Ace:
Retreat, declare victory, and pick up another Nobel Peace Prize on your way to the 19th Hole.
President Obama said Syria’s offer to place its chemical weapons under international controls is a “significant” and a “potentially positive development.”Obama in an interview with NBC News said the offer had to be taken “with a grain of salt” given Syria’s behavior, but also said it would be scrutinized seriously.
“We are going to run this to ground,” he told NBC in one of six network interviews he taped Tuesday afternoon.
Yeah and supposedly Kerry’s talking to his opposite Russian number about the details, but you know what? They don’t care about the details.
They always sought a Symbolic Gesture and this qualifies as a Symbolic Gesture.
And Harry Reid’s excited by the Gutsy Call Climbdown, too.
RT @davidmdrucker: RT @AP: BREAKING: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delays Senate test vote authorizing military force in Syria
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 9, 2013
There will be champagne & Spades tonight at the White House.
And in the media, too. The media was struggling carrying Obama’s water on this one, and now they can go into their preferred mode of Obama coverage: Ecstatic praise.
Recall the Keystone Kops of the 1913-17, the silent movie. Iconic photograph of the Sargent on the phone and the dummies lined up behind him.
Putin has played this fool to the max, the world winner and hero in Putin-next Nobel prize winner.
kerry, reid one of the bigger racist and idiots, polosi, feinstein , clapper, hagel and holder lined up on this one.
The failure of the IC is as bad as 9/11. But nobody gets fired. incompetence is rewarded under the idiot.
What you don’t see as the lobbies and bankers that will skim billions out of the American people once this fool exits.
If Bashar al-Assad surrenders his chemical weapons to international control without the U.S. having fired a shot, it will not be “a Symbolic Gesture.” It will be getting precisely what was wanted.
@Greg:
Uh, no. Obama and Kerry have been saying that Assad must be “punished” for his supposed use of Chemical warfare, there was never any way in hell that a limited cruise missile attack would do any more than release yet more chemical warfare gasses. nor after the WH blabbing all about the “plan” would it have likely to had much of any chance of success. All Obama really wanted to do was a toss a few warheads to to ease his own tortured ego, and the Russian plan to remove Assad’s CW weapons for the duration of the uncivil war, removes the objective for our spoiled brat that is the POTUS. So Greg parrot’s the WH lie that that was all Obama really wanted, so Obama is still the pompous fool that the entire world now knows him to be. Amateurs indeed.
Taking the toys they used to hurt others does not “punish” the child, it only forces them to use different toys as weapons. Why are the lives taken by the release of chemical weapons worth more to the Greg and the Obama regime than the thousands killed my other weapons? That is part of the insane hypocrisy from the WH who are weaseling their way around the issue to desperately help Obama save face from his own stupid comments.
Nor will taking Assad’s CW remove the possibility of continued CW attacks by the al-Queda backed “insurgents” who have been also attacking the original homegrown rebels.
The US has no skin in this game other than the CWC treaty who’s responsibility to uphold belongs only to the UN. There never was any legal authority for the Obama to take action, so Putin has saved Obama from becoming a war criminal.
Syria, an unstable client state of Iran, has an estimate 100 tons of chemical weapons. A Scud missile, which Syria also has, can carry a 2,000 pound warhead at 5 times the speed of sound. That would mean that any Israeli population center is only minutes away. Yet the right keeps asserting that Syria’s chemical weapons pose no threat to U.S. interests, and that it would be meaningless if they were no longer part of the equation.
You might want to advise your POTUS that Syria is a threat. He was just on the talking heads shows, saying Syria wasn’t any threat to us. WTF?
@Greg:
And Assad can go on killing all he wants by conventional means. Seems to me we bombed Libya because Obama said to many people were being killed by the Qaddafi regime. Same thing is happening in Syria yet we’ll turn a blind eye there. No consistency at all out of this bunch.
And if you trust Putin on this you are a bigger fool than I figured.
@Mully, #6:
My impression was that people on the right generally didn’t consider humanitarian considerations a sufficient reason for U.S. military intervention in Syria. The presence of WMD next door to Israel weren’t sufficient reason, either. Nor was the fact that they could be used by Iran as a deterrent to any U.S. or Israeli interference with Iran’s nuclear program. Apparently the only sufficient reason would have been an attack by Syria on Israel, or Syria’s chemical weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists. At which point, in either case, it would have been too damn late.
You can trust Putin to pursue Putin’s interests. What might actually make this all feasible is that the continuing presence of chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria doesn’t really serve Russia’s best interests any more than ours, even though Russia assisted in the development of that capability. There’s nothing particularly useful to Russia that can be done with them, and they certainly have abundant reason for concern about Islamic extremists with chemical weapons. They’re friendly with Iran, but do they really want hasten Iran’s progress toward becoming a nuclear power?
DEBKA FILE has an article up saying all the rebels have been thrown to the wolves by this Putin/Obama pact.
Since just yesterday we learned that these same rebels were taking over Christian cities and laying down the ultimatum to convert into Islam or die, I think this might be a great solution.
Assad allowed many minority groups to live in Syria.
Until this rebellion, they got along as well as expected.
But now, it is impossible for Alawites (Assad is one and they are considered apostates from Islam), for Jews, for Christians and for unbelievers to live there at all.
Thus the 2 million refugees.
Anyway, tonight we’ll see where Obama takes us.
I’m betting there will be no proof that Assad was behind that attack.