White House aide: 'I wouldn't take anything off the table' for Syria attack response
White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said Sunday on ABC nothing has been ruled out as a possible U.S. response to this weekend's suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. "I wouldn't take anything off the table," Bossert told host Martha Raddatz. "These are horrible photos."
"The pendulum has swung in the wrong direction for too long, and the United States of America has been taken advantage of in their responsibility to provide security for the entire world," Bossert continued. "It is time to move that pendulum back in a way that brings regional partners and others with equities in these matters all around the globe into putting their resources and their treasure and their boys and girls on the line, and not just American troops."
President Trump has vocally opposed regime change efforts, including in Syria, but in his response to this attack, he blamed former President Obama for failing to oust the Bashar al-Assad regime. When Assad was accused of a chemical weapons attack last year, Trump reversed his position on Syria, deciding to respond with a missile strike on regime targets after he was shown photos from the attack.
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Watch an excerpt of Bossert's comments below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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