U.S. locked and loaded if Syria uses chemical weapons again: Haley

There should not be expanded military operations without an updated congressional authorization and we can not repeat the mistakes of the past with open ended combat operations in the Middle East. “Could not have had a better result”, Trump tweeted Saturday. “There won’t be anything, or anyone, even close!”

Trump, who just a week earlier said he wanted to pull US troops out of Syria “very soon”, didn’t want to become drawn into the civil war there and instead focused the military response on deterring the use of chemical weapons, according to the official.

The logic behind this attack is to show that the United States is committed to retaliatory strikes any time the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons.

It was, instead, about the use of chemical weapons, May said.

“These are not the actions of a man, they are crimes of a monster”, he said, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

There are those in the Montreal Syrian community who supported the strike. The attacks had continued, culminating in Saturday’s attack in Douma.

Haley told the UN Security Council on Friday that Assad and his Russian backers were to blame for the deaths of thousands of Syrian civilians.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry also condemned the strike and warned of unspecified consequences.

Let’s be clear: These limited strikes nearly certainly did not destroy the Syrian government’s entire chemical weapons stockpile, let alone seriously set back its ability to fight anti-government rebels.

He said: “Bombs won’t save lives or bring about peace”.

“This evening I have authorised British armed forces to conduct co-ordinated and targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian Regime’s chemical weapons capability and deter their use”, the prime minister said in a written statement from Downing Street.

The Pentagon said Saturday that a series of military strikes on Syria carried out by a US-led coalition struck at the “heart” of Syria’s chemical weapons program.

USA forces launched targeted missile strikes on Friday at key military outposts in Syria, where the government is thought to have stored chemical weapons used in a strike that killed over 40 civilians last weekend.

The Pentagon on Saturday echoed the President’s assessment. “So it was mission accomplished”, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White later said. “We met our objectives”.

The document concludes with a demand for the Syrian regime to reveal its chemical weapons program to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and destroy its remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons – something the regime claims it already did in 2013 following a U.N. Security Council resolution. “So it was mission accomplished”.

“We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents”, he said. Enough to send a message to Syria.

“We were very precise and proportionate”, Mattis said. French Defense Minister Florence Parly said that “with our allies, we ensured that the Russians were warned ahead of time”. “We call on Russian Federation to take a hard look at the company it keeps, and live up to its responsibilities as a Permanent Member of the Council and defend the actual principles the United Nations was meant to promote”, she said. Overall, we launched 105 missiles. The strikes “successfully hit every target” and the allies “took every measure and caution” to only hit the intended targets, White said Saturday morning.

The Pentagon said America is ready if anyone should retaliate.

Gen. Ali Mayhoub said three civilians were wounded in one of the strikes on a military base in Homs, although the attack was aborted by derailing the incoming missile. Some U.S. media had said Washington was confident Assad had also used sarin on April 7. They also pushed back on Russian claims that the strike was a breach of the U.N. Charter.

The targets of that strike included Syrian aircraft, aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage facilities, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radar.

“Just as the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons last weekend was not an isolated incident, our response is part of a new course charted a year ago to deter future use of chemical weapons”, she said. Al-Quadri, who is now in England working on a Master’s degree, said she had hoped that this time, the United States would respond with more force to put more pressure on Assad.

“There has been a 2,000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours”.