I have my doubts about the Russian account of Trump’s strikes where the US foolishly spread out a hundred subsonic Tomahawks between a dozen targets, but the American story doesn’t make much more sense either.
In fact, both sides’ stories were wildly different. I dismissed the report from the Pentagon as fake news. Video surfaced out of Syria with Syrian Air Defenses clearly taking out tomahawk cruise missiles. Yep, the Syrians took down Trump’s “nice and smart” bombs using Soviet made air defenses built in the 1960s and early 70s.
The Pentagon foolishly believes everyone in the US has the brain capacity of a marshmallow and told their public they have targeted 3 sites: an airport (which wasn’t used) and two imaginary chemical research facilities, which were actually Damascus university science buildings.
Why would anyone fire 110 missiles at three targets? From the start, the Americans are lying, because you can’t target three small buildings with 110 bombs, this is what such attempt would look like: completely insane.
some source tell us that 76 cruise missiles hit 3 houses of that “research center”.
Here one guy illustrated what it would mean.
the attack is not impossible but insanehttps://t.co/CDoQdHXYta pic.twitter.com/lmrhiDljVy— rambo54 (@reutersanders) April 15, 2018
The Russians on the other hand stated eight different facilities were targeted, however the Syrians brought down at least 71 cruise missiles, essentially 2/3rd of the missiles. Each cruise missile is 540kg at a cost of $1.5m. In addition, at least 26 missiles were ‘rerouted’ one can assume with the help of the Russians into the desert. Roughly a handful, 4-7 were allowed to pass and Moscow did not engage any of their real toys (S400, BUK, Pantsir..).
Essentially, Washington spent $155m to make itself look ‘relevant’ at home.
Despite the public outrage in Moscow, the Kremlin had all of this arranged with the US. The US needed the show of force, very badly because Trump needed a massive distraction from the trouble he is in with the special prosecutor who couldn’t find anything on Russia so is now investigating what and who Trump did over the past 20 years.
Moscow promised the US it would not take all of the missiles out, it will let some in. It was the exact same scenario like the last time.
US pundits screamed for joy that Moscow was too weak to intervene (yes, these pundits are that stupid.). To Moscow, all of this was more than acceptable. Moscow won without firing a shot, again. Assad, Russia and Iran continue to win the war on the ground, while the ISIS protecting US got a chance to show that it is still relevant, of course in the process it outraged the entire world because everything the US does to other nations is not just contrary to international law, but an actual declaration of war.
Macron and May needed this as well, both leaders are on very shaky ground at home with May barely holding her spot as a PM, while Macron is faced with massive protests on daily basis. A false flag distraction was needed for all three.
As for Assad, what he thought of the strikes was perfectly summed up in his stroll to his office just few hours after the attack. Assad is winning the war.
