Washington, September 7 (RHC)-- In the U.S., a new book has revealed that Donald Trump demanded the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a 2017 chemical attack that Washington blamed on Damascus.
 
According to an excerpt from the book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, the U.S. president told Defense Secretary James Mattis that he intended to assassinate the Syrian leader, after Washington accused the government in Damascus of a suspected chemical weapons attack against the militant-held village of Khan Shaykhun in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib last year.
 
"Let's -- kill him!  Let's go in. Let's kill the... lot of them," Trump told Mattis on the phone.  Mattis reportedly told Trump he would get "right on it" in an apparent attempt to pacify the president, but hung up the phone and instead told a senior aide: "We're not going to do any of that.  We're going to be much more measured."  
 
Renowned journalist Bob Woodward wrote that the U.S. national security team then prepared a plan for a more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.  The Washington Post writer also said that the defense secretary had marveled at the time of Trump's ignorance on foreign affairs and told close associates the U.S. president had the intelligence of "a fifth- or sixth-grader."
 
On April 4, 2017, a suspected sarin gas attack hit the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria's Idlib Province, killing more than 80 people.  Led by the United States, Western countries rushed to blame the incident on Damascus, with the U.S. launching a missile attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria's Homs Province on April 7, 2017.
 
Trump tweeted a day later that the military attack against Syrian targets was a "Mission Accomplished!"   He wrote:"A perfectly executed strike last night.  Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military.  Could not have had a better result."  
 
Washington claimed that the air field had been the origin of the chemical attack. Damascus, however, said the Khan Shaykhun incident was a fabrication to justify the subsequent US missile strike.
 
Woodward claimed in his book that Trump had once mocked Attorney General Jeff Sessions's southern accent and called him "mentally retarded" in a conversation with a White House aide.  The U.S. president lashed out at Sessions, who he has repeatedly criticized for recusing himself from the Russian investigation, as he was speaking with then-White House staff secretary Rob Porter, according to the book.
 
"This guy is mentally retarded.  He's this dumb Southerner," Trump told Porter while using a southern accent.  "He couldn't even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama."  
 
The Washington Post reports that Woodward's account was based on "hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents."  
 
The book's release date comes less than two months before the midterm elections.  The book, "Fear: Trump in the White House," hit the top spot on the regularly updated Amazon.com best-sellers list for books, despite the fact that it will not come out until September 11th.
 
In an excerpt from the book, Woodward also claims that the White House chief of staff John Kelly had called Trump "unhinged" and "an idiot" in a conversation with aides and associates.  Kelly reportedly censured the U.S. president and said during a small group meeting that it was "pointless" to advise Trump on anything.
 
"He's an idiot.  It's pointless to try to convince him of anything.  He's gone off the rails.  We're in Crazytown.  I don't even know why any of us are here," Kelly said, Woodward writes.  And the veteran journalist added that Kelly said: "This is the worst job I've ever had."  
 
Several hours after the excerpts were first published, the White House issued a statement denouncing Woodward's book.  "This book is nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in the statement.
 
Woodward's book, which is set to hit shelves next week, reportedly describes the U.S. president and his staff as being in the midst of a "nervous breakdown."