Syria and Lebanon imploding

Tom Rogan writes in the Washington Examiner about the collapsing economies of Syria and Lebanon here.

Trump outsmarts Putin

Joseph Klein writes in FrontPage Magazine,

...Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is peeved that President Trump had not given her advance notice of the al-Baghdadi mission, insulted the president to his face about ten days ago when she accused him of helping Russian President Vladimir Putin by withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. "All roads with you lead to Putin," Pelosi said before storming out of a White House meeting. President Trump was right not to trust erratic Pelosi or her leak-prone Democrat colleagues like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff with advance notice of such a dangerous mission. It could have ended disastrously if they had allowed information about the raid to get out before our troops had returned safely.

President Trump made clear that U.S. forces would remain in Syria as long as necessary to combat ISIS and to protect the oil fields in northern Syria from ISIS or Iranian seizure. Neither Russia nor the Syrian Assad regime will be getting their hands on the oil fields either, so long as the U.S. maintains its military presence there. What exactly then will Russia be gaining from the U.S. withdrawal in northeastern Syria, where the Syrian Kurds had been relying on U.S. protection from Turkey’s forces? Not as much as President Trump’s critics think, according to Zev Chafets, a prolific writer who was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine. In an article entitled “Trump Outsmarts Putin With Syria Retreat,” Mr. Chafets wrote that Russia will, by necessity, have to take on more responsibility for fighting ISIS and other jihadists as well as reconstructing Syria.

Read more here.

"President Trump is thinking outside the box!"

What else is new, Lindsey? Senator Lindsey Graham is now expressing optimism, after talking with Trump. Reuters reports,

Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been one of the most vocal critics of President Donald Trump’s decision to move U.S. troops out of northeastern Syria, said on Sunday he now believed “historic solutions” were possible.

In an interview with Fox News, Graham said a conversation he had with Trump over the weekend had fueled his optimism that a solution could be reached where the security of Turkey and the Kurds was guaranteed and fighters from Islamic State contained.

“I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years if we play our cards right,” Graham said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Graham said Trump was prepared to use U.S. air power over a demilitarized zone occupied by international forces, adding that the use of air power could help ensure Islamic State fighters who had been held in the area did not “break out.”

Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Saturday that Trump understood the need for the United States to maintain air power in the region.

“The U.S. must retain air power to keep the pressure on ISIS, prevent our adversaries Russia and Iran from exploiting this situation and protect our partners on the ground,” he said in a statement. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

Graham also said he believed the United States and Kurdish forces long allied with Washington could establish a venture to modernize Syrian oil fields, with the revenue flowing to the Kurds. “President Trump is thinking outside the box,” Graham said of Trump’s thinking on oil.

“The president appreciates what the Kurds have done,” Graham added. “He wants to make sure ISIS does not come back. I expect we will continue to partner with the Kurds in eastern Syria to make sure ISIS does not re-emerge.”

Graham, referring to the Kurdish fighters in the region, previously warned that Trump’s decision to pull out U.S. troops would lead to their “destruction.”

"Also, how stupid does the House look after that idiotic vote to condemn the withdrawal of a couple platoons of men?"

JJ Sefton reports in the Ace of Spades blog,

...The big story is Trump's successful brokerage of a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds in Syria. Big foreign policy win, IMHO. We got our massive force of 50 soldiers out of harm's way in a part of the Middle East that has no bearing on our own national security interests and perhaps prevented a wider conflict between Turkey and Syria that might have drawn in the Russians. Horrible as Turkey is, they are still a NATO ally. Much as I hate that useless organization, getting Turkey out of it is harder than Brexit, believe it or not. And contrary to some very stupid articles I've seen, Russia has been involved with Syria since the days of Brezhnev and Assad the elder. Plus, not only are the Kurds not a sovereign nation, but they are at best for us erstwhile mercenaries and, less known, also of the Islamist bent vis a vis sharia and all that goes with it. Also, how stupid does the House look after that idiotic vote to condemn the withdrawal of a couple platoons of men? Perhaps not as stupid and two-faced as Mittelschmerz Romney who as he was blasting President Trump for abandoning our Kurdish allies forgot that in 2007 he claimed Kurdish nationalism is destabilizing to the Middle East. What a fraud.

"If Trump wants to be done with Syria, it might not be done with him."

In the New York Post, Rich Lowry writes in part,

The longstanding American military reflex is to win and go home, but it’s rare that even the most clear-cut victory is so neat.

We won a decisive conventional military victory in World War II in Europe, and we still have troops in Germany.

The first Gulf War is supposed to be the model of a rigorously limited commitment, but it still resulted in a no-fly zone over Iraq, the creation of an autonomous region for the Kurds in the north and a constant effort to enforce UN sanctions.

Nor is getting out as clean as advertised. Obama triumphantly exited Iraq, only to have to go back in when things spun out of control.

If Trump wants to be done with Syria, it might not be done with him.

Read why here.

"Complicated business, folks, complicated business!"

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance explains,

...As a gatekeeper between radical Islamist elements and Europe, President Erdogan holds the ultimate leverage and blackmail over his NATO allies. If Europe does not acquiesce to the whims of Erodogan, he can open the gates and flood the EU with extremists. Erdogan loves to play this power game against the EU and ultimately against the U.S.

President Obama embraced President Erdogan because ideologically the Obama administration and Erdogan both supported political Islam, The Muslim Brotherhood.

Erdogan’s regional arch-nemesis is Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. As a general al Sisi had to deal with the outcomes of Muslim Brotherhood extremism, and ultimately remove Mohamed Morsi from office. President Sisi formed the Arab coalition that is now aligned with President Donald Trump against the radical elements of political Islam known as The Muslim Brotherhood.

The U.S. Arab coalition includes Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Yemen. Additionally, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are aligned against the radical elements within political Islam (The Brotherhood), and the U.S. is supporting the coalition with self-defense military purchases.

...Unfortunately, Europe will not defend itself; will not kick Erdogan out of NATO; will not take their own ISIS fighters back for trial and punishment; and instead, just like Lindsey Graham, the EU demands the U.S. remain as perpetual zookeepers.

...Instead, President Trump is going to support the Arab coalition and the GCC that has been assembling a military coalition to protect itself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

That is why President Trump is willing to support Saudi Arabia with more troops, while withdrawing from Syria where the U.S. was having to stand alone to protect the interests of Europeans who will not protect themselves.

In one regional area the U.S. will support and defend Israel, Egypt and Jordan. In the Southern region the U.S. will support the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar).

...Instead, President Trump is going to support the Arab coalition and the GCC that has been assembling a military coalition to protect itself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

That is why President Trump is willing to support Saudi Arabia with more troops, while withdrawing from Syria where the U.S. was having to stand alone to protect the interests of Europeans who will not protect themselves.

In one regional area the U.S. will support and defend Israel, Egypt and Jordan. In the Southern region the U.S. will support the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar).

At 4:11 p.m. yesterday Sundance wrote on Twitter, "President Trump's decision will likely mean the Kurds will form an agreement with Bashir Assad. This is a good thing. Assad and the Kurds will be united against Turkey. They can work the rest out within internal Syrian politics."

At 4:19 p.m. yesterday, the BBC announced that the Kurds and Syria made a deal in which Syrian government forces will be deployed along Syria's northern border "to halt Turkey's assault."
Read more here.


"Complicated business, folks, complicated business!"

"Trump avoided war with Turkey this week. And he began extracting America from an open-ended commitment to the Kurds it never made and never intended to fulfill."

Carolyn Glick wrote in FrontPage Magazine,

The war in Syria broke out in 2011 as a popular insurrection by Syrian Sunnis against the Iranian-sponsored regime of President Bashar Assad. The Obama administration responded by declaring US support for Assad’s overthrow. But the declaration was empty. The administration sat on its thumbs as the regime’s atrocities mounted. It supported a feckless Turkish effort to raise a resistance army dominated by jihadist elements aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

President Barack Obama infamously issued his “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons against civilians by Assad, which he repudiated the moment it was crossed.

As ISIS forces gathered in Iraq and Syria, Obama shrugged them off as a “JV squad.” When the JVs in ISIS took over a third of Iraqi and Syrian territory, Obama did nothing.

As Lee Smith recalled in January in The New York Post, Obama only decided to do something about ISIS in late 2014 after the group beheaded a number of American journalists and posted their decapitations on social media.

The timing was problematic for Obama.

In 2014 Obama was negotiating his nuclear deal with Iran. The deal, falsely presented as a nonproliferation pact, actually enabled Iran – the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism – to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile systems required to deliver them. The true purpose of the deal was not to block Iran’s nuclear aspirations but to realign US Middle East policy away from the Sunnis and Israel and toward Iran.

...Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has stood against the US and its interests far more often than it has stood with it. Across a spectrum of issues, from Israel to human rights, Hamas and ISIS to Turkish aggression against Cyprus, Greece, and Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean, to upholding US economic sanctions against Iran and beyond, for nearly 20 years, Erdoğan’s Turkey has distinguished itself as a strategic threat to America’s core interests and policies and those of its closest allies in the Middle East.

...Despite the compelling, ever-growing body of evidence that the time has come to reassess US-Turkish ties, the Pentagon refuses to engage the issue. The Pentagon has rejected the suggestion that the US remove its nuclear weapons from Incirlik airbase in Turkey or diminish Incirlik’s centrality to US air operations in Central Asia and the Middle East. The same is true of US dependence on Turkish naval bases.

Given the Pentagon’s position, there is no chance that the US would consider entering an armed conflict with Turkey on behalf of the Kurds.

The Kurds are a tragic people. The Kurds, who live as persecuted minorities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, have been denied the right of self-determination for the past hundred years. But then, the Kurds have squandered every opportunity they have had to assert independence. The closest they came to achieving self-determination was in Iraq in 2017. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds have governed themselves effectively since 1992. In 2017, they overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling for Iraqi Kurdistan to secede from Iraq and form an independent state. Instead of joining forces to achieve their long-held dream, the Kurdish leaders in Iraq worked against one another. One faction, in alliance with Iran, blocked implementation of the referendum and then did nothing as Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk was overrun by Iraqi government forces.

The Kurds in Iraq are far more capable of defending themselves than the Kurds of Syria. Taking on the defense of Syria’s Kurds would commit the US to an open-ended presence in Syria and justify Turkish antagonism. America’s interests would not be advanced. They would be harmed, particularly in light of the YPG’s selling trait for Obama – its warm ties to Assad and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard truth is that the 50 US soldiers along the Syrian-Turkish border were a fake tripwire. Neither Trump nor the US military had any intention of sacrificing US forces to either block a Turkish invasion of Syria or foment deeper US involvement in the event of a Turkish invasion.

Apparently, in the course of his phone call with Trump on Sunday, Erdoğan called Trump’s bluff. Trump’s announcement following the call made clear that the US would not sacrifice its soldiers to stop Erdoğan’s planned invasion of the border zone.

But Trump also made clear that the US did not support the Turkish move. In subsequent statements, Trump repeatedly pledged to destroy the Turkish economy if Turkey commits atrocities against the Kurds.

If the Pentagon can be brought on board, Trump’s threats can easily be used as a means to formally diminish the long-hollow US alliance with Turkey.

Here it is critical to note that Trump did not remove US forces from Syria. They are still deployed along the border crossing between Jordan, Iraq, and Syria to block Iran from moving forces and materiel to Syria and Lebanon. They are still blocking Russian and Syrian forces from taking over the oil fields along the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Aside from defeating ISIS, these missions are the principle strategic achievements of the US forces in Syria. For now, they are being maintained. Will Turkey’s invasion enable ISIS to reassert itself in Syria and beyond? Perhaps. But here too, as Trump made clear this week, it is not America’s job to serve as the permanent jailor of ISIS. European forces are just as capable of serving as guards as Americans are. America’s role is not to stay in Syria forever. It is to beat down threats to US and world security as they emerge and then let others – Turks, Kurds, Europeans, Russians, UN peacekeepers – maintain the new, safer status quo.

...The best move Trump can make now in light of the fake narrative of his treachery toward the Kurds is to finally retaliate against Iran. A well-conceived and limited US strike against Iranian missile and drone installations would restore America’s posture as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and prevent the further destabilization of the Saudi regime and the backsliding of the UAE toward Iran.

As for Syria, it is impossible to know what the future holds for the Kurds, the Turks, the Iranians, Assad, or anyone else. But what is clear enough is that Trump avoided war with Turkey this week. And he began extracting America from an open-ended commitment to the Kurds it never made and never intended to fulfill.

Read more here.

Staying ahead of the critics

President Trump invited our military leaders and their spouses to dinner at the White House tonight. Before the dinner, he and the military leaders spent time with the press. Of course, the first question was about Syria. Sundance has the full transcript at the Conservative Treehouse. Trump did not mince words. Neither did he mince words on the second question, which was about the second "whistleblower."

Trump wants our troops out of Syria

President Trump announced yesterday that he wants to pull our troops out of Syria. That did not sit well with the Romneys, Grahams, McCains, Haleys, and Cheneys of the world. Audrey Conklin has the tweets at the Daily Caller.

Libya, Syria, ISIS, Clinton, Obama

Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton: "Oh, yes, Benghazi is tied to Syria and the rise of ISIS!" Tom reads from a Defense Intelligence Agency document. The DIA was run by General Flynn! "No wonder Obama didn't like him!"

BIG ARMS SCANDAL: Smoking gun docs uncovered by @JudicialWatch show Obama/Clinton were aware arms going to Syria through Benghazi and were warned about rise of ISIS, and they were supporting terrorists in Syria. Obama/Clinton created Syria/Iran mess. https://t.co/2L30dJSmpn … pic.twitter.com/iPQYkX11YP

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) June 21, 2019

Is McConnell pressuring Trump to keep troops in Syria and Afghanistan?

Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse brings us the story of the US Senate passing a resolution

To express the sense of the Senate that the United States faces continuing threats from terrorist groups operating in Syria and Afghanistan and that the precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either country could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.

Only three Republican Senators voted no on cloture: Cruz of Texas, Lee of Utah, and Kennedy of Louisiana.

Sundance alleges that those who voted for cloture were doing so because they are part of The Big Club, who are influenced by lobbyists to keep us at war. Moreover, Sundance alleges that McConnell is letting Trump know that he has the votes to impeach Trump if he doesn't play ball.

Go here to read more, including the amount of money being spent by various lobbying groups.

What could we spend that money on?

Rand Paul agrees with the President on removing troops from Syria and Afghanistan

"The Constitution demands that the people give their consent through their representatives in Congress."

As the prosecutor 25 years ago when "radical Islam declared war against the United States by bombing the World Trade Center," Andrew McCarthy is a person to be listened to. He writes in National Review,

...ISIS is simply a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda. It started, long before Obama came along, as the network’s franchise in Iraq, during the anti-American insurgency that metastasized into sectarian civil war. Al-Qaeda did not spontaneously generate either. It arose largely out of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. You may notice a pattern here. The animating force is sharia-supremacist jihadism — the conviction that there is a divine injunction to impose Islamic law on Muslim countries and, from there, spread it globally. This is to be done by any means necessary, though fundamentalist ideology (in contrast to other interpretations of Islam) makes violence the highest form of jihad.

...When ISIS arose and gobbled up territory, beheading some inhabitants and enslaving the rest, Obama began sending in small increments of troops to help our “moderate” allies fend them off. But the moderates are mostly impotent; they need the jihadists, whether they are fighting rival jihadists or Assad. Syria remains a multi-front conflict in which one “axis” of America’s enemies, Assad-Iran-Russia, is pitted against another cabal of America’s enemies, the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda factions; both sides flit between fighting against and attempting to co-opt ISIS, another U.S. enemy. The fighting may go on for years; the prize the winner gets is . . . Syria (if it’s the Russians, they’ll wish they were back in Afghanistan).

When ISIS arose and gobbled up territory, beheading some inhabitants and enslaving the rest, Obama began sending in small increments of troops to help our “moderate” allies fend them off. But the moderates are mostly impotent; they need the jihadists, whether they are fighting rival jihadists or Assad. Syria remains a multi-front conflict in which one “axis” of America’s enemies, Assad-Iran-Russia, is pitted against another cabal of America’s enemies, the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda factions; both sides flit between fighting against and attempting to co-opt ISIS, another U.S. enemy. The fighting may go on for years; the prize the winner gets is . . . Syria (if it’s the Russians, they’ll wish they were back in Afghanistan).

...It was, moreover, absurd for President Trump to declare victory just because ISIS has been stripped of 95 percent of the territory it once held. Caliphate aspirations notwithstanding, ISIS’s mistake was the attempt to be an open and notorious sovereign. It was always more effective as a terrorist underground, and it still has tens of thousands of operatives for that purpose.

...The Kurds are a more complicated problem. We have had a good deal with the Kurds: We protect them from Turkey, they kill jihadists. I could not agree more with David (among others) that it is shameful to abandon them, and it is shame multiplied by cowardice if, as reporting indicates, Trump decided to pull out after a threat by Ankara.

When we look a little deeper, though, we see why Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism. When we made our arrangements with the Kurds, we knew the backbone of their fighting forces was the PKK, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization. We knew the Kurds had territorial ambitions over which the Turks (and the Iranians, for that matter) are spoiling to go to war. We knew, further, that Turkey is our purported ally in NATO — quite apart from its failure to keep its defense commitments, this Western alliance maintains as a member the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a sharia-supremacist in the Muslim Brotherhood mold who despises the West. We knew, therefore, that conflict between Turkey and the Kurds was inevitable, that we would eventually have to make an excruciating choice, and that the freight of the NATO alliance would tip the scales in Erdogan’s favor. In fact, in the very conversation in which Erdogan advised Trump to steer U.S. troops clear of Turkey’s imminent anti-Kurd operations, Trump offered Erdogan a Patriot air- and missile-defense system in order to dissuade the Turks from completing a purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile-defense system.

The Constitution is not a suggestion; it is our law. But this week, it is somehow not even a consideration. I hold no brief for Trump on Syria (as noted above, I believe his lawless aggression risked a wider war no one wants). But I find it remarkable that, as the president was rebuked across Capitol Hill — from Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a true believer in American adventurism, to Democrats, who will exploit any pretext to attack Trump — congressional critics never paused, ever so slightly, over the fact that the troops they want the president to keep in Syria were never authorized by Congress to be in Syria.

...Want to declare war against ISIS? I’d be up for discussing that. Or, as a matter of honor, an authorization of military force to protect the Kurds for what they’ve done on our behalf? I could be persuaded. Or even a declaration of war against Iran — it wouldn’t require us to invade, but it might be useful as part of a real “maximum pressure” strategy, rather than just making mean faces at them in Syria. I’d be open to all of that; but not to more unprovoked military interventions that don’t have congressional authorization.

There is nothing for America in Syria. We haven’t defeated ISIS by taking its territory, and it wouldn’t matter if we did because sharia-supremacist culture guarantees that a new ISIS will replace the current one. The names change, but the enemy remains the same. And if you want to fight that enemy in an elective war, the Constitution demands that the people give their consent through their representatives in Congress.

Read more here.

" Our troops come home, and a stable transition is ensured by a regional ally.

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports that

CHECKMATE – Saudi Crown Prince MbS Sends Replacement Troops To Defend Kurds in Syria…



...Now let’s consider the brilliance of this move.

First, remember Turkish President Recep Erdogan was the antagonist in the Kashoggi matter and Erdogan orchestrated the blame toward Saudi Crown Prince MbS. There is no better motivated mid-east ally to protect the Kurds against any military action by Turkey other than MbS. No doubt MbS and UAE will send their best forces.

Secondly, what military equipment will MbS and the UAE be shipping along with their military troops? Those would be military purchases directly from the U.S.

Third, who stood up against i"nternational pressure and refused to condemn MbS over the Kashoggi matter? That would be a strategic U.S. President Trump. MbS owes a favor; see how that works?

Fourth, what leverage does U.S President Trump have toward Turkey in order to further facilitate no hostile action? That would be the economic leverage of current sanctions against Iran; and the option of controlling/punishing any economic engagement therein.

So to summarize: President Trump withdraws U.S. troops from Syria, and leverages his relationship with MbS to step up to replace them, thereby eliminating any concern that Turkey might take hostile action toward our Kurdish allies in Northern Syria.

Our troops come home, and a stable transition is ensured by a regional ally.
how do you like them apples!

Read more here.

Explosions in Syria

The Washington Post believes Israel is responsible for the explosions in Syria yesterday. Read the report here.

Explosions in Syria tonight

Red State is reporting huge explosions in the Syrian city of Hama. Read more here.

Sending some messages

Thomas Lifson brings us at American Thinker the official Pentagon map of the Syrian targets.


What messages were sent last night in Syria? Lifson writes,

The first message is that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. The huge "red line" blunder of Obama has been corrected again. This is more than a do-gooder concern for humanity, even though that is what is being said, for the most part. If these weapons are used and not punished, they will used again and again. Not only can terrorists gain access by capturing them in Syria, but chlorine is not that hard to fabricate. A poison gas attack on Israel or the United States is not out of the question.

But there are other messages being delivered. The second one is to Russia.

It is obvious that the timing of the attack enabled Russia to pull its naval fleet from the Syrian port of Tartus, where Russia has its sole overseas naval base. The message was that the U.S. does not want war and will not knowingly attack Russia unless we are attacked by it. But Russian allies and puppets get no such protection. According to the news conference underway now, Russia was given no special warning of last night's attack. But Russia could read the tea leaves. And now we know how quickly Russia can evacuate its naval (and other) facilities, and no doubt have learned a lot of other precious data from our electronic and satellite monitoring of the Russians' responses to a pending attack.

The third message is to Kim Jong-un and the mullahs of Tehran: that vaunted Russian air defense capability you have purchased for precious hard currency isn't going to do you any good. The B-1 bombers that carried out part of the mission were not even detected, or if they were, the attacks on them were ineffective.

The pending summit between the POTUS and Kim Jong-un probably is of even greater importance than Assad's chemical weapons folly. And Kim now knows that President Trump can and will use American weaponry to destroy what he wishes to destroy, and Russia is powerless to prevent it.

Of course, in war, the enemy has a say, so matters still could turn south. But so far, the needle has been threaded, and the worst fears of critics are unrealized.

Limited and targeted strikes

Following Fox's live coverage. Jennifer Griffin reports at Fox News that Syria moved some of their military assets onto a Russian airbase. It was almost one year to the day after the last chemical attack in Syria. Hannity says Trump has called for precision attacks.

Two structures in downtown Damascus were struck. Strikes are directed at Syria's production of chemical weapons. France and Britain participating in the strikes. Well coordinated. Destroying Russia's air defense systems in Damascus. However, allegedly 13 incoming Tomahawk missiles have been destroyed.

The Pentagon is now briefing us. Three targets, all chemical weapons facilities. Research, development and production of chemical weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbL_WMOvly4

Nice and new and smart!

What is going to happen in Syria? Russia is moving their ships out of the way of our missiles.

Trump tweeted:

Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!