Page 13 - Target Set News Today

Whats your body of proof? ♪ ♪ the powerful backing of american express. dont live life without it. here our breaking news at this hour and cnn. president trump announcing airstrikes on blast regimes chemical weapons program. i want to bring in cnn military analyst major general james expired marks and cred rick lateen. colonel francona you have new information about the targets hit. what do you know? >> ive been monitoring syrian arabic language media. and there was a press release put out...

Way. if you look at the target set. the target set was in the damascus area. there were only a two targets in the homs area. most of the russians, the senior russians and bulk of forces are in the northern part of the country. and also their air defenses are in the bulk of the northern part of the country. so we avoided a lot of the russian air defense as well. i think it was probably planned that way. hit the targets that you know arent going to be that defended. hit the targets where you think...

Enough to punish syria, but not so hard that it would start a war with russia and iran. how do you think it did? >> yeah, i think they achieved that goal. if you look at the target set and it was interesting the syria media had the target set released before the western press did. they knew what was being struck. every one of the targets and there were ten had thing to do with the chemical weapons program. so the target set was very narrowly defined and they stuck to it. it included production f...

French ships or missiles? and were any of the strikes intended to kill ba sar -- bashar al-assaal-assad? >> those will be details well pull together for you in the morning. >> the targets tonight were specifically designed to degrade the syrian war machines ability to create chemical weapons and to set that back right now. there were no attempts to broaden or expand that target set. and ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming in this evening. based on recent experience, we fully expect a sign...

Qatar. it was important that we talk to him as well. so that took time. second, i think there was some kind of -- there was probably substantial discussion inside the administration and across the river to determine what the target set was going to be, how extensive it would be and so on, and that took time as well. finally, i think one of the things that took time and made the attack occur now rather than earlier and why it may seem like its coincident with some of the presidents domestic diffi...

Doing so. general mccaffrey, what do you make of the initial reports of what went on tonight of you and colonel jacobs have been talking about defining the mission. do you feel that was reached tonight? >> look, brian, i think on balance, it was a very competent military operation commanded by general votel in tampa, florida. i thought the presidents statement was well crafted and straightforward. secretary mattis and general dunford unsurprisingly were coherent and focused. its worth underscori...

Harvard educated lawyer, msnbc, national security analyst. jeremy, what is the light in which you are viewing the size and scope of tonights strike, what it was, what it wasnt? >> brian, great that we worked with our al lies. great that it was, proportionate. but i am just struck by how narrow the target set was. we selected three targets. it was a one time shot. to use secretary mattislingo from the podium. it was a one day operation. we could have used this opportunity in the parlance of the p...

A straight-up mistake. he gave away the element of surprise in a perfect world, no one would have said a thing. no schedules would have been changed. a few meetings would have happened. the element of surprise would have happened three days ago. the surprise is when bombs start blowing up in damascus. so that is usually how we have done it. every president, every leader has their style. and there is always an announcement. as a matter of fact when we got word that the president was going to make...

Engage u.s., british or french ships or missiles. secretary mattis were any of the strikes tonight intended to kill bashar al assad? >> the only action im aware of is surface to air missiles. i happened to be down at the military command center. im not aware of any russian committee or the scope of the syrian regime at this time. those are details well pull together for you in the morning. >> the targets again were specifically designed to degrade the syrian war machines ability to create chemic...

>> theres concern about that. theres also concerns about getting drawn into the mire, the muck that is the syrian civil war. and its one of the reasons that people ought to be really careful about taking -- getting rid of assad or weakening him. but what courtney just laid out is the u.s. options. theres punitive options that even twice what we did last year, we shoot off 100 cruise missiles. they want to use chemicals again they will in a week or two. theres not a great target set. theres the r...