Conspiracy theories about the Syrian air strike:

[JHan]

4. Yes Eric would spin it that way..

The low risk nature of the attack doesn't help his argument - it's the low risk nature of the attack that birthed many of the conspiracy theories anyway.

I still think the push to respond likely came from Mattis or McMaster, and their thinking would have been to give a "proportional" attack signaling that America is paying attention but doing it in such a way to not cause a spike in the conflict. If Trump had a more coherent, strong position about foreign policy and didn't have a Sec of State who has been a waste of space, there may not have been a chemical attack to test the U.S. response in the first place.

So the question really is how to interpret a low-risk attack - is it to distract ( because the Russia scandal is not going away) or was it to send a message? For me, I see McMaster's fingerprints all over this , with russiagate off the headlines just an incidental , temporary plus for the adminstration.