USA Launches 59 Tomahawk Missiles Strikes Into Syria Following Chemical Attack.

I think it was mostly a message for the Russian military. U.S. is treading on incredibly dangerous waters right now with Russia, and especially when hours prior Russia gave warning of negative consequences if they chose to attack Syria. When the strikes hit the airbase there was Russian military dangerously close within its proximity and I think right now U.S. does NOT want to strike with Russia but at the same time shit needs to get done as far as taking Assad's military power out. There's an awful conflict of interest going on right now considering Russia is also backing Assad's military.

@ad1x2: I agree but his supporters bought the whole "He's different" thing and ran with it. This is further proof that trump is just like the rest of them. It is also worth noting that those other examples didn't continuously bash a decision on twitter in a very rude way only to turn around and make that decision when they were in charge. I'd argue it's more about how worded his disagreement. It is much easier to sell to people that you changed your mind if you just plainly state your disagreement. When you start throwing around insults like trump, people are going to attack you for changing your mind.

While I am not against letting in refugees that are properly vetted, we have to be realistic and realize that we can't take every single person into the country that is being oppressed around the world. Even if Hillary Clinton was president right now, those same children would have probably been killed and she herself said that we should bomb Syria hours before it actually happened.

Before trying to fly millions of refugees into the country a year until everyone is safe, maybe we should consider putting them in a position where they no longer need to flee their countries?

now we know that president trump isn't a russian puppet, but this won't satisfy white liberals. president trump must bomb russia next to prove that he isn't a puppet

Pretty much. People are saying he's using this as a distraction when a country just broke the Geneva Convention and used weapons of mass destruction on their own people. I swear Trump could hand out 100 dollar bills to liberals and they would complain how they were folded.

thanks white liberals, it's all good because president trump needs to prove that he isn't a russian puppet. if president trump refuses to have military conflict with russia, then he's a russian lapdog because of RUSSIARUSSIARUSSIARUSSIARUSSIARUSSIARUSSIA

To be completely fair, except for Rand Paul during the primaries, he was running against little shits who waved the "THOSE CORRUPT POLITICIANS WHO ONLY WANT TO DO WHAT THE LOBBYISTS AND THE WARMONGERS WANT? YUP. WE SURE ARE THEM" flag pretty damn proudly at all times. Hillary was easily the worst of the bunch. The woman ran an entire campaign built EXCLUSIVELY around the idea that she was the establishment and that was totally awesome because reasons.

ah those conservative tears...

They found oil at the Golan Heights.

President wants to bomb area. President finds out military left attack zone. President attacks zone, killing civilians. Numerous government officials with the President state that they have no plan to oust the government they attack. Officials admit attack was done to show disapproval. Regional enemy promises to help state President attacked. Regional enemy is led by a man the President cannot say even a bad word about. President's nation loses standing. President's nation maybe never recovers it's place.

The deflection is strong with these ones.

I think its worthy of consideration given there has been zero independent verification on anything and there are so many issues with the situation that legitimate organizations and people are having.

Ill say this much, i hate bringing up the "false flag" thing becasue the wonderful people of the internet kind of ruined it by proclaiming it for every situation possible, even when we had tons of evidence to the contrary. So whenever you mention it now its like bringing up big foot. But the fact of the matter is these are operations our government has taken part in since Vietnam on a regular basis and you don't have to take anyone else's word for it aside from what the CIA has now declassified.

Pretty much.

This is typical, rash, impulsive behavior from Trump. A strike predicated more upon his initial emotional reaction than any form of critical long-term consideration as to consequences that are going to span a broad spectrum. And this is what frightens me the most about Trump respective to foreign policy (especially); as a person he appears to not hold the intellectual capacity (or caring) to measure any action he takes into greater context. This character attribute has been exemplified from him mouthing off in the past and in his tweets that have come back to bite him in the ass.

He exists in the moment. Sure, this may quench desire for revenge in the short-term for him and many, but I sincerely hope that Trump is actually thinking about the many other problems that may butterfly from any response he commits to, because he will be committed, and this is changing world dynamics. He's opening a can of worms here without thinking about what to do once it's open. This will be interesting to watch unfold. To remind myself that we have a businessman reality TV star at the reigns here frightens me to my core.

EDIT: and aside, Trump said his claim about Assad has "changed" after this. So what was he.....living in blissful ignorance of this man's history? Was he unaware of what he's done in the past? This is no policy contingent upon the past that he uses as a framework, it's a policy determined on the fly out of downright ignorance. His stance apparently is dictated to him by events that unfold. I mean, Christ...

You don't think that the NSC briefed him of his options and possible outcomes from this before he gave the thumbs up to fire the missiles? It's highly unlikely that he called the Joint Chiefs and told them to bomb Syria on impulse during a piss break while he was eating dinner with the Chinese President.

Not to mention Hillary Clinton stated that she felt that Syria needed to be bombed in retaliation to the chemical attack hours before it happened, meaning that if she was president the same thing probably would have happened.

Great Russia is pissed off at us now.........one blunder after the next.

Of course I think he was briefed. Do I think he much listened? That's another issue entirely, and given Trump's past attitudes and actions is not something I can merit towards his personality. I'm sure Trump was also briefed about that operation that turned into a catastrophe that killed one of our SEALs and numerous others, something he apparently gave the thumbs up for over dinner (and then predictably blamed Obama for).

I don't have much faith in this man's decision making abilities at all.

Yet the last time they did this, everyone(including trump) was against military actions against the syrian government. Funny how peoples opinions change depending on whether their guy is in power or not.

It's weird what having classified intelligence will do.

Dan Rather with words of wisdom for the press:

The role of the press is to ask hard questions. There is ample evidence that this Administration needs to face deep scrutiny. The lies we have heard, the chaos in governance, and the looming questions about ties with Russia - itself a major player in Syria - demand that the press treat this latest action with healthy skepticism. Perhaps it was the right thing to do. Perhaps a strong and wise policy will emerge. But that judgement is still definitely hanging in the balance.

The number of members of the press who have lauded the actions last night as "presidential" is concerning. War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative. It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike.

We should have voted for Ron Paul in 2012.

@Gaming-Planet said:

We should have voted for Ron Paul in 2012.

The correct person was President in 2012

@Gaming-Planet said:

We should have voted for Ron Paul in 2012.

I dont see why. A lot of his personal beliefs were insane, which clearly colored his judgement on many issues, like abortion rights. Couple that with his foreign, domestic, and financial plans being nowhere approaching feasibility.

Having classified information doesn't really change the facts.

Wait, did you see something on Fox and Friends that the rest of us missed?

Chances are, Hillary Clinton would have did the same thing in response if she won the election. After all, Syria promised that they wouldn't use chemicals against their own people again after they did it the first time.

As for the SEAL mission, that mission was in the planning stage while Obama was still in office. If he turned it down, then the criticism would change from people saying he made a reckless decision approving the mission to people saying he thinks he is not listening to the advice of his generals when the rejected mission eventually gets leaked to the press.

There is a thousand things people can criticize him on, but this isn't one of them.

Yeah, excuse me if I don't take advice on the subject of proper journalistic technique by Dan Rather.

Even if he is right, he has no moral standing.

@n64dd: Bin Laden your source.............smh.

Also Syria isn't our enemy.

All Trump has to do is send one really bad tweet pushing Russia to do something with their warship.

Sure Hillary would've done this or something similar. Difference being, this was her position all along. It was Trump who adamantly opposed intervention and touted the "America First" policy again and again that he rode to victory, and it was his followers that whined Hillary was going to initiate WW III with Russia through meddling in Syria. I'm not against what Trump has done in this instance viewed by itself; it's what brought him to the conclusion to execute upon it (and in doing so betraying his years of rhetoric) that concerns me. Again, was he unaware of the horrors this regime has inflicted upon its own people prior to this gassing? This happened in 2013, media was available to view of such atrocities. Being privy to "classified intel" does not change the horrors that everyone has been able to witness for a very long time now as hundreds of thousands have been losing their lives. Yes, Assad's a murderous ass....news at 11.

Trump's actions show that there's no real policy he is adhering to until it is formed. Before he had stated that we should mind our own business and let Syria work itself out, then all of a sudden he sees some pictures of children gassed and extreme suffering, and his political beliefs falter? It appears that his administration is being dictated policy as things happen instead of initially crafting policy and then implementing it around events that unfold. That, if anything, IS something he should most assuredly be questioned and criticized heavily on because having someone in the OO who is so easily manipulated away from his political convictions by emotional affections is worrisome.

This, again, seems to be typical governing on-the-fly by Trump.

Yes, the raid was planned under Obama, but was not undertaken due to a lack of sufficient intelligence at the time. Intelligence that Trump belittled/dismissed the importance of and gave the go-ahead anyway, with the plan to blame Obama if it went bad....which is exactly what he did.

@MirkoS77: Don't feel like you have to defend Clinton's military stances here. Just say they're shit (because they are), and I wish we weren't following similar actions now.

I find it tragically comical that after years of Republicans berating Democrats for being soft on international enemies, we now have two pro-war parties when the public is becoming increasingly war weary.

You know what I find concerning? The amount of facebook users suggesting that people espousing an opinion on the matter are invalid or should keep their mouths shut because they don't have the same intelligence briefings compared to the president.

Seriously?

Anyways, the airstrikes are a meaningless gesture, an emotional response against the ruthless killings of innocents from chemical weapons. As much as I support the gesture, there is no long-term goal behind it, hence why it's meaningless.

Will Trump support the overthrow of Assad? Will he commit troops on the ground? If not, who cares.

@drunk_pi: He asserted his dominance. The world

world take us seriously again finally after Obama

went on an apology tour.

I don't necessarily disagree with or rule out military intervention, it's always an option (and sometimes viable one) so I won't call them shit simply by virtue of their action because that's not how I feel. In context of how that intervention is undertaken is what I'm taking issue with. My point is Trump's actions seem to be predicated upon a policy driven mostly by emotion, not policy borne of an overall strategy.

Or at least it doesn't seem that way given his sudden turn around.

@MirkoS77: I don't rule them out of hand either, but Clinton is of the class of politicians that puts it out there as one of the first options. That's a terrible mentality.

Just make sure you go out and vote in 2018 midterms. Vote all the republicans and corporate democrats out of office and fill it up with progressives

If anything, look at it as proof the president can be swayed to consider better options and that he is willing to listen to his advisers. Who knows, maybe after a few more months in office, someone will finally convince him that building a wall to stop illegal aliens is a huge waste of money and there are more affordable ways to stop them from coming.

Bombing Syria may have been Hillary's position all along, but she has been in the government in some shape or form for decades and her time as Secretary of State obviously made her more privy to information that bought her to that position Trump never had access to as a business owner and reality star. He is not the only president that changed their mind on some issues after they got a reality check from their cabinet and other advisers.

Yes, the news reports the horrors that were going on in Syria for the past few years, but the news doesn't report everything. The whole point in us electing politicians into power is so that they make the decisions for us based on the intel they will have access to we can't just watch on CNN due to the fact that our enemies can watch it too. Obviously, we can protest their decisions based on what information is available to us, and they can either listen to our protests or they can ignore them and risk not being reelected.

Why does everyone always assume that military intervention = regime change? The US has a lot more option on the table than just overthrowing assad.

Trump doesn't give a damn about the children caught over there....he refuses to let refugees in. He's an ass.

While it may be true that he doesn't care that much, realistically we aren't going to solve the problem in Syria by opening the door to every single refugee that wants to come here versus getting their dictator out of power so that they can rebuild their country and have no need to flee.

While he may not represent all Syrian survivors, he makes a good point people that think we should just open the floodgates for refugees versus making Syria a better place to live may not be considering.

Trump was privileged to intelligence briefings for months prior to the election to bring him up to speed in the event that he was elected. Policy is constructed, and campaigned upon, before someone even reaches office. To claim that Trump was left completely out of the loop more than Hillary was is inaccurate. Hillary had experience, but Trump had access to classified information just as much as she had, she was not privy to it more than he. He's been in office now for nearly three months now, and just before the gas attacks he held a non-interventionist position re Syria. A few pictures later, all has changed. Why did Trump oppose meddling in Syrian affairs right up until the point this gassing happened?

What drastic new intelligence came to light after the gassing that changed his mind that he didn't know a day before? Nothing. He would've known exactly the same thing pre-gassing as post, the only difference is, he let his emotions take him for a ride.

What's on the table then? More airstrikes? Sanctions?

During WWII, the allies were committed to overthrowing and dismantling the regimes that brought ruin to the world. Then came Korea and Vietnam. And then there were regimes we did help overthrow such as Iran (look how that turned out).

Then we had the 1990s Gulf War which only weakened Saddam's regime but still allowed it to abuse its people. Do I even have to go into the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush Administration? Or how about Libya and Syria during the Obama Administration, especially with the "red line."

There is no strategy behind Trump's attack. People are calling it presidential which is hilarious. Assad is reusing the airbase. It's like eating dessert to make yourself feel good only to realize there was no gain behind it other than a short-term satisfaction. That's all it is. A short-term goal that did nothing for anyone.

Presidential my ass.

Oh boy, more conservatard talking points.

Obama committed more drone strikes and was militarily involved in numerous countries, not that is necessarily a good thing.

Assad is reusing the airbase. Trump is a cuck.

@MirkoS77: @drunk_pi:

It isn't hard to figure out. It isn't meant to solve things in Syria. We have a long standing viewpoint in the West of deterring crazy leaders from using chemical weapons. It is part of our mindset wrt collective defense.

This action was meant to deter the continued use of these weapons, both within Syria, and as a warning to other crazy leaders who might want to use such weapons. Nothing more, nothing less.

The alternative is do nothing, which simply emboldens freaks like Assad to keep doing it. Nothing has changed materially on the ground, but that's not the point. You cross a line, you pay a price. Simple.

We have never flown millions of refugees into the US in any year and nobody that I'm aware of is proposing that we start doing that. Prior to Trump, the vetting process for a refugee took years to complete and we currently don't have problems with refugees causing terror attacks. Donald Trump's talk of refugees is nothing but fear-driven propaganda. His extreme vetting is a waste of time and money.

Yah, most people don't argue that we should let every refugee in and ive never seen anyone suggest allowing for millions upon millions.

There are however two arguments/stances here.

1. Trump's rhetoric is nothing but xenophobia and a solution looking for a problem.

2. The second most common stance is the same stance i take, which is we should be doing a much better job of helping these people. Purple said "His extreme vetting is a waste of time and money.", without his weird additions it was already an extreme vetting system. People in refugee situations cant wait 2-4 years for help, and that is how long our process takes. And its not because people are sitting around doing nothing, its because of how many checks there are. The reality is America and the UN in general, need to do a better job with getting people out of these situations. Even if we simply do something like ship them to an island with humanitarian services as a temporary measure while vetting takes place and then determining where to place them, thats something that is worth the cost.

Syria isn't a problem.. It is only being made a concern because the economic importance being pushed in which a oil pipeline can be laid through the country.. If people seriously think that these things are being done to "save people" than they have their ass shoved far in their own asses.. We have numerous examples in the past 2 decades alone of mass deaths of people caused by regimes with the west barely raising a finger to outright ignoring it.. Notice you don't hear any hubbub from the numerous people Saudi Arabia has killed with starving and bombing the people of Yemen, with US ordinance no less.

This is disappointing but not surprising what so ever that Trump would lie about not goign to war and continue the military industrial complex establishment policies that both parties have been doing for decades now.

"Millions" was a number I threw out there because millions of people are currently being oppressed by Bashar al-Assad, and the current amount of refugees we are taking in every year is barely making a dent. Also, while you may not have personally heard anyone propose that we take in millions every year, there are plenty of people out there that already thought we took in too few and wanted to greatly increase our intake of Syrian refugees even before Trump was elected.

The whole thing about vetting refugees is while there may not have been a major terrorist attack on US soil committed by a refugee, to assume that there is absolutely no chance of the system being exploited and calling all opinions to the contrary as fear-driven propaganda isn't taking all possibilities into consideration. While I agree that it is highly unlikely that refugees that are sincerely trying to get away from oppression in their home countries will attempt to cause trouble, ISIS has already made their intention of possibly exploiting the refugee system to get fighters into the US known.

Also, in 2011, two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky for attempting to send weapons and other support to al-Qaeda in Iraq. The two men also admitted that they had used IEDs against US troops in Iraq before they came to the US, a fact that wasn't discovered during their original vetting process. Not too many people mention the arrests, because of the low press coverage it got when it happened, and it was greatly overshadowed six years later when Kellyanne Conway called the incident the "Bowling Green Massacre" and put herself and the Trump Administration in the position of being ridiculed for the false statement.

There aren't too many good options in this situation. A regime change would probably have troops on the ground in Syria for years like in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not enough countries are taking in refugees fast enough to make them safe. The "safe zones" that have been proposed may be a decent middle ground, but we would probably still need to send troops in there to guard them.

Part of the argument here is that we have a system that could do far better and is not even attempting to make a dent. 12,000 people over what? 5 years? Is not exactly humanitarian efforts and definitely shows that we are not attempting to put a "dent" in it. We're not even attempting temporary relocation's to other places, in an effort to save lives.