“We have no knowledge of Russian involvement in this attack, but we will investigate any information that might lead us in that direction,” a senior official told reporters during a background briefing at the Pentagon.

…“We don’t know why somebody or who struck that, we don’t have positive accountability yet, but the fact that somebody would strike the hospital potentially to hide the evidence of a chemical attack, about five hours after is a question that we’re very interested in,” the official said.

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And it signals to a world that’s skeptical of an untested president that the Trump doctrine will include American action that has little precedent in terms of its speed – a clear break with the international deliberations favored by the last administration.

…One of the few times in the campaign Trump broke publicly with his running mate, Mike Pence, came after Pence appeared to back intervention in Syria, when he said the U.S. “should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime.”

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Several Republicans who’ve had extensive contact with Trump and his foreign policy team in recent months have told me they believe this to be the key to understanding Trump’s approach not only to the Syria chemical weapons attack but to many seemingly confounding foreign policy causes Trump has taken up: from the near-impossible task of trying again to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians after Obama-brokered talks went nowhere, to reaching out to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a time when he and Obama were barely on speaking terms.

…But if it was clear that Trump had played the Blob masterfully Friday, it was less clear what his Syria decision would mean for his broader strategic goals, especially as the day went on with increasingly tough criticism directed at Washington from Moscow, where Putin has been propping up the Assad regime over the past few years and sees his stepped-up presence in Syria as the key that has unlocked an enhanced role for Russia throughout the Middle East.

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Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow has suspended its memorandum of understanding on air safety over Syria with the United States following the deadly US missile attack on the Sha’irat airfield.

…”The Russian Defenswe Ministry denied US media reports that Russia is allegedly going to keep the ‘red line’ with Pentagon’s representatives in the framework of the memo on the prevention of incidents in Syrian airsrpace,” the Russian ministry responded.

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It was difficult to reconcile the anguished president with the snarky critic of American engagement who, from the comfort of private life, advised President Barack Obama not to strike Syria after a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus three years ago.

…And it is not easy to square Mr. Trump’s empathy for the victims of a single chemical weapons attack with his refusal to take in thousands of Syrian refugees from years of strife that have turned that country into a charnel house.

…Even after Mr. Assad’s forces killed hundreds in a poison gas attack in August 2013, Mr. Obama did not carry out a threatened missile strike because, he said, he had not gotten Congress to sign off on it.

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Some of President Trump’s most ardent campaign supporters were among his most vocal opponents on Thursday after he ordered the missile strike against Syria, charging him with breaking his promise to keep the United States out of another conflict in the Middle East.

…Some of those supporters claimed, without evidence, that the chemical weapons attack was a hoax carried out by the “deep state” — what they believe to be a nebulous network of military officials working behind the scenes — to drag the United States into war.

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Britain’s ambassador to the U.N. is stressing his country’s strong support for the U.S. air strikes on Syria and harshly repudiating Russia for its protection of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

…Top European Union officials are supporting the U.S. missile strikes on military targets in Syria as a means of deterring further chemical weapons attacks by Damascus.

…NATO’s chief says Syrian President Bashar Assad only has himself to blame for a U.S. missile strike launched in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed dozens of people.

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Arabs on social media are showering US President Donald Trump with thanks and praise after he ordered the first direct US military action against Syrian government forces.

…”Fifteen warplanes that would have killed thousands of Syrians” were destroyed, one user said, changing his Facebook profile picture to an amalgam of Trump’s face, the American flag, and the Arabic words: “We love you.”

…Also, a pro-Syrian government Twitter user who was critical of the US move tweeted: “Is Trump going to bomb his own airfields for all the Iraqi and Syrian children they have killed in Raqqa and Mosul?”

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“The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.”

…Saudi Arabia’s state news agency SPA said the government “fully supports” the missile strikes, calling it a “courageous decision” by President Trump in response to the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government against civilians.

…Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement: “Canada fully supports the United States’ limited and focused action to degrade the Assad regime’s ability to launch chemical weapons attacks against innocent civilians, including many children.

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In a speech on the Senate floor in 2013, however, McConnell announced his opposition to Obama’s proposal, saying, “A vital national security risk is clearly not at play, there are just too many unanswered questions about our long-term strategy in Syria, including the fact that this proposal is utterly detached from a wider strategy to end the civil war there, and on the specific question of deterring the use of chemical weapons, the President’s proposal appears to be based on a contradiction.

…Orrin Hatch approvingly tweeted of Trump’s decision to attack on Thursday night, but in 2013, he said in a statement, “What is clear is that launching a few missiles will do nothing to end Syria’s civil war, and is neither a real strategy to stop the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria nor a guarantee that chemical weapons won’t be used in the future by the Assad regime.

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A statement from the office of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said the American missile strikes, which President Trump said were a response to a chemical weapons attack in Idlib Province on Tuesday that left more than 80 people dead, was the result of “a false propaganda campaign.”

…Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that the American attack would do nothing to advance the fight against international terrorism, which he called a priority for Mr. Putin and which he noted had also been a main pledge of the Trump campaign.

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Satellite images released Friday of the Syrian air base that was pounded with 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles show large-scale destruction to airfields, planes and fueling facilities allegedly used by the Assad regime to mount chemical weapons attacks.

…”Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons,” Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said, according to Reuters.

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According to CNN, the Pentagon is particularly interested in whether a Russian warplane actually conducted the bombing run on the Khan Sheikhoun hospital where victims were receiving treatment within hours of the attack, “with the aim of destroying evidence.”

…However, the Fox News report also quotes U.S. officials who said “between 12 and 100 Russian military personnel” were present at the base, complete with their own barracks, which the U.S. “took pains” to avoid blowing up.

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Explaining the strike, Secretary of State Tillerson pointed to one clear security goal: “if there are weapons of this nature available in Syria, the ability to secure those weapons and not have them fall into the hands of those who would bring those weapons to our shores to harm American citizens.”

…This strike will save lives—in Syria, by preventing Assad from daring to use chemical weapons again, and in unknown future conflicts where the losing side will be tempted to employ chemical weapons, and will think twice and not do it.

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Obama was widely criticized at home and abroad—particularly by the leaders of many U.S.-allied nations—for behavior interpreted as feckless and weak, but he later told me, in one of the interviews I conducted with him for a 2016 article on his worldview, that he was “very proud of this moment.”

…The events of the past week, culminating in the decision by President Obama’s successor to launch a punitive strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation for Assad’s continued use of chemical weapons against civilians, prove a number of points, some that reflect well on Obama, and some that do not.

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Syrian military officials appeared to anticipate Thursday’s night raid on Syria’s Shayrat airbase, evacuating personnel and moving equipment ahead of the strike, according to an eyewitness to the strike.

…U.S. officals believe the plane that dropped chemical weapons on civilians in Idlib Province on Tuesday, which according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights killed 86 people, took off from the Shayrat airbase.

…Following a 2013 chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1400 people outside of Damascus which a U.S. government intelligence assessment concluded likely used a nerve agent, the Obama administration threatened retaliation but ultimately called off planned airstrikes after Assad agreed to turn over the majority of his chemical weapons arsenal to an international watchdog group.

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That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

…The White House sees this as “leadership week”: the decision to order a missile strike on Syria after its deadly nerve-agent attack on its own citizens, including children; a prime-time announcement to the nation from Mar-a-Lago last night, in which Trump said, “God bless America and the entire world”; his assertive stance on North Korea, with the rogue state testing him by firing a ballistic missile; and meetings with the heads of state of Egypt, Jordan and, continuing today, China.

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The very presence of military personnel from the US and other countries in Syria without consent from the Syrian government or a UN Security Council mandate is an egregious and obvious violation of international law that cannot be justified.

…Russia has expressed on numerous occasions that it was ready to cooperate on resolving the most urgent issues the world is facing today, and that fighting international terrorism was a top priority. However, we will never agree to unsanctioned action against the legitimate Syrian government that has been waging an uncompromising war on international terrorism for a long time.

…There is no doubt that the military action by the US is an attempt to divert attention from the situation in Mosul, where the campaign carried out among others by US-led coalition has resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and an escalating humanitarian disaster.

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“You could be Barack Obama, or you could be Donald Trump,” Newt Gingrich, a top adviser who keeps in touch with Trump and his aides and is writing a book on the president, said by way of explaining the president’s decision to send missiles into an airbase suspected of launching the chemical attack.

…In conversations Friday with five aides and advisers inside and outside the White House, including some traveling with the president, it was clear that the president remains leery of intervention – but that he also hasn’t grappled extensively with his own foreign policy doctrine, and seems to be malleable based on the situation.

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A Russian warship entered the eastern Mediterranean Friday and was heading toward the area where two U.S. Navy destroyers launched missile strikes into Syria, Fox News has learned.

…The U.S. struck a Syrian airbase in retaliation for this week’s gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, including infants and small children, military officials said.

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WASHINGTON — The American military strike against Syria threatened Russian-American relations on Friday as the Kremlin denounced President Trump’s use of force and the Russian military announced that it was suspending an agreement to share information about air operations over the country, devised to avoid accidental conflict.

…Mr. Trump left it to others to address the issue on Friday, but his team signaled that no further military strikes were imminent unless the government of President Bashar al-Assad again used chemical weapons against Syria’s people.