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Of: TT
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Photo: Darko Vojinovic / AP / TT
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Stock Photography.
US President Donald Trump says that in 2017 he wanted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed, but then-Defense Minister Jim Mattis opposed such an operation.
– I would have preferred to get rid of him. Everything was ready. Mattis didn’t want to do that. Mattis was a highly overrated general and had to stop, says Trump on the Fox and Friends television show.
The revelation supports information that Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward published in 2018 in his book “Fear: Donald Trump in the White House” and that Trump later denied.
“It has not even been considered,” the US president said in September 2018.
“No good man”
Trump’s new statement can be seen as part of the criticism and harsh criticism that Trump is directing at the former defense minister.
When Jim Mattis took office, Trump hailed him as “a great man,” but the relationship grew colder and colder, and in late 2018 Mattis stepped down as Secretary of Defense.
In the Fox interview, Trump says he has no regrets about the decision not to have Assad killed and that “he could have lived with it no matter what.”
– I really don’t think he (al-Assad) is a good person and I had the opportunity to get rid of him if I wanted to, but Mattis was against it.
Mattis was against most of those things.
Bloody regime
Bashar al-Assad has been the president of Syria since the turn of the millennium and during the devastating but continuing civil war. His regime is charged with a host of crimes, including summary executions, torture and chemical warfare.
According to Woodward’s book, it was after a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians in April 2017 that Trump wanted Bashar al-Assad killed.
Journalist Bob Woodward is best known for his pivotal role in exposing the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
In recent days, Woodward has published another book, “Rage,” about Donald Trump’s time in the White House.
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