Do you know or can you explain any legitimate reason that Putin waited this long to accept Obama’s June 2012 proposal to dismantle Assad’s CW arsenal before some were used to kill babies and their mothers.
It seems you have not noticed Putin’s entirely self-serving, and murderous, agenda having say on his ass more worked about the $30 Billion Assad owes him than worried about Assad gassing babies to death for what? For sport.
It is odd how conservatives view awkwardly at what Putin despicably has done and has sided with.
Seriously BrokenBriton can you or anyone here defend Putin’s delay in waiting for babies to be gassed before agreeing to Obama’s request long ago for his pressure to get CW out of the war zone?
The case against Assad and/or Putin is entirely sufficient without any need to suggest they have some specific malign intent towards babies. Please don’t do that.
Now, I can no more enforce that request than I can flap my arms and fly into the treetops. Still, please.
For that matter, when high level Iranian officials blame Assad(admittedly since walking back unconvincingly those claims) it seems a bit silly to criticize people for believing Assad behaved like a Baathist dictator.
Point is had Putin acted earlier to dismantle these weapons, stop using them, and enable UN inspectors to inventory and secure them, some babies may not be gassed to death now.
So why did Putin put off what he could have done years ago.
Why didnt he start this when Obama proposed it?
Why do you applaud his no turning to yes after Kids were gassed?
I think what he’s trying to say, and I believe there may be some truth to it, is that Obama didn’t decide to go to Congress until after he saw that the British Parliament denied authority to Cameron. Had the BP not weighed in, or worse, weighed in in favor of Cameron’s wishes. Obama might have felt emboldened to act without consulting Congress.
We can’t know if that’s true, of course, but by zig-zagging his way into our current situation, I think Obama has left himself open to that sort of charge. I would not state it in such certain terms as BrokenBriton does, but I do believe it is a possibility not to be simply dismissed as some fringe idea.
What is it about the “current situation” that it requires ‘that sort of’ (gossippy) ‘charge’ to be leveled at Obama about the process of how he got one confrontational powerful opponent and his rogue nation that sits upon an arsenal of chemical weapons, to do what he wanted with out firing a shot?
Who cares except the sideline’s never-satisfied critics whether Obama zagged when they think he should have zinged?
It’s worth noting that Juan Cole who’s probably the Left’s most popular Middle East scholar and hardly a fan of either the American empire or intervention has argued it’s “preposterous” that Assad forces weren’t responsible.
Nor would it be surprised to anyone familiar with the infamous “Hama rules”.
OK, but I was simply answering your question, and the answer is “no”.
And yes, there is lots of evidence pointing to Assad and very little pointing to the rebels. Still, the UN investigators said all along that they would not be assigning blame.
*Maher al-Assad, the president’s younger brother, commands the regime’s Republican Guard, the Syrian Army’s 4th Armored Division and special forces, which are tasked with protecting the regime.
*
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I’m quite sure Russian Orthodox Devotee Putin has no malign intent toward Syrian babies, but when Russian made shells were used to gas innocent babies kids and their mothers to death in violation of international norms it is clear the Assad’s regime were not at all concerned with gassing some babies to death. This observation makes it incredulous to flirt with the politically charged right wing push on the narrative that Putin has bested Obama in a Syria showdown this past month.
That narrative is absurd because Putin is tied to the act of evil and needs a way out of that embarrassment.
If only America’s right wingers could give up the goal of destroying Obama’s presidency no natter what, Putin would be seen in the weak position he is in on the global scene.
Putin had the moral position and upper hand when he liberated South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, and when he opposed the US invasion of Iraq, but he has none of that here.
The ‘discovered’ Mustard Gas shells were not declared but they were found at the same facility where other declared materials were to be destroyed. Libya destroyed nearly half its chemical weapons since 2004 until the destruction facility broke down just before the revolution broke out in 2011.
The headline here is horrible but the fact that it was not really a secret stash being hidden somewhere is in the report.
See previous post about Gadhaffi’s so called secret stash but also I have already pointed out that Saddam Hussein’s word prior to the invasion was that he was disarmed and Bush and Blair were lying. Saddam’s word in 2003 turned out to be good.
So I don’t see the point you and others are making that this Syria deal is all a ruse so not worth much. The other two dictators who had chemical weapons got rid of them as they said. Their word was good. Bush and Blair’s word sucked.