Monday, September 09, 2013

Putin Trips Up Obama

Russia has announced a plan to put Syrian government chemical weapons under the control of international monitors who will then destroy them.   The proposal apparently is acceptable to Assad provided the U.S. agrees not to attack Syria.

2 comments:

Anyong said...

The thing is Syra is not as strong as the powers that be would have us think. This is once again a game to try and strengthen the US economy. Can anyone think of a better idea than what the Russians have put forth?

The Mound of Sound said...

What I read at Slate.com is that the State Department is rehashing the old line used against Saddam - "we don't trust him." Saddam repeatedly insisted Iraq didn't have WMDs. The Bushies replied, "we don't trust him." They refused to accept the UN weapons inspection teams led by Hans Blix either.

Now Assad says he'll go along with the Russian initiative. The U.S. says "we don't trust him." Presumably that means they won't trust international inspection teams either.

This opens up some interesting options for the Russians, a way to get back at the Americans for their role in humiliating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Russia could send in teams to secure the chemical weapons plus air defence batteries to protect Assad against American, French or Israeli air strikes. Just the presence of Russian-manned S300 missile batteries would give Netanyahu fits.