Donald Trump Is An International Law Breaker by Publius Tacitus

Donald Trump's decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie.  In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:

1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.
2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.
3. The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.
4. There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.
5. We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called "first responders" handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through "Live Agent" training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

There are members of the U.S. military who were aware this strike would occur and it was recorded. There is a film record. At least the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that this was not a chemical weapon attack. In fact, Syrian military chemical weapons were destroyed with the help of Russia.

This is Gulf of Tonkin 2. How ironic. Donald Trump correctly castigated George W. Bush for launching an unprovoked, unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003. Now we have President Donald Trump doing the same damn thing. Worse in fact. Because the intelligence community had information showing that there was no chemical weapon launched by the Syrian Air Force. 

Here's the good news. The Russians and Syrians were informed, or at least were aware, that the attack was coming. They were able to remove a large number of their assets. The base the United States hit was something of a backwater. Donald Trump gets to pretend that he is a tough guy. He is not. He is a fool. 

This attack was violation of international law. Donald Trump authorized an unjustified attack on a sovereign country. What is even more disturbing is that people like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and NSA Director General McMaster went along with this charade. Front line troops know the truth. These facts will eventually come out. Donald Trump will most likely not finish his term as President. He will be impeached, I believe, once Congress is presented with irrefutable proof that he ignored and rejected intelligence that did not support the myth that Syria attacked with chemical weapons.

It should also alarm American taxpayers that we launched $100 million dollars of missiles to blow up sand and camel shit. The Russians were aware that a strike was coming. I'm hoping that they and the Syrians withdrew their forces and aircraft from the base. Whatever hope I had that Donald Trump would be a new kind of President, that hope is extinguished. He is a child and a moron. He committed an act of war without justification. But the fault is not his alone. Those who sit atop the NSC, the DOD, the CIA, the Department of State should have resigned in protest. They did not. They are complicit in a war crime.

Comments

[Fred]

CL,

That meeting was supposed to be about Kim Jong-un, who is an unstable world leader with 20-40 nuclear weapons at his disposal and a military that "just follows orders".

Donald Trump just proved to Xi that he is an unstable man with 4,000 nuclear weapons at this disposal and a military that follows orders. Constitution? What constitution. Rule of Law? Hah! I don't know about you but it looks to me like Xi and Putin now have one giant incentive to become allies. All because some unstable jackass from NYC with his "art of the deal" bull-s*&# got the "i feelz" spent all day watching CNN/MSNBC/Borg central.

What deal with a guy who won't abide by the rule of law do you think is going to matter? Unstable guys with 40 nuclear weapons need to be negotiated with. Unstable guys with 4,0000 nuclear weapons at their disposal and generals who just obey orders need to be removed from power before they kill us all.

[ejm.alrai@gmail.com]

Excellent

[turcopolier]

John Minnerath

PT writes his own stuff. pl

[Patrick Armstrong]

"Militarily useless" is too charitable. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-07/first-images-aftermath-inefficient-us-missile-strikes-emerge?page=1
Fortunately, all the rah-rah Borgists will pass this off as Russo-Syrian propaganda.

[Les]

I thought the deconfliction arrangement only applied to the air force. Since the cruise missile attacks were launched from the sea, I would reconsider the assumption or report that it was coordinated with the Russians.

[kooshy]

According to news sources ,they did inform Russians and Syrians

[Brucie A.]

You're not cynical enough!

[Ghostship]

Once the Russians and Syrians have run some news crews through Shayrat to film the damage, it'll be up and running again very quickly. Some planes might have been lost but as all history shows, they are not that important. It's the pilots that matter. From what I've seen, the Syrians have more planes than pilots so I expect to see the SAAF bombing the jihadists as hard as they were yesterday by the end of the weekend. Putin's most effective response will be to send a couple of additional squadrons of fighter bombers or CAS with their entire retinue to Shayrat and up the carnage on HTS in Idlib. Since this whole piece of theatre seems to be designed to assist HTS (the moderates) for the neo-cons, wiping out HTS and/or driving them back across the Turkish border seems the sweetest revenge.

[The Twisted Genius]

Publius Tacitus,

I agree with damned near every word you wrote. The history you provided about the targeting of Khan Sheikhoun is especially damning. Unfortunately, I doubt the eventual revelation of the jihadi fakery at Khan Sheikhoun will contribute to a call for impeachment or any meaningful outcry from the American people. I also don't think the Trump administration's commitment of a kabuki theater violation of international law will phase the American people in any way. Most just don't care and, in fact, revel in this kind of swaggering "Billy bad ass" violence.

I don't subscribe to the view that poor little Donnie was forced into this by the big, bad Borg. He knew exactly what he was doing. He's a first class bullshit artist and consummate con man. Any promises he made or convictions he may have will crumble to dust in service to his one true conviction of self-agrandizement.

[maningi]

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, that the US is organizing a coalition to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. What does this mean? Are we going to witness another Lybia-type-of-scenario or even an US-invasion with the help of coalition forces? Hope this is fake news, any further infos regarding that?

https://southfront.org/creation-of-coalition-to-remove-syrian-president-is-underway-us-state-secretary/

[Serge]

IMO a big reason for all of this was to throw a wrench into the collusion narrative. As Babak mentioned, this was done in an extremely minimal way(23/59 tomahawks reached the target if russian MOD is to be believed, is this normal?intentional misses?). As well as throwing a wrench into that DNC narrative he gets the neocons off his back and gets all republicans to coalesce around him for domestic policies

[DH]

You remind me of Alba Etie and me when we insisted, or was it predicted, Obama would not honor his red line statement. I agree there is still wriggle room for hope.

[fatsamurai]

According to Leith Fadel, the targeted airport is the main hub of operations against ISIS. He said that supporting air to Deir Ezzour and Hama will be severly affected. So hardly insignificant.

[Fred]

John,

Perhaps a great compromise. Just censure him like McCarthy. That would affect his ego more than impeachment.

https://ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=86

[Angry Panda]

Per the Russian Defense Ministry's presser (http://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12117678@egNews - the video has English subtitles)...

1. Only 23 of the 59 Tomahawks had actually reached the base. I am not a Tomahawk expert, so this seems a pretty incredible failure rate to me IF it's true. Was the flight pathing so bloody awful or so bloody last-minute? Is this a normal failure rate these days? Was it just one of the older blocs without modernized guidance systems? Enquiring minds want to know...

2. In any case, the damage to the base was pretty negligible. Drone video (~4 minutes in) shows untouched airstrips, and the Russians claim only six aircraft were lost (in maintenance hangars, so ones that could not be moved - which is plausible given that they had advance warning of the strike). A couple of buildings and the base radar were blown up, so I suppose that's something of a return on investment.

The point is that from a purely military perspective this...this was just very, very bad execution. Even if you completely believe the chemical weapons story and buy into the eminent right of the U.S. to launch a missile strike on any sovereign nation it bloody well pleases; even if you believe that a one-time strike is enough to constitute a deterrent for a "monstrously evil dictator" (gee, wasn't Assad elected?) who uses chemical weapons thrice daily on his friends and enemies...this is, per the Russians, a fantastically ineffective one-time missile strike. The mind boggles, really.

Not that the U.S. cares, I don't think. I suspect this was more about internal politics than anything else...

[Babak Makkinejad]

Plus reassuring Gulfies and Turks.

It also sent a signal to Iran that US will not accept the offer of Spheres of Influence - at least US is consistent.

The Iranian papers did not treat this as a huge item.

Two things to watch:

If Ayatollah Khamenei is going to give a speech on this topic.

Is the United States on the escalation ladder (in the ripeness of time)?

[Babak Makkinejad]

Please take a look at this picture:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-condemns-us-missile-strike-on-syria/2017/04/07/c81ea12a-1b4e-11e7-8003-f55b4c1cfae2_story.html?utm_term=.3c934c7b0578

There is a sign on the left hand side which reads: "Aleikom b Al Jihad".

And then there was the terrorist attack today in Stockholm.

Wonder never ceases.

[Emad]

Patrick,

This may very well have been the intention, but I doubt it'll turn out to be the effect. Trump's missile strike makes a Faustian bargain with the Borg on Russia more likely, not less.

My SWAG on how: After initially praising the attack, Washington consensus types from both parties, neocons and the media will frame it as "Trump did what any POTUS would naturally do". This will then lead to "No cookies for you Donald; you still haven't proved you're no Russian plant", and the inevitable manhood test for bullies: Beat Putin, and you can join the adult table, hair and all.

For Trump not to reach this point, he needs to own the news cycle by generating many more pussy grabbing scandals; hiring and firing a lot more people; divorcing Melania and getting back together with her a couple of times, and tweeting bigly. I'm just not sure he can do that.

[ISL]

PT, I agree with your analysis, and thanks for putting out the idea for discussion that this could be a tool to get leverage over President Trump.

Supporting your interpretation, via zerohedge, is the following ICRC statement, which could be used as justification to start impeachment, or to threaten to start impeachment.

"Any military operation by a state on the territory of another without the consent of the other amounts to an international armed conflict," ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet told Reuters in Geneva in response to a query.

"So according to available information - the U.S. attack on Syrian military infrastructure - the situation amounts to an international armed conflict."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-07/russian-pm-us-brink-military-clash-russia

[robt willmann]

Nancy K,

Of course Kissinger denies the quote that he said soldiers are just dumb animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. Do you think he is going to admit that he said it?

Kissinger is also alleged to have said, "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Does he deny that quote as well?

[Will2.71828]

You have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. It's about serving Mammon. Mammon in two forms: 1) serving the 1% that controls 99% of the media and internal US wealth and wants the breakup of the Levant so settler Israel can expand from the river to the river and to throw out the indigenous or autochtonous people. 2) serving the Wahhabi petrodollars of the medieval Kingdom of Saudi Barbaria/Gulfies that wants to breakup the Shia Crescent (prefer the secular or semisecular crescent) by creating a buffer Islamic statelet between the former Iraq & Syria.

This further creates the opportunity and pathway for the Qatar to Turkey gas pipeline. This is why the US Air Force mistakenly (for two hours) bombed the defensive perimeter of the DeirEzZor, a city of 200K defended by the Syrian Army and longterm beseiged by Daesh/ISIS. The airbases 'cruised' by the Trumpster was important to the defense of Palymra and DerEzZor. It was already targeted. And the fake gas attack in Western Syria provided an opportunity too good to be missed.

So it was not about the Sarin gas but about the gas pipeline.

[sid_finster]

Lord, what does it take for some people to stop drinking the Kool Aid?

[Swamp Yankee]

Fred,

Is it fair to say that this constitutes a change in your view of and thinking on Trump? Honest question. Thanks.

[sid_finster]

What do you think?

Ask people this - are you ready to take a nuke for Syria?

[Cee]

All,

More on weapons to terrorists

Jane's Defence Weekly reported that in December 2015 the U.S. shipped 994 tonnes of weapons and ammunition (including packaging and container weight), generally of Soviet-type from Eastern Europe, to Syrian rebel groups under operation Timber Sycamore. A detailed list of weapon types and shipment weights had been obtained from the US government's Federal Business Opportunities website