Posted on 04/10/2017 6:33:43 PM PDT by BenLurkin
U.S. officials say they are reaching the consensus view that Assad was simply acting out of desperation. The embattled Syrian leader is facing a major rebel offensive in Idlib province, led by radical Islamic groups, that his depleted and exhausted army is ill-equipped to counter by conventional means. Chemical weapons were a response of cold-blooded convenience, they believe.
That Trump and his team couldn't initially decide what may have motivated the strike complicated the decision-making on how to move forward, one administration official said, but "not to the point of stopping us from doing anything.”
...Aides and friends say the lack of clarity seemed to worry Trump, who is impatient and has sometimes expressed distrust of the intelligence community, while he faced his first military test.
"No one really knew exactly why," a senior administration official said Saturday. "And Trump wanted to know why.”
Trump continued to ask questions about Syria's motive even after the strike, mentioning the lack of a clear motivation to friends and aides at Mar-a-Lago, according to people who spoke to him.
...
While many Syria experts in Washington endorse the official consensus that Assad is desperate to fend off even a weakened rebel opposition, they are still entertaining other theories.
... They include the possibility of a rogue military commander — perhaps loyal to Iran, which has sent troops and funding to prop up Assad — was trying to sabotage the possibility of a U.S.-Russia-Assad alliance that could isolate Tehran.
Another is that Assad was trying to psychologically terrorize his opposition through a so-called demonstration effect. This school of thought holds that “he’s showing the rebels, ‘I can get away with this,’” Salem said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I’m going to give you a second to calm down and stop acting hysterical. Take a deep breath, go to your happy place.
You feel better? Good. Now lets review the following:
>Now several U.S. officials say they are reaching the consensus view that Assad was simply acting out of desperation. The embattled Syrian leader is facing a major rebel offensive in Idlib province, led by radical Islamic groups, that his depleted and exhausted army is ill-equipped to counter by conventional means. Chemical weapons were a response of cold-blooded convenience, they believe.
These US officials are lying. Assad’s forces kicked the crap out of the rebel offensive and the rebels took huge losses. ssad’s troops are continuing to exploit their counter attack on the retreating rebels. If this is the kind of lying intel officials are giving President Trump I’m not surprised he attacked Syria. These people are lying to President of the United States of America.
Are they saying the POTUS is asking these questions now?
Agree. Lots of fog out there right now.
Ok. this makes me far more reassured ...I wasn’t big on the strike but... but i see the questions I was asking asked.by Trump ..
Why would Assad do this now (seems like a damn stupid move) and to be skeptical of the intel considering what’s been going on with certain people on the Intel community and Trump.... I’m going to have faith in Trump on this one
And I also get the sense now from this that this is in fact a one-off stri. It was a message... it was an opportunity to send a message to China about getting North Korea on a leash and for Russia to get Syria on a leash
I’m seeing a pragmatic decision
As I mentioned—and we seem to agree on this—the US intel community has given President Trump virtually no reason to trust it. And despite that non-controversial fact, apparently you believe that the President just blindly took their word for what happened, and decided to launch a massive cruise missile attack as a result.
By all accounts, that's simply not the case. The President didn't blindly accept the US intel. He got additional intel from other sources, and he then used this additional information as a means of confirming what he was told from the US sources.
So it appears that the President went to great lengths to verify the intelligence he was being presented with. He want to great lengths to determine whether he was being lied to.
Now if, as you say, the President was being deliberately lied to, then whoever did that should be hung for treason.
Unfortunately, you haven't provided any factual basis for your assertion. You've pointed to the idea that Assad was "winning" in some recent campaign, and you tried to reverse-engineer that into a blanket statement that the intel was therefore false, because Assad had no ostensible motive.
All of this is, of course, presuming the dubious notion that a brutal dictator is always going to act logically and rationally, when in reality there's ample evidence that isn't always the case.
Doubt about the motive? Yes.
Doubt about the intel? There doesn't appear to be; indeed it was confirmed from multiple sources, including Israel. Are they all lying to the President?
For your "alternate facts" to hold any water, there must be more than just an assertion.
It's as if 1) you don't trust the Trump administration, or 2) you do trust the Trump administration, but have no faith in the US intel community.
Which is it?
Really. Those dead-body scenes look like sarin victims to you? Anyone who know anything about sarin knows either it wasn’t sarin, or they were gassed somewhere else and moved to the photography locations
What exactly did he have to gain by killing those people with chems? They were irrelevant to the war and even if that weren’t true, he could have killed the with good ol’ bombs.
WHAT A CROCK! Did not one single advisor have the guts to stand up and say “Mr President, perhaps Assad’s forces did NOT do it”?
Really. Those dead-body scenes look like sarin victims to you? Anyone who know anything about sarin knows either it wasn’t sarin, or they were gassed somewhere else and moved to the photography locations
Seems odd attire to wear to a chemical gas explosion.
Forgetting the mighty big gap between when he was forced to stop that and when we went to war :)
And you’re likely a Saudi Arabia apologist too, I guess :)
Only 90 percent of the terrorists were Sauds and only 20 pages were kept from us. The 20 pages proving Saudi collusion.
But we hit that POWERHOUSE Iraq!!!
That showed em in SA :)
God told him :)
Now you have “sources”? :)
WELL THAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!!!! :)
maybe you can get Colin Powell to show us.
Huh?!
You guys are making less sense by the day.
Obama did nothing. Trump said let Syrians decide and we do not do Regime change and nation building anymore.
Asad thought it was business as usual, he did it before and he did it again. He was likely encouraged and/or helped by Iran and Russia and a bit Trump test.
Trump rightly enforced the Red Line about no WMDs are to be used. A punch on the nose in dramactic fashion and don’t do it again.
So not only is there a new sherif in town, but at least the town has a sherif now. As Obama was Coward In Chief and became a door mat
I have not seen any. If you are going to start ww3 you better have solid irrefutable evidence and you better release it to the American people. Why are we even in Syria in the first place? No one in the USA gives a damn about Syria.
When I voted for Trump I trusted him to keep his campaign promise to not get us involved in Syria and not get us into a confrontation with Russia over Syria. That trust has been broken.
I don’t give a crap about any of those sand flee countries or their screwed up governments or clan fighting. I do care about keeping extremists and terrorists from coming here, or getting hold of any WMDs to use against us infidels.
I don’t have sources. I’m at the source. I’m not going to apologize because I have authority to see certain data that those without a clearance can’t. Like I have told others, if you don’t want to believe what I am saying, don’t. I have lots of tin foil for sale if you’d rather purchase that.
As for Assad, no evidence exists that he is the guilty party. Stephen Cohn just stated this on CNN. Of course, others on CNN jumped all over him. There is a push to get us into a war with Russia, led by McCain.
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