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Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain released a joint statement on Tuesday urging President Donald Trump to bolster ground efforts in Syria. "As part of a broader strategy, we urge the President to take greater military action to achieve our objectives, including grounding the Syrian air force and establishing safe havens inside Syria to protect Syrians,” the statement reads. “There will never be a diplomatic solution as long as Assad dominates the battlefield,” according to McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, and Graham, who chairs an appropriations subcommittee.

Cruz, up for reelection in 2018, is back home in Texas on a “two-week listening tour” with voters. In an interview with NBC 5 reporter Julie Fine, he explained the problem with pursuing regime change in Syria without a clear strategy or end game. "We are trapped between impossible options. On one hand, Bashar al-Assad is a monster. He has repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own citizens, against innocent men women and children. He is a bad, bad guy,” Cruz said. [cut] “But on the other hand, the opposition – many of the rebels fighting against him – are...

Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, seems to have gotten away with all her crimes against the American people. Of course, it was not just the American people she betrayed There are many around the world whose suffering has been revived by Clinton. When she and Obama toppled Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, they invited in a new modern day slavery. The ISIS invasion brought with it a revival of human trafficking, slavery, and flesh markets. I think the word “freed” was what she did for the Libyan people after brutally murdering Qaddafi. That “freedom” brought Libya...

The parameters of politically incorrect language keep expanding: now simply accusing somebody of being worse than Hitler is WORSE THAN HITLER!Of course that only applies to Republican spokesmen (microaggression!) for the Republican (trigger warning!) President, Donald J. Trump. In normal situations using sarin gas on your own people would be the major transgression, but in the post-Obama world of Ted Baxter news reporting it’s the reporting on the use of sarin gas that comes under attack. I don’t know about you but I couldn’t help but think “Ted Baxter”  when I hear the gravitas with which Scott Pelley pronounced the...

Tuesday on CNN’s “At This Hour,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal” who he believes “intentionally left chemical weapons in the hands of Assad.”

Press Secretary Sean Spicer went on CNN to fight for his job after favorably comparing Adolf Hitler with Bashar al-Assad at today's White House briefing. Spicer had said unlike the Syrian strongman, the 1940s Nazi dictator 'didn't even sink to ... using chemical weapons,' leaving reporters in disbelief and causing some critics to call for his head. 'I apologize, it was a mistake to do that,' Spicer said to the network's Wolf Blitzer, whose own parents survived the Holocaust. Blitzer's paternal grandparents were killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

Six years of brutal war and dashed expectations from the U.S. leave most anti-Assad rebels skeptical of man they call ‘Abu Ivanka.’ Syrians seem to have learned at last the most important lesson in geopolitics: when to be cynical about American intentions. The Trump administration’s airstrikes on Bashar al-Assad’s Shayrat air base after Assad’s suspected use of the nerve agent sarin against the people of Khan Sheikhoun was followed by an instant round of jubilation among anti-Assad rebels and activists. Some took to referring to the Donald as Abu Ivanka al-Amriki, which literally means “Father of Ivanka, the American” in...

Many of President Donald Trump's staunchest supporters — the very people who put him in the White House — expressed feelings of anger and betrayal following the administration's illegal military attack on Syria. Among the prominent Trump backers who have spoken out so far are conservative pundit Ann Coulter, one of Trump's earliest and fiercest supporters, along with radio host Michael Savage, one of America's most popular talk-show personalities, who is credited by some analysts with putting Trump in the White House. Also speaking out was former U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) leader and Brexiteer Nigel Farage, along with his successor...

THE biggest loser from last week's cruise-missile strikes on a Syrian air base wasn't President Bashar al-Assad. It was Vladimir Putin. The Syrian leader was punished, but Russia's new tsar was humiliated. Even with an hour's warning of the attacks, Putin's military in Syria did nothing to defend its ally. For all of the Russian bluster in recent years, Putin couldn't stop the strikes. His military lacked the means to do so. And any attempt to interfere with the operation would only have revealed the inferior quality of Russian armaments - including their much-ballyhooed air defence systems. This is vitally...

Appalling images of Syrian babies gasping for breath and others foaming at the mouth after the Damascus regime hit a rebel-held town with chemical weapons has stunned the world. But people were almost as stunned last week that Syria still had chemical weapons because the Kremlin in June 2014 had vouched publicly for their complete eradication. One man who certainly wasn’t stunned that Syria had such weapons and would use them was Syrian Brig. Gen. Zaher al-Sakat, once the Bashar regime’s chemical weapons chief in charge of such operations. In an interview this week with Fox News, Sakat remained steadfast...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a stern warning to Russia on Tuesday: Either stand with the US and other “like-minded” nations against Syria or side with President Bashar al-Assad and his allies Iran and the militant group Hezbollah. SEE ALSO Russia knew Syria’s chemical-weapon attack was coming: US Russia knew Syria’s chemical-weapon attack was coming: US ​​”We want to relieve the suffering of the Syrian people. Russia can be a part of that future and play an important role,” Tillerson ​told top diplomats during a meeting in Italy. “Or Russia can maintain its alliance with this group, which we...

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had information that the United States was planning to launch new missile strikes on Syria, and that there were plans to fake chemicals weapons attacks there. Putin, standing alongside Italian President Sergio Mattarella who was in Moscow for talks, said Russia would tolerate Western criticism of its role in Syria but hoped that attitudes would eventually soften. When asked whether he expected more U.S. missile strikes on Syria, he said: "We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared ... in other parts of Syria including in the southern Damascus suburbs...

Donald Trump's decision to bomb Syria was influenced by his daughter, Ivanka, being "heartbroken and outraged" at the country's alleged chemical weapons attack, one of the president's sons told a British newspaper. The president launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base he alleged was involved in a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians last week. Trump's 33-year-old son, Eric, told The Daily Telegraph on Monday that the strike was influenced in part by Ivanka, who he said was "heartbroken and outraged" by the chemical attack.

Top Democrats are not pleased that Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pushed the U.S. to collect and release evidence from the scene of the chemical attack in Syria. Gabbard visited Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad in January and has been consistently cautious about American involvement in the Middle Eastern county. The Hawaii congresswoman said in a statement that the airstrikes on Syria were “short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaida and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia.” She also said she has not seen...

President Trump is emerging from his first overseas crisis looking calm and competent, with his foreign-policy and national-security teams hitting on all cylinders. Surprise! His airstrike against Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria won the support of 78 US senators, including 30 Democrats — albeit with some qualifications. The fact that Trump executed what came off as a rapid turnaround on his Syria policy in the wake of a war crime indicates he’s not locked into preconceived notions or policies: He’s adjusting to reality as it develops. Yes, Trump lacks the kind of grand foreign-policy doctrine pushed by the last two...

The key bit comes at 4:30, a few minutes after he talks about working to remove Assad and ISIS at the same time. Old and busted: Two-front wars. The new hotness: Two-front wars within the same country. Marco Rubio made this same lame point about the same Rex Tillerson comment that McCain is thinking of and got called out on it by Tillerson himself this weekend, as Ed mentioned earlier. Tillerson said on March 30th that it was for the Syrian people to decide whether Assad remains in charge (and doubled down on that position yesterday), a notable break from...

"Trump has escalated military operations in Iraq to a degree that has hugely increased civilian deaths in the war against Islamic State militants.... Furthermore, sending in more U.S. forces to fight alongside the opposition (which includes jihadist groups formerly affiliated with al Qaida) will plunge the U.S. deeper into a conflict against Russia. The destabilizing impact of such a move has to be fully contemplated. While the images and videos of children struggling to breathe and survive is sickening, there must be some sober consideration about the realities on the ground in Syria. The truth is hard to come by...

Is Donald Trump a student of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand? Some of Trump’s recent actions suggest that he is, at least intuitively. I am thinking in particular of Talleyrand’s observation that “non-intervention is a metaphysical idea, indistinguishable in practice from intervention.” The question is not whether a state like America is part of the process. It is, by definition. The question is how effective a role it will play. Thursday night, Donald Trump demonstrated his grasp of that truth. In August 2012, Barack Obama had some stern words for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “We have been very clear to the...

With one fell swoop, 59 Tomahwk missiles made it unmistakably clear to the Muslim world and to America's enemies that the rules have changed and that the U.S. would now stand up for its beliefs -- even at the cost of clashing with a power like Russia. On April 7, 2017, the international Trump era kicked off. In one fell swoop, U.S. President Donald Trump erased the last six years of Obama administration feebleness in Syria. Fifty-nine missiles made it unmistakably clear that a new sheriff was in town, that the rules have changed and that the United States wouldn't...

Chemical weapons have limited military utility, a fact known since the end of World War I. Explosives and machine gun bullets were shown to have killed far more people, to say nothing of disease. The use of chemical weapons today provokes international condemnation, if not always action. Those who order their deployment risk being charged with war crimes. So why would Syria's President Bashar Assad use them? Against civilian populations, chemical weapons are instruments of terror – a demonstration that resistance will bring horrific consequences. But indiscriminate mass murder is a consequence of their use, not the objective.