Thanks Robert good effort but This is the first essay that I am not totally in accord with you. Deep state False Flag IMHO Trump was seemingly forced into some action (Two Allies proclaiming proof.) and the target was likely facilities that potentially house or create WMD's. There are no good actors in Syria, f.....them all! Putin backed away I suspect after discussions with Pres Trump and the MSM said trump was starting WWlll For the fifth time.

Ask yourself why did NK stay out of the news during this very busy time for the Pres .Ahhh WWlll it is the Patriots vs the deep state (worldwide) The thing is WWlll was started on Election Day. We were mired in the Middle East because of the Bush/Clinton/Obama crime syndicate that had America on the verge of destruction. I also think you use a Michael Mann type of hockey stick graph with the assumption Trump will have Six and 1/2 more years of big deficits. The military was degraded by Obama and was in dire straits.
Peace through strength .
Thanks for your consideration.

Russians team up with ignorant savage neocons to destroy America. Sounds like a spy novel.

Russia could be the best ally America could ever have, and a mutually profitable trading relationship. Overcoming mistrust between Russians and Americans should be a primary goal of free men. The high frontier is much closer to colonization with such a partnership.

This narrative in the article seems plausible to me. The attack is of some help for President Trump politically because it allows him and Russia to exchange threats and make people wonder if this disagreement will lead to WWIII, which is contrary to the accusations of Trump having conspired with Russia and/or being heavily influenced by Russia. I suspect that those accusations are baseless. I suspect Putin is out to show liberal democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Russia ran propaganda supporting Sanders and Trump because they questioned the legitimacy of US. Immediately after the election, they ran propaganda attacking Trump’s legitimacy. They didn’t think Trump would win but he turned out to be a dream come true for Putin because not only did a candidate critical of the election win, Trump amazingly continued attacking the legitimacy of the election and continued attacking US institutions after he won. Maybe Putin was concerned these accusations (which I think are false) of Trump conspiring with Russia were undermining Trump, and Putin wanted to buoy him while at the same time discouraging the US from redeploying troops from the region.

This is all speculation. It could be the Syria figured the US was committed to removing troops from the area and they were safe to use the weapons. That is hard for me to accept though. Maybe Syria had an opportunity to reach objective and they used chemical weapons because they thought it was worth the price of a US cruise missile strike. The narrative offered in this article seems the most plausible.

Regarding “decisive action”, this is just the standard practice. Doing otherwise, the conventional thinking goes, “risks normalizing chemical weapons.” The part I’m not sure is whether Russia longs to be a superpower policing the world like this or whether they think it’s wasteful and are content to let the US keep the role and keep the exponentially growing debt.