Source: CNN

Syria "welcomes" Russia's proposal for President Bashar al-Assad's regime to put its chemical weapons under international control, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Moscow on Monday.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/politics/syria-kerry/index.html

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Earlier story:

(CNN) -- Russia urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday to put his nation's chemical weapons stockpile under international control as part of an effort to head off a possible military strike from the United States.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said his country would urge Syria to take the action if it would avert a military response from the United States. There was no immediate reaction from the Syrian government.

Lavrov's comments came the same day Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to endorse a similar course of action.

Assad "could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week," Kerry said during a news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague. "But he isn't about to do it and it can't be done obviously."

I. Can't. Stand. These. People. Anymore.

Kerry's right: it's un believable.

From The Guardian, emphases mine:


Of course, Kerry and Obama are telling McCain et al that this will be a sweeping, expansive effort.

I just can't stand this anymore. Saying anything to anyone without shame has now become acceptable.

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I can't recall anything so weird. The President and his staff:

- threw the UN out of Syria early so we could bomb
- then suddenly turned to Congress for a non-binding vote (which will certainly fail thanks to House Republicans)
- have put forth all sorts of easily-refutable information, ranging from the number of gas deaths to the number of Islamic crazies in the Syrian opposition - you know, the opposition who are on video executing and eating the internal organs of their enemies?
- are waging the most powerful and comprehensive campaign since his election to win a fight he can't possibly win, and to make damned sure that the 80% of Americans who disagree with him on this issue know that he thinks they suck.

Obama's going to tape 6 interviews with the major news anchors? Really? How about doing those interviews on the obliterated middle class, homelessness, world hunger, or something else more actionable then the Syria disaster?

This will go down in history as a very bizarre and self-ruinous episode, sort of the Pickett's Charge of American politics.

For 30 years Republicans have grown crazier and crazier. For 22 years, the Democratic mainstream has been little but triangulators and Wall Street's paid staff, the tip of the spear that's shafting the 99%.

Now there's some heartening change afoot: Democrats are starting to realize that our old guard was not put on Earth to help us.

The skepticism and scorn heaped upon the cabal that's trying to triangulate us into bombing Syria is gratifying - The People are no longer asleep, and we're mooning them back.

In New York City, Bloomberg's authoritarian stand-in is getting ditched for an unabashed Liberal.

Larry "Toonces" Summers' unprecedented run as the Predator Class's unelected watchdog in the White House may have finally come to an end.

And Elizabeth Warren.

This is not to say things will get easier for the 99% now. Things will get harder now. When Predators find they can't get what they want the easy way, they start grabbing what they want the hard way. So it will suck for a while.

But if the 99% pulls together, fights, and sticks it out, we'll win. We have the power - we just need to recognize it, and to use it wisely.

Seriously, what was the President thinking when he pulled this congressional advisory vote stunt? That the House Republicans would hand him a public victory?

It's truly is either 11 dimensional chess, or incomprehensible foolishness. I'm really not sure which. Your theories appreciated.

*For the parody impaired: that's not an actual quote by any actual person that I know of.

According to the UN, 3.1 million children under 5 die each year from causes rooted in malnutrition. That's one Syria gas bombing every few hours.

The Syrian incident warrants great international discussions, Congressional hearings and likley the spending of billions of dollars for stuff that goes BOOM.

The starving kids? Not so much.

Why?

Fabulous.

Seems to me that we need to rethink this whole use of force outside of our borders thing. In my opinion, we should only use it to deal with a clear and present danger, to defend an allie that has been attacked, or something that the broader international community (e.g., the UN) has declared to be a war crime or crime against humanity.

The recent fashion of a single American deciding whether to kill people is a really, really bad idea. Within our country we have a judicial system for that, and we have a Congress to determine when we kill internationally. Our Founders did not intend for a single person to grab such power.