in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State.
The American F/A-18 shot down the Syrian government warplane south of the town of Tabqah, on the same day that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps launched several midrange missiles from inside Iran at targets in Syria, hoping to punish Islamic State forces responsible for last week’s terrorist attacks in Tehran.
The Guards Corp said it “targeted the headquarters and meeting place and suicide car assembly line” of “ISIS terrorists” in the province of Deir al-Zour, where Islamic State forces surround an estimated 200,000 people in a government-held section of the provincial capital of the same name…..”
Credit Vadim Savitsky/Russian Defence, via European Pressphoto Agency
WASHINGTON — Long-running tensions between the United States and Russia erupted publicly on Monday as Moscow condemned the American military’s downing of a Syrian warplane and threatened to target aircraft flown by the United States and its allies west of the Euphrates.
The Russians also said they had suspended their use of a hotline that the American and Russian militaries used to avoid collisions of their aircraft in Syrian airspace.
The episode was the first time the United States downed a Syrian plane since the civil war began there in 2011 and came after the SU-22 jet dropped bombs on Sunday near American-backed fighters combating the Islamic State. It followed another major American military action against the Syrian government: a cruise missile strike to punish a nerve gas attack that killed civilians in April.
The latest escalation comes as competing forces converge on ungoverned swaths of Syria amid the country’s six-year civil war. Syrian forces and Iranian-backed militias that support them are extending their reach east closer to American-backed fighters, including forces that the Pentagon hopes will pursue the militants into the Euphrates River valley after they take the Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa. The collision of the disparate forces has, in effect, created a war within a war.
More:
“I would be very surprised if they willfully shot down a U.S. plane that came to bomb some al Qaeda target west of the Euphrates River,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington. “On the other hand, if we’re coming after Assad’s forces with some big armada, maybe they want us to be a little nervous that maybe we’d get shot at.”
O’Hanlon added, “They’re trying to create some deterrents, or some limits, on our involvement in escalation. And it’s consistent with the way this thing has been going back and forth for a while.”
Then again, some analysts believe the Russians are issuing empty threats because they can’t afford the consequences of doing anything more.
“A lot of of this is saber rattling and bluster from the Russians who are clearly unnerved actually by recent U.S. actions,” said Gardiner.
Gardiner said it’s significant that when a plane from NATO-member Turkey shot down a Russian fighter operating from Syria in 2015 there was rhetoric from Moscow but not a whole lot of action……
Sabre-rattling, or serious threat? Maybe there wasn’t a lot of action in 2015, but things have moved on. I guess we’ll find out what the next move is soon enough.
GENEVA The Trump administration gave formal notice on Tuesday that it is reviewing its participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council and called for reforming the body to eliminate what it called its “chronic anti-Israel bias”.
“The United States is looking carefully at this Council and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening,” Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Geneva forum, opening a three-week session.
The Council’s critical stance of Israel has long been a contentious issue for the United States, Israel’s main ally.
The body has taken a strong position against Israel’s occupation of territory seized in the 1967 Middle East war, its treatment of Palestinians, and its building of Jewish settlements. Most countries consider the settlements, in areas the Palestinians envisage as part of an eventual independent state, illegal.
Washington says the Council is stacked with opponents of Israel and boycotted it for three years under President George W. Bush before rejoining under Barack Obama in 2009.
“Tragically, we’ve been down this road before, Haley later told the Graduate Institute of Geneva. “America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council. We seek to reestablish the Council’s legitimacy.”
She named Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi, and Saudi Arabia as not upholding the highest standards despite their membership and said that the forum was becoming “discredited” like its predecessor body, the Human Rights Commission.
The 47-member Council adopted five “biased” resolutions on Israel and the Palestinian territory at its March session, but never even considered a resolution on Venezuela, she said.
“This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the Council itself,” Haley said, as some in the audience interrupted briefly with laughter at the remark.
She called for the Council to address serious human rights violations in Venezuela and for the government of President Nicolas Maduro to address them.
“If Venezuela cannot, it should voluntarily step down from its seat on the Human Rights Council until it can get its own house in order. Being a member of this council is a privilege, and no country who is a human rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table,” she said.
Haley called for the council to adopt strong resolutions on abuses in Syria, Eritrea, Belarus, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo at its session.
Some activists urged Washington to focus on abuses at home.
“It’s hard to take Ambassador Haley seriously on U.S. support for human rights in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and immigration crackdowns,” Jamil Dakwar, director of the human rights program at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Reuters.
“The United States must get its own house in order and make human rights at home a priority – then, it can begin to credibly demand the same of other countries abroad.”
(additional reporting by Tom Miles, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Much thanks to John De Rothschild at theConTrail.com for the article:
20.04.2017
Urgent statement by the deputy commander of the DPR Armed Forces, Eduard Basurin.
The Nazi Ukraine Army (AFU)continues to aggravate the situation on the contact line in violation of the Minsk Agreements. The ATO command is trying to transfer the conflict into a “hot” phase, committing provocative actions against the DPR People’s Army.
As it became known from a source in the command of the military unit A0456 (Odessa), on the eve of the May holidays, the Ukrainian Nazi Armed Forces, specifically the Ukrainian Junta Navy units as part of one combined brigade of Marines, prepare a plan for active military operations in the Volnovakha and Novoazavsky districts of the former Donetsk region.
According to the plan of the command, on April 23-24, two mobile subversive groups are planned to be deployed in the area of the locality of Shirokino. At the moment, weapons are being prepared for saboteurs.
To conspire the operation of the group, it is planned to use civilian vehicles equipped with mortars.
The main goal of the group is to approach the contact line as close as possible, to conduct a provocative fire on their false positions, and, consequently, justify the beginning of retaliatory strikes on the positions of the DPR Army.
Then, it is planned to launch a large-scale offensive in order to regain control over the territory of the former Donetsk region. The planning of the operation takes place against the background of the raising the degree of the rhetoric of the Nazi Ukrainian authorities representatives and is accompanied by the intensification of propaganda in the media controlled by the Nazi Kiev regime .
Due to the depressing moral and psychological state of the military, the authorities are making attempts to rotate the ATO forces units, hastily «repairing the gaps» in the vanguard of the future offensive.
Recently, the Ukrainian media have spread a statement by Nazi Official Alexander Turchinov on the AFU steady advancement to the Russian border. By the way, soon after this statement, the head of the National Security and Defense Council was hospitalized with an unidentified diagnosis. The politician of the newly baked European power preferred not at home, but in Germany.
In addition, the Defense Minister of the Ukraine Junta , Stepan Poltorak, incessantly informs of building up the tank grouping on the contact line. In addition, the other day Poltorak announced his intention to send over 20 tanks to the ATO zone. It should be noted that all the statements of the Kiev representatives are made against the background of the ceasefire and the withdrawal of weapons. In particular, right after the separation of forces in the former Lugansk region, Poroshenko announced that all tank units were in constant combat readiness and, if necessary, in no time would return to the battlefield.
While newspapers and news agencies of the Independent continue to be full of reports on the conclusion of agreements with ‘friendly countries’ on cooperation in the military sphere, the president of the country extols in London the power of the ‘Ukraine-fighter’ occupying the 8th position in strength in Europe. Most importantly, he said that Kiev was fighting with its ‘own weapons’, without any outside help, but owing to ‘fantastic’ training by British, Canadian, American and European colleagues.
After such statements, it is not clear how the military and political authorities of Ukraine are going to fulfill their promises on a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbass. Based on recent actions by politicians and other bosses, it is absolutely clear that the Kiev authorities do not plan to resolve the conflict in Donbass politically. On the contrary, all the facts point to the preparation of the Nazi Ukrainian Armed Forces to unleash a large-scale war in the east of the country.
It can not either be ruled out that this aggravation will be used by Kiev to accuse the DPR and LPR representatives of violating the Minsk Agreements. This is most likely to happen on the eve of the next meeting of the Tripartite Contact Group for the settlement of the situation in Donbass, which, according to the statement of the OSCE Special Representative, Martin Saydik, will be held on April 26.
Interesting report from SGT expresses what many are no doubt feeling. Has Trump been swallowed by “The Swamp”? It seems to me that the Illuminated Elite are still in charge. Some presidents are members or willing accomplices, others reluctant or unwitting. Whatever, it seems “the Plan” marches on regardless, inevitably towards the goal of a global New World Order in place by the year 2030.
As The Trump administration is flexing its military muscle, having stood up to Syria and its ally Russia, and while it’s now relishing in the news it has dropped the nation’s largest most-powerful non-nuclear bomb on a cave complex in Eastern Afghanistan, one critic was quick to point out one little-known fact. Wikileaks tweeted a simple but true statement concerning the origin of the cave complex the Americans are so proud to have reportedly destroyed. “Those tunnels the U.S is bombing in Afghanistan? They were built by the CIA,”Wikileaks tweeted.
Linked to the tweet was a New York Times article from 2005, which described a similar cave complex in detail, and added a few additional details worth noting. “Tora Bora” as it’s known, contains “fortified caves” which are reported to contain, “miles of tunnels, bunkers and base camps, dug deeply into the steep rock walls.” The tunnels were built by the “C.I.A.”, with the help of the Bin Laden family, who constructed the complex.
Also jumping in on the mockery of the Trump administration is Edward Snowden, who tweeted, “The bomb dropped today in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, cost $314,000,000.” And in a follow up tweet, also said, “Those mujahedeen tunnel networks we’re bombing in Afghanistan? We paid for them.” He, too, linked his tweet to The NY Times article mentioned above. Apparently, the ant farm network of tunnels built by the CIA can now be destroyed by the American military in yet another pseudo-show-of-force meant to make the Trump administration seem tough on Syria, ISIS, and Al Quaeda.
It was said Bin Laden even helped to run the bulldozers at Tora Bora and knew the labyrinth of tunnels like the proverbial back of his hand. Financed by the intelligence agency to provide a headquarters and safe haven for the Mujahedeen, the Afghani fighting force was used to prevent the Russian takeover of Afghanistan during the Afghan War. After the Russians were defeated, the same Mujahedeen became known as Al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden.
After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Bin Laden became the United States’ most wanted man. Not surprisingly, he took up refuge inside Tora Bora, within its miles and miles of complex, well-fortified tunnels. Times writer Mary Anne Weaver “asked Masood Farivar, a former Khalis officer who had fought in Tora Bora during the jihad, to tell me why the caves were so important. ‘They’re rugged, formidable and isolated,” he said.
“If you know them, you can come and go with ease. But if you don’t, they’re a labyrinth that you can’t penetrate. They rise in some places to 14,000 feet, and for 10 years the Soviets pummeled them with everything they had, but to absolutely no avail. Another reason they’re so important is their proximity to the border and to Pakistan.'”
One American military leader tasked with capturing or killing Bin Laden was General “Mad Dog” Maddox. Maddox is now the Trump Administration’s Secretary of Defense, and appears to have attempted to destroy at least a portion of Tora Bora’s system of tunnels with the drop of the MOAB bomb, known as the “Mother Of All Bombs.”
The aging general who’s now the nation’s most powerful military leader, with the exception of Trump as Commander-in-Chief, appears to be following through with a sixteen year old vendetta he may have been holding onto. The Times article from 2005 writes, “Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis…along with another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that…he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden’s lair…He argued strongly that he should be permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves.”
However, according to Weaver, “The general was turned down,” and the decision not to take Bin Laden there at Tora Bora was one of the greatest military mistakes of the Bush Administration’s attempt to get him. Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora on December 16th, 2001.
Comment: Assuming Bin Laden was even at Tora Bora why would Bush and company want to kill or capture the greatest boogie man and military security complex boondoggle the US has ever seen?
It is also important to note that Wikileaks’ tweet may or may not be 100 percent accurate. CNN reported the MOAB bomb was dropped on a tunnel complex about 12 miles from Tora Bora. However, those tunnels likely all connected. CBS reported the airstrike destroyed several caves used by ISIS with it’s 11-ton ordinance. The news agency also interviewed a military expert who said the U.S. has at least 14 more MOAB missiles and may be prepared to lay waste to all such cave systems.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, targeted Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”. The recently appointed director has apparently had enough of Wikileaks’ activities, such as the March release of the CIA’s Vault 7.
Comment: What a perfect metaphor for the US economy, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars building infrastructure for military forces we like – only to spend hundreds of millions of dollars later to destroy it when it becomes a “good story” to.
Top ten reasons to doubt official story on Assad poison-gas attack
by Jon Rappoport
April 13, 2017
The sarin-gas attack story prompted the US missile strike on a Syrian runway. Here are the top ten reasons for doubting that story, and instead calling it a convenient pretext:
ONE: Photos show rescue workers treating/decontaminating people injured or killed in the gas attack. The workers aren’t wearing gloves or protective gear. Only the clueless or crazy would expose themselves to sarin residue, which can be fatal.
TWO: MIT professor Thomas Postol told RT, “I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the [US intelligence] document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun…Any competent analyst would have had questions about whether the debris in the crater was staged or real. No competent analyst would miss the fact that the alleged sarin canister was forcefully crushed from above, rather than exploded by a munition within it.” How would a canister purportedly dropped from an Assad-ordered plane incur “crushing from above?”
THREE: Why would President Assad, supported by Russia, scoring victory after victory against ISIS, moving closer to peace negotiations, suddenly risk all his gains by dropping sarin gas on his own people?
FOUR: In an interview with Scott Horton, ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi states that his intelligence and military sources indicate Assad didn’t attack his own people with poison gas.
FIVE: Ex-CIA officer Ray McGovern states that his military sources report an Assad air strike did hit a chemical plant, and the fallout killed people, but the attack was not planned for that purpose. There was no knowledge the chemicals were lethal.
SIX: At consortiumnews.com, journalist Robert Parry writes, “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 are CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other top intelligence officials?”
“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.”
“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.”
SEVEN: As soon as the Assad gas attack was reported, the stage was set for a US missile strike. No comprehensive investigation of the purported gas attack was undertaken.
EIGHT: There are, of course, precedents for US wars based on false evidence—the missing WMDs in Iraq, the claims of babies being pushed out of incubators in Kuwait, to name just two.
NINE: Who benefits from the sarin gas story? Assad? Or US neocons; the US military-industrial complex; Pentagon generals who want a huge increase in their military budget; Trump and his team, who are suddenly praised in the press, after a year of being pilloried at every turn; and ISIS?
TEN: For those who doubt that ISIS has ever used poison gas, see the NY Times (11/21/2016). While claiming that Assad has deployed chemical attacks, the article also states that ISIS has deployed chemical weapons 52 times since 2014.
I’m not claiming these ten reasons definitely and absolutely rule out the possibility of an Assad-ordered chemical attack. But they do add up to a far more believable conclusion than the quickly assembled “Assad-did-it” story.
These ten reasons starkly point to the lack of a rational and complete investigation of the “gas attack.”
And this lack throws a monkey wrench into Trump’s claim that he was ordering the missile strike based on “a high degree of confidence.”
WASHINGTON – President Trump unleashed airstrikes on Syria on Thursday to punish its strongman, Bashar Assad, after a chemical attack this week that killed dozens of civilians, including children. The barrage amounted to the most significant military operation ordered by Trump, a newcomer to governing who had warned, before taking office, against escalating America’s involvement in the Middle East.
“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Trump said in Palm Beach, Florida. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”
The operation — the first known direct American strike on Syrian government assets since the start of the country’s civil war — rained at least 50 cruise missiles from U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean on a Syrian airfield thought to be the point of origin for the chemical attack, U.S. officials said. The attack took place at 8:40 p.m. Eastern time.
The decision risked confrontation with Russia, Syria’s patron, which reportedly had troops stationed at the air base, and could mean increased dangers for hundreds of U.S. troops now in Syria to prepare for the assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State militant group. But it also sent a dramatically different message about Washington’s willingness to use force in Syria after Barack Obama shied away from enforcing his self-imposed “red line.”
President Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
The decision to dramatically escalate America’s role in a conflict that has left some 500,000 dead, according to human rights groups, was arguably the new president’s biggest decision yet, with many unknown consequences. At home, the early response from Congress suggested strong bipartisan support for the strikes but deep concern about the way forward. Some in Congress, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Trump should have sought authorization from Congress for a military operation that was not in response to an attack on the U.S.
Trump explained his decision by describing the horrific images from Tuesday’s chemical weapons strike in a mostly rebel-controlled area near the Turkish border, saying “there can be no dispute” that Assad’s forces were responsible.
“Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians,” he said. “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.”
So “tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Trump said. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”
The president also urged “all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”
Congressional Democrats offered measured support for the onslaught but warned that lawmakers would need to weigh in on any sustained escalation of the conflict. Some of the lawmakers delivering that message stood idly by while Barack Obama escalated America’s role in Iraq and Syria.
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland, said in a statement that “any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress.”
Cardin also pressed Trump “to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country.”
Trump had huddled with top advisers, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was to hold meetings Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a sign of how quickly events were unfolding, White House officials had said just a day earlier that McMaster would not travel with Trump.
Tillerson told reporters that the president had begun a long, difficult and potentially fruitless effort to push Assad from power.
“The process by which Assad would leave is something that I think requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country, to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving,” he said. Pressed on whether he and Trump were working to assemble an international coalition to achieve that goal, Tillerson replied: “Those steps are underway.”
The secretary of state also had tough words for Moscow, Assad’s patron. “It is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime,” he said.
And he reaffirmed what senior U.S. officials have said since the world first saw footage and photographs of gasping, dying or dead children in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province: Assad is to blame.
“There is no doubt in our minds and the information we have supports that Syria, the Syrian regime under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, are responsible for this attack,” Tillerson said.
From The Guardian:
The UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs says it has no sign that U.S. military strikes against a Syrian air base have had “any direct consequence” on overall aid operations in Syria, reports the Associated Press.
Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said such violence “is not a new feature” of Syria’s war, and cited continued UN-led efforts to reach people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas of the country.
The United States launched cruise missile strikes against Shayart air base in Homs province following a chemical attack in a northern village that U.S. officials and others have blamed on President Bashar Assad’s forces.
UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Friday at a UN briefing that use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, would amount to a war crime
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “bears full responsibility” for the U.S. airstrikes against an air base in Syria, Reuters reports.
“The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.
“Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable,” said Stoltenberg, who was informed by the U.S. defence minister that strikes would go ahead.
From MSN:
President Vladimir Putin believes that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt U.S.-Russia relations, Russian news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying on Friday.
The Russian leader, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarded the U.S. action as “aggression against a sovereign nation” on a “made-up pretext” and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, was cited as saying.
The United States fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase earlier on Friday from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week.
Moscow had been hoping to cooperate with new U.S. President Donald Trump to jointly fight the Islamic State militant group in Syria, a move it was banking on to improve battered U.S.-Russia ties which are languishing at a post Cold War low.
But the U.S. action caused consternation in Russia, angering the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin lawmakers who suggested it had dealt a significant blow to any hopes of doing business with Trump.
“Putin views the U.S. strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext,” Peskov was cited as saying.
“Washington’s step will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties.”
Peskov was also quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the U.S. move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism, an idea that Putin has repeatedly pushed.
Russia would now call for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the matter, the RIA news agency cited Viktor Ozerov, the head of the upper house of parliament’s defense and security committee, as saying.
No Russian citizens had been hurt in the strikes, another lawmaker said, while Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the upper house’s international affairs committee, said it looked like Trump may have been bounced into approving military action by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
“One way or another, Russian cruise missiles are continuing to strike terrorists and American ones government troops who are heading the war against the terrorists,” Kosachev wrote on social media.
“I fear that with these approaches the hoped-for U.S.-Russian anti-terrorism coalition in Syria … is breathing its last before it is even born.”
PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war.
In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting Assad’s military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people.
That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad.
“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically,” Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,” he said of Tuesday’s chemical weapons strike, which Western countries blame on Assad’s forces. “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”
The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency.
(Source: Reuters)
12:16 From The Guardian:
Putin holds security council meeting
Shaun Walker
President Vladimir Putin has held a meeting of the security council to discuss the Russian response. “The participants expressed deep concern at the inevitable negative consequences of these aggressive actions for the joint efforts to fight terrorism,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He said the security council also expressed regret at the harm the strike would do to US-Russian relations, and they discussed ways to continue the Russian air force operation in Syria to give support to Assad’s army.
ADDED * APRIL:
Vladimir Putin has diverted a warship from a routine voyage to protect Syria against further US airstrikes – which has heightened fears of conflict between Russia and the West.
The Russian leader has sent the navy’s Admiral Grigorovich frigate to the Mediterranean to position itself between US ships that bombed a military airfield near Homs on Friday.
A Moscow source said the warship, armed with cruise missiles, was due to arrive in the Mediterranean later on Friday after it was moved from an exercise in the Black Sea.
They told Russian news agency TASS : “The Russian ship armed with cruise missiles Kalibr will visit the logistics base in Tartus, Syria.”
Credits: Facebook/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
Credits: Facebook/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
3/3 SLIDES
The Russian Defence Ministry added Syrian air defences would be beefed up after the US cruise missile attacks, according to local media.
The ministry was also cited as mocking the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes as “extremely low” saying that 23 missiles had hit their targets but it was unclear where 36 others had landed.
The moves come as the US launched up to 60 Tomahawk missiles from Navy ships in the Mediterranean on Thursday night.
It is believed they bombarded the Al-Shayrat airbase, south of the city of Homs.
Syrian state news claimed nine people were killed in the bombing which included four children. Six Syrian military jets had also been destroyed.
The military action sparked a furious response from the Russian President who appears to have become involved in preventing further conflict.
Sabre-rattling, or serious threat? Maybe there wasn’t a lot of action in 2015, but things have moved on. I guess we’ll find out what the next move is soon enough.
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WikiLeaks: The Afghan Tunnels the US Just Bombed — “They were built by the CIA”