re: #201 lawhawk

Why the heck would Putin offer Obama an out on dealing with Putin’s own client state? That makes no sense.

What makes more sense? That the US floated a proposal at the G20 in the sidebar conference between the US and Russia to get Russia to take in Assad’s chemical weapons and transfer them to the US for disposal.

It solves several issues without anyone losing face. Assad can continue his slaughter of the rebel opposition. The US can claim they’ve eliminated access to WMD, and Russia keeps its client. Win win for everyone, except those who are still being killed by Assad’s forces on a daily basis. They are just a statistic though.

The world will get back to this when there’s a real body count to address. /

Yeah, I’m having this exceedingly hard time seeing Putin as concerned about the political consequences to Obama if he pushed forward with the strikes and Congress publicly rebuffed him. Makes more sense that he’d be looking at these strikes and the growing evidence of a disconnect within Assad’s command structure and becoming uncomfortable about the possibility that such weapons end up in Chechnya and then in a Russian city.