Trump Declares “Mission Accomplished” After Missile Strike on Syria
On Friday night, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and France joined in a coordinated missile strike launched at three locations in Syria, following a week of threats after the Syrian military allegedly used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma on April 7.
Prime Minister Theresa May said, per CNN, she had “authorized British armed forces to conduct coordinated targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian regime's chemical weapons capability and deter their use.” French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed France’s involvement, saying that a “red line set by France in May 2017 has been crossed. So, I ordered the French armed forces to intervene tonight, as part of an international operation in coalition with the United States of America and the United Kingdom and directed against the clandestine chemical arsenal of the Syrian regime.”
The three strikes targeted a research center in Damascus, a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs, and a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and command post near Homs. “Last night, operations were very successful," Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said at a Saturday morning briefing. “We met our objectives. We hit the sites, the heart of the chem-weapons program. So it was mission accomplished.”
Syrian state TV claimed that several civilians were wounded in Homs after “several” missiles had been intercepted by Soviet-era air-defense systems. Russian forces claimed to have shot down a dozen missiles, but the U.S. military pushed back at those claims. On Saturday morning the Pentagon said that the coalition had launched more than 100 missiles at three targets and that the “heart” of under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime’s chemical weapons operation had been taken out before any Syrian missiles had been fired.
On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted that the strike “could not have had a better result” and that it was “mission accomplished.” (Purposefully or not, Trump’s declaration recalled George W. Bush’s appearance before a banner with the phrase almost exactly 15 years ago as he prematurely declared the end of combat operations in Iraq.)
