Wonderful news this early morning. 
The entire world is a little bit safer now that theres no need to bomb Syria.
A positive turn of events.
The devil will be in the details, but there’s reason to feel optimistic.
Has McCain issued a statement yet?
Exactly. This could be a rope-a-dope designed to buy more time before possible airstrikes. I’m reminded of the somewhat silly and desperate response to international demands for a ceasefire in Libya, with Qaddafi replying that they were observing a ceasefire but with absolutely no change in his troops behavior.
On the other hand, it may be a genuine offer. Or something in between, where they will drag their feet for weeks or months before letting inspectors in and removing most (but not all) of their chem stock.
Great now the UN will have a chemical weapons capability! 
Who is going to get to control the weapons.
Ohh Iraq and Russia will take care of them.
I’m skeptical that this is anything but a stalling tactic. Still, if it avoids moronic & pointless airstrikes, then it’s a great development.
It’s a trap! Syria will give up a massive amount of chemical weapons for show and keep just enough to selectively use so that they can blame the future attacks on outside terrorist groups. Thus allowing them to keep their air force and heavy guns intact for use against the rebels. They know if they don’t do something like this we are going to hammer them and give the rebel forces an opening. Assad will do anything to stay in power at this point. Sad fact is this tactic will most likely work. Welcome to muddle east politics Mr. President.
Mr. Kerry will either be considered to be a genius or a fool when this all plays out.
This is a positive development. I have never seen such opposition to a war.
Not even the second Iraq War. Every single person I know, whether liberal, conservative, libertarian, green, or moderate, they all agree that we shouldn’t go to war in Syria.
Will the level of disapproval from the electorate make any difference to those who wield the lever of power? Time will tell.
It really is surprising how overwhelmingly one-sided public sentiment is. John McCain is pretty much Obama’s only friend in this. I’m still trying to figure out how he managed to get Boenher & Pelosi on his side, altho I’ve noticed neither has been very vocal lately. Kerry is still playing the loyal minion, but aside from them, the pro-war camp appears rather thinly-populated.
My immediate thought was - is Syria also promising to stop making any more chemical weapons? I am no chemist and have no cites, but I thought Sarin was relatively easy to make. So they hand over all the chemical weapons they currently have; now what? They continue bombing the bejeezus out of the rebels with conventional weapons while they secretly make more chemical weapons. Seems to me that any way you look at it this is definitely a very positive development for the Syrian regime.
I don’t think Kerry deserves any credit for this. He was saying the only thing that could help Syria was something impossible like turning over all their chemical weapons in a week. He didn’t think this was an actual possibility.
I would suspect that any chemical weapons activity in Syria after the “surrender” would be a huge diplomatic black eye and embarrassment for Russia and a loss of any barrier to western strikes for Syria. It would make much more sense for Russia to legitimately lead the UN effort to take and destroy the chemical weapons while they continue to send conventional weapons to Assad.
I read in a news article that Pelosi said most of the calls and emails she is getting are against striking Syria, “but they don’t know what I know.”
So apparantly there are very good reasons. Reasons we don’t need to know about.
No, Assad is already and still claiming that the rebels released the gas in order to provoke the west into intervening; that has been his stance all along. If they give up the weapons and then only use them sporadically they will claim that the rebels still have them because they gave theirs up and are now defenseless against the religious extremist.
It’s just a ploy to stay in power now and appear to be a reasonable guy while he continues to paint his adversaries as religious extremist. It’s a tactic of repeating a lie long enough that people will start to believe it and start quoting the original lie as fact. Sort of what Fox News does.
Yeah, no one believes that story from Assad now and no one is going to believe it then either. Putin undoubtedly knows this even if Assad doesn’t (and Assad probably knows it as well).
The only way anyone is going to consider buying “extremist rebels did it!” is if the only people gassed are loyalist forces.
Do you imagine that this “positive development” would have come about without the prospect of an American strike?
Do you equate any military action with “going to war”?
Or not so loyalist troops, troops that Assad decides are plotting against him. I don’t put anything past this guy.
This is very encouraging. I hope they are serious and follow through as promised.
Obama’s speech writers must be busy totally rewriting tonights speech. I expect that we’ll continue applying pressure on Syria. But it’s time to silence the war drums and give this new development a chance to work. Pressure can be applied without some red line “do it or else we drop bombs” rhetoric.
In related news, all the gangs in New York have pinky sworn that they’ll hand in all their unregistered guns if the cops promise not to raid their crack and 'ho houses.