Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump says missiles coming
Amid dig at Russia, he hints U.S. closer to attacking Syria
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signaled Wednesday that he was on the verge of ordering a barrage of “nice and new and ‘smart!’ ” missiles against the Syrian military for its alleged use of poison gas against civilians, dismissing a threat that Russian forces would shoot down U.S. missiles in flight.
The warning came as U.S. and French warships armed with cruise missiles are in the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast, and activists said that Syrian forces had begun evacuating air bases and other military facilities in anticipation of a U.S.led airstrike aimed at punishing the government in Damascus and crippling its chemical weapons capabilities.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other national security aides huddled at the White House as leaders in Britain, France
and Saudi Arabia pledged support for a strong response to the suspected poison gas attack Saturday that killed more than 40 people in a rebel-held town outside Damascus.
Mattis suggested that Trump had not decided to launch the Tomahawks. “We’re assessing the intelligence — ourselves and our allies,” he told reporters.
Any air assault is expected to be more damaging than Trump’s decision last April to fire 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a single Syrian airfield in response to a nerve gas attack that month. The airfield was back in operation soon after.
The crisis in Syria has sparked a new level of tension between Washington and Moscow, raising concern that the dispute over an alleged chemical attack could spiral into a deadly conflict between the former Cold War enemies. Both countries have several thousand troops in Syria.
Trump fanned those fears early Wednesday with tweets aimed at the Kremlin and Syrian President Bashsar Assad, who Russia supports in the country’s sevenyear-old civil war.
“Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ ” Trump tweeted about U.S. missiles. “You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”
Trump tweeted after a mid-level Russian diplomat defiantly claimed that Russian forces in Syria would shoot down U.S. missiles in midair, and suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin had issued the order. The Kremlin did not confirm that Putin had done so.
“Russia will execute the statement of its president related to any U.S. aggression against Syria, knocking down American missiles and striking at the sources of fire,” Alexander Zasypkin, Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon, told the Lebanese television channel Al-Manar.
Trump’s tweet was striking given his reluctance over the past year to criticize Putin. He has largely remained silent even as administration has imposed sanctions on more than 100 Russians, including some in Putin’s inner circle, and expelled scores of alleged Russian spies, in retaliation for Russian meddling in the 2016 election, its cyberattacks and other allegedly malicious activities.
Though none of Trump’s tweets Wednesday mentioned Putin by name, he declared that “our relationship with Russia is worse now than it has ever been, and that includes the Cold War.”
Citing U.S. intelligence, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump “holds Syria and Russia responsible for this chemical weapons attack.”
Asked for evidence of Russia’s role, she said Russia “holds some responsibility” because it guaranteed that Syria wouldn’t use chemical weapons again as part of a 2013 agreement. She did not say whether Russia had played a direct role in Saturday’s attack, which reportedly involved Syrian helicopters dropping barrel bombs on the rebel-held town of Douma.
She declined to label Russia an “enemy” when asked, choosing to say “we certainly think they’ve proven to be a bad actor.”
In a later tweet, Trump blamed “much of the bad blood with Russia” on “the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama.”
Trump’s mixing of a global crisis with his domestic frustrations marked another unprecedented moment in a presidency that seems headed for its largest military reprisal to date.
A national security analyst said Trump’s bellicose tweets could be a complicating factor for the Pentagon because commanders must ensure “the size of the strike matches the rhetoric.”
The analyst, who spoke anonymously, said he believed Trump dropped his public deference to Putin after the Russian leader forged a nominal alliance in Syria with Turkey and Iran, leaving the U.S. on the sidelines as the civil war moves into its final stages.
“There was an opportunity for a major power, almost summit-style Syria end game, and I think that’s what Trump was playing for,” the analyst said.
As tensions escalated, the Kremlin said it would not participate in “Twitter diplomacy.”
Trump met late Wednesday with GOP congressional leaders, who have shown little desire to weigh in on military strikes or to get more involved in Syria.
“Before President Trump conducts military operations, he must come to Congress for authorization,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement that called Trump’s tweet “the height of irresponsibility.”
In August 2013, President Barack Obama sought authorization from a skeptical Congress to launch airstrikes against Syria to punish it for a poison gas attack after he failed to win support from Britain, a usually reliable international partner. Congressional leaders refused to call a vote, however, and the attack was canceled.
Trump’s tweets suggesting an imminent attack is at odds with his public boasts that he does not telegraph military operations because it ruins the element of surprise.
Military experts say the strategic value of a surprise attack is often outweighed in modern warfare by the need to protect civilians and allied groups that may be near opposition targets.
U.S. officials are still trying to determine if Syria used a banned nerve agent, like sarin, in the attack on Douma, as well as a toxic gas, such as chlorine, which is deadly but not barred by international agreement.