Well this is awkward...
On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.
The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.
Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president's determination to ignore the evidence. "None of this makes any sense," one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. "We KNOW that there was no chemical attack ... the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth ... I guess it didn't matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.“
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In a series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect between the president and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4. In an important pre-strike process known as deconfliction, U.S. and Russian officers routinely supply one another with advance details of planned flight paths and target coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk of collision or accidental encounter (the Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian military). This information is supplied daily to the American AWACS surveillance planes that monitor the flights once airborne. Deconfliction’s success and importance can be measured by the fact that there has yet to be one collision, or even a near miss, among the high-powered supersonic American, Allied, Russian and Syrian fighter bombers.
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Russian and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the carefully planned flight path to and from Khan Shiekhoun on April 4 directly, in English, to the deconfliction monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which was on patrol near the Turkish border, 60 miles or more to the north.
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One reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the jihadist leadership was forewarned not to attend the meeting. I was told that the Russians passed the warning directly to the CIA. “They were playing the game right,” the senior adviser said.
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“It was a totally Trump show from beginning to end,” the senior adviser said. “A few of the president’s senior national security advisers viewed the mission as a minimized bad presidential decision, and one that they had an obligation to carry out. But I don’t think our national security people are going to allow themselves to be hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump had gone for option three, there might have been some immediate resignations.”
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/art ... -Line.htmlAnd today:
The White House has said it believes the Syrian government is planning a chemical weapons attack and warned Bashar al-Assad that his regime will “pay a heavy price” if it does so.
However, several US defence officials have said they are not familiar with the intelligence that informed the statement.
“The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children,” the White House said in a statement on Monday night, claiming the planning was similar in nature to the steps taken before the 4 April sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of civilians.
The incident prompted US President Donald Trump to launch a “one-off” retaliatory cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase – the first direct intervention by the US in more than six years of the Syrian civil war.
“If Mr Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price,” the White House continued.
The Syrian government has consistently denied that it carried out the attack or that it possesses any chemical weapons after giving up its stocks to international inspectors in 2013.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment on Monday night on the allegations or what form US retaliation would take. Several sources across the US State Department, Pentagon and Central Command, which oversees the country’s military operations in Syria and Iraq – said that they did not know what had prompted the unprecedented threat to the Assad regime.
An official at Central Command told BuzzFeed News they had “no idea” what prompted the statement.
Several policy advisers at the State Department appeared not to have been briefed before the White House statement went out, learning about the news from reporters instead.
On Tuesday, the White House said it wanted to "clarify that all relevant agencies... were involved in the process from the beginning," spokesperson Sarah Sanders said, noting that the State Department, Pentagon, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence were involved.
"Anonymous leaks to the contrary are false," she added in an emailed statement to Reuters.
There had been “abnormal” activity at an airbase where the Syrian government is suspected of hiding or creating new chemical weapons agents, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, shedding light on the initially unsubstantiated claims.
Although the intelligence was not considered conclusive, the administration issued the swift public warning about the consequences of another chemical attack in an attempt to deter such action, officials said.
Mr Trump himself, who took to Twitter shortly after the statement was published, did not address the threat made to Syria, writing instead about a Fox News report on Barack Obama’s failure to stop Russian interference in the 2016 general election.
The warning to the Syrian government comes three days after US army Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesperson for the international coalition against Isis, told reporters in Baghdad that the US would welcome concerted efforts from Syria and its Iranian and Russian allies to eliminate the extremists in the east of the country.
Tensions have escalated between Donald Trump and the Assad regime in the last three months after the US’s strike on an airbase near Homs and several mostly defensive actions against Syrian and Iranian forces.
Strange days.
to any tin foil hat sites that says unicorns exist 
