^Not sure about German media, but I remember the first doubts arose within days after chemattack -- that it was staged and those kids in the video were previously kidnapped and eventually (as the source suggests) killed to stage that attack. Not sure to what degreed it is true, but it is hard to ignore all this information indeed.
As for the whole Putin's article in NYT. Cannot say I didn't enjoy the reaction, especially the one coming from politicians and pundits, any reaction: positive, neutral or negative (even though NYT readers' reaction varied from neutral to positive surpassingly... not). Certain opposition kind of people reacted exceptionally positive, e.g. my fav PCR: "Most of Putin’s critics are too intellectually challenged to comprehend that Putin’s brilliant and humane article has left Putin the leader of the free world and defender of the rule of law and exposed obama for what he is–the leader of a rogue, lawless, unaccountable government committed to lies and war crimes" (that's bold i'd say! even for PCR). Even people least inclined to admire Putin, bashed Obama. Poor Obama received a heavy beating from his own media, I know he didn't want those strikes.
Speaking about exceptionalism, that part is what made the reaction even better. Not so long time ago when debating with sc94597 in another thread about whether the US is a single nation (my point was yes, it is) and nationalism in general, it did crossed my mind that his true point was "America is immune to nationalism because bla-bla-blah" (since he perceived nationalism as strictly negative phenomenon as a form of national, ethinc, religious or whatever hate, the logical chain is understandable here). Even not mentioning the recent counter-examples like Zimmerman case that caused a lot of turmoil, there's indeed a certain level of kulturtrager'ism is going on within information field the US are living in.
For those of you who's unaware "kulturtrager" is a German word (quite talented nation indeed that has its own word for various things we don't), meaning "the culture bringer", de facto the whole concept in majority of cases could be simplified to "I'm civilized -- you are not, I'm white -- you're black (well, usually), I brought culture to you therefore I have an exceptional right to... (whatever pleases you)". Here's your typical kulturtrager:
So when certain people say, I quote Kazs, that country is "shitty dictatorship (even it means democratically elected leader), therefore..." this is basically a new age kulturtrager'ism.
