On Syria Chemical attacked: Trump launched military strike.

 The United States launched a military strike Thursday on a Syrian government target in response to their chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians earlier in the week.
On President Donald Trump's orders, US warships launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, US officials said.

The strike is the first direct military action the US has taken against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's six-year civil war and represents a substantial escalation of the US military campaign in the region, which could be interpreted by the Syrian government as an act of war.

Trump said, "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Trump said during short remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, where he ordered the strike just hours earlier. "It is in this vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons."

He also added: "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically."
Shift in policy

His decision marked a dramatic shift in his position on whether the US should take military action against the Syrian President's regime -- which Trump opposed during his campaign for president -- and came after the President was visibly and publicly moved by the images of this week's chemical weapons attack.

The Order

Trump's decision to launch the strikes, the most significant military action of his young presidency, came nearly four years after the US first concluded that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons in Syria.

 

The Obama administration concluded that Syria had violated the "red line" Obama had set a year earlier in discussing the use of chemical weapons, but ultimately decided against military action against Syria in favor of a Russian-brokered deal to extricate the country's chemical weapons stockpile.

Trump at the time said the US should "stay the hell out of Syria" and urged Obama on Twitter to "not attack Syria" in the wake of the 2013 chemical attack.