US President Donald Trump said that he does not regret not liquidating the president of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, and that he had the opportunity to do so, in response to the chemical attack carried out by the Syrian regime forces more than 3 years ago on the city of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib (northern Syria) .
Trump added in an interview with Fox News today, Tuesday, that it was former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis who advised him not to do so, considering that he was a terrible general and a bad leader.
He continued, speaking of his plan to liquidate Bashar al-Assad after the attack on Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, "I would have preferred to kill him, I was prepared for the matter completely."
He also said, "I definitely thought he was not a good person, but I had a chance to get rid of him if I wanted, and Mattis was against that ... Mattis was against most of those things."
At the time, the US President’s administration responded with missile strikes targeting military sites of the Syrian regime.
Trump's comments came in response to a question about a passage from the book "Fear," by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, which says that the president called on Mattis and told him that he wanted to kill the lion after the chemical attack that resulted in more than 100 Another 500 killed and wounded.
According to Woodward, Mattis told Trump he would follow up, but then told an aide that they were acting more prudently.
Ultimately, his team devised a plan to launch air strikes on targets that Trump eventually ordered.
It is noteworthy that Trump denied on September 5 that he even thought about killing the head of the Syrian regime because of his use of chemical weapons against his people.
The US President had described Mattis as a great man before the dispute erupted between them, so the latter resigned in late 2018.
In the same interview with "Fox News", Trump talked about the killing of former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a military operation that took place in October of last year in Barisha village in Idlib Governorate (northwestern Syria).
The US President said that after he destroyed ISIS, Al-Baghdadi tried to rebuild the organization and ordered his killing.
"I ordered his killing, as many people were killed, and the same applies to Soleimani," he added, referring to the former Iranian Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, who was killed earlier this year in an American raid that targeted the Iranian leader's convoy as he left Baghdad International Airport.