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?
> The paragraph you cited was in relation to the “why”, not the “how”. There appears to be very little doubt about the “how”. You’re trying to conflate something about which there appears to be little or no doubt, with something else about which there is doubt.
No you dolt, the point is if intel guys lied about something as obvious as that, then they probably lied about everything. A president is in the position where they have to believe the intel that comes in, but if it’s all lies then of course he’s going to make bad moves.