Juan Cole: How Putin Saved Obama, Congress and the EU from Further Embarrassing themselves on Syria

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61. Consider this please

I don't think the President wants to do the Syrian strike at all but being PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND COMMAMDER-IN-CHIEF OF EMPIRE and all that entails demands continual war to quiet the media war drummers and the congressional corporate puppets of the military industrial complex, plus of course, keeping MIC coffers full. His flipping of the script to turn the decision over to Congress, IMHO, shows that he's trying to find a way out of intervention but he has to maintain the facade of being for it, same thing with Kerry and Rice — united front and all. And remember, his reputation for taking out the bad guys like Ben Ladin, Khaddaffi and to some degree Mubarak goes before him. So he has that going for him by keeping the pressure on Syria.

I also understand that he and Putin (who all the Obama haters are now giving credit for the idea) discussed the surrender of Syria's chem weapons not just at the recent G20 conference but during the summer also.

I think the President really doesn't care who gets credit but a solution seems to have been arrived at without a shot being fired. That's how you use the power of the US. Assad blinked, partly because what happened to Ben Ladin is playing on his mind.

Funny how that keeps happening with this president — except in Ben Ladin's case, thankfully.