By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--April 7, 2017
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Trump, who had long said the top U.S. priority in Syria should be to fight Islamic State, immediately ordered a list of options to punish Assad, according to senior officials who took part in the flurry of closed-door meetings that played out over two days. Confronting his first foreign policy crisis, Trump relied on seasoned military experts rather than the political operatives who had dominated policy in the first weeks of his presidency and showed a willingness to move quickly, officials involved in the deliberations said. On Thursday afternoon, Trump ordered the launch of a barrage of cruise missiles against the Shayrat air field north of Damascus, which the Pentagon says was used to store the chemical weapons used in the attack. "I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line ... It is clear that President Trump made that statement to the world,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters.
Senior administration officials said they met with Trump as early as Tuesday evening and presented options including sanctions, diplomatic pressure and a military plan to strike Syria drawn up well before he took office. “He had a lot of questions and said he wanted to think about it but he also had some points he wanted to make. He wanted the options refined,” one official said.In other words, Trump did exactly what most presidents would do. He sought advice from the right people, asked good questions and avoided acting rashly. But unlike certain presidents, he wasn't afraid to take action and show some resolve. We're now told that the decision to fire the missiles has escalated tensions with Russia, which is an awfully strange thing for a guy to do who is supposedly Vladimir Putin's BFF and does whatever the Russian puppetmaster wants him to do. Then again, Nikki Haley's spellbinding performance at the UN yesterday was very much along the same lines. The Russians have been lying about the gas attack in an attempt to cover for their buddy Assad, and the Trump Administration is having none of it.
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