that s why they dent want to get dragged into a broader war. you heard the president talking in his briefing last night that there are some challenges in syria that they don t have the capacity nor the interests to handle. what they were trying to make clear and plain, this was just about deterrence, about chemical weapons. the policy toward the assad government hasn t changed. they are not advocating for regime change. at the same time they talked about how they degraded their ability to produce and maintain chemical weapons and hinted they are maintaining some strategic maneuverable. i wanted to ask you hans just about we have attacked the heart of the syrian chemical weapons program. i m not saying they are going to be able to reconstitute it or continue it. but this dealt them a very serious blow. whap what happens going forward has everything to do with the assad regime. we sent a very clear message. on this issue of whether or notes in a one off strike, what
them were directed at one facility, at barsa on the outskirts of damascus. it was a chemical weapons research facility. it is needless to say, destroyed, at least according to the united states. not destroyed is syria s air force. more than 250 airplanes, more than 80 helicopters. that s intact. and remember, that s the strike force that has delivered owe many conventional bombs that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. and those warplanes are free to go up into the air tomorrow. so this air strike, these series of missile strikes, were designed to deter president assad from using chemical weapons again, but his route to convention weapons is still open. russia did not engage the allied warplanes or the missiles. it didn t fire a shot. its soldiers are unharmed.
weapons attack on the citizens of the country. he tweeted mission accomplished a phrase president bush used prematurely in 2003. hans nichols is live at the pentagon. jeff benity is at the white house. we haven t seen president trump today but our understanding is that he has been on the phone talking to some of the leaders i just mentionedt from france and the united kingdom. that s right. we haven t seen the president today. we are told we won t see or hear from him directly apart from whatever he tweets. he did swe with emmanuel macron and prime minister theresa may. in readouts of the calls, the white house says all three leaders affirm that the joint air strikes were successful and necessary to deter the assad regime from any further use of chemical weapons. so here we have a president who
much. at the close of the gulf war, general sworz could have gave the iraqis permission to fly helicopters agreeing to that concession was something that saddam used to quell the of th uprising of the country. we are focused on chemical weapons because they are awful. that said, assad is killing his people left and right. i don t think that has changed. i don t know that the russians are going to stop backing us or the iranians. i don t see the civil war changed much. one last thing to touch on what ben was saying, are we always going to look to the military to solve problems? less than 1% of the country wears a uniform. it s an easy band aid solution. we don t have a secretary of state. we should be looking at long term solutions that don t always look at the military. we have been at war since 2001.
what stood out to you. it was exactly as we anticipated. it was limited. it was specifically targeted. limited to the production of chemical weapons. that went pretty much by the book as anticipated. i think the things that stood out to me, a couple of thing, the variety of locations and the weapons platforms and weapons that were used. i mean, the u.s. threw everything at these three sites. they launched from three different from water from three different angles, from the sea, from under the sea, from bombers, with fighter escorts. we saw everything. including the use of a missile that hasn t been used in combat called a jassm a joint air to surface missile that s a stealth missile, a cruise missile that was designed for something like air war far against a high encompetition like china. not necessarily for static sites like this. so i think the u.s. made a point to show that these, you know, famously strong air defenses