What does Assad think of all this? If the CIA hates God-Emperor Trump so much that they are willing to murder foreign civilians in a false flag operation to provoke him to recklessness, to set him up for a fall, to alienate his supporters from him, and everybody knows this, then Assad is probably wondering why the God-Emperor doesn’t purge the CIA? That is what is being depicted on American television as this is written after all.

Assad’s and Russian’s version of events is that the rebels were maintaining nerve gas stocks and that was what was released during the Syrian government airstrike on the rebel controlled warehouse. If it was a false flag operation perpetrated by the CIA then one wonders why Assad and the Russians didn’t out the CIA so as to expose it to the wrath of Trump?

Well in any event, God-Emperor Trump has made an incontrovertible statement that he will not countenance chemical warfare in Syria and will punish those who engage in it. It remains to be seen where events lead from here.

“A U.S. cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base may persuade President Bashar al-Assad to be more cautious with some of his tactics, but will not deter him and his allies from pressing a full-throttle military campaign to crush rebels. It was the first time Washington has directly targeted Assad's government in six years of civil war, and has pushed the administration of President Donald Trump into proclaiming that Washington still wants Assad removed from power.”

“But the single volley of Tomahawk missiles was of such limited scope that it will reinforce the view held by Damascus and its allies that the United States is no more eager than before to take the sort of strong action needed to defeat him.”

"Assad now knows there is a red line with regard to the use of chemical weapons. But I think he also probably just sees it as a slap on the wrist," said David Lesch, professor of Middle East history at Trinity University and an author on Syria. "Assad has to recalibrate but not fundamentally change his military approach that they've been engaging in since the Russian intervention," Lesch said. "I really believe they are not feeling too bad today, if this is the extent of what the U.S. is going to do."

“…Though the attack had shown Trump to be unpredictable, a third official in the pro-Assad alliance did not yet see a major shift in the U.S. approach. “Is this a strategic shift by the Americans? Do they want to get into a big problem with the Russians? I don't think there is a strategic shift."

“…Moscow and Damascus say the deaths were the result of a Syrian air strike on a depot where rebels were making chemical weapons that then leaked into the town - a claim rebels deny and Washington dismisses as beyond credibility. The attack marked a departure from the approach of Obama, who ran a large-scale air campaign in Syria against fighters from Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, but avoided direct entanglement in the parallel civil war to unseat Assad.”

Assad could see U.S. strike as just a 'slap on the wrist'

"All these overlapping and often contradictory goals and alliances may seem odd to an outsider but this is the Middle East, where such complex arrangements are the old normal.”

Yes, politics in the Middle-East is an insane dichotomy. The situation in Syria in particular. It makes no sense to us Americans. The people in the Middle-East don’t think like us. Betraying friends and allies and cooperating with enemies to obtain some short term and temporary advantage, pursuing competing and contradictory goals, saying things that you don’t really mean because it’s expected and taking up self-destructive courses of action. You have to be prepared to pay bribes to do business, but then there is absolutely no guarantee that the people you bribed will stay bought. So you must be willing and able to use the stick as well as the carrot to keep players in the region loyal and on track. Add to all that the outside players, like the Russians, the Chinese and the former European colonial powers with their own agendas and who enter the game to play and get played themselves. You can’t keep track of who’s zooming who without a program. Fortunately for us besides being capable of stunning perfidy and vindictiveness the people in the Middle -East are also prone to buffoonish incompetence. Otherwise we would really be in trouble, gullible and kind-hearted fools that we are.

Syria: Bluff Called, Reply Awaited

The Government controls some 60 percent of the population and is pushing hard against anti-government forces (Taliban, ISIL and the drug gangs), but the anti-government forces are still operating and still able to hit back.

Afghanistan: Bloody, Broken Dreams -Strategy Page

strategypage.com | April 5, 2017: 

Iraq: Disorganized And Demoralized Mosul Finale – Strategy Page

strategypage.com | April 4, 2017: