Really it's the best solution. Everybody gets a bit of what they want and nobody comes off looking like a fool.

Except David Cameron. Moved a bit too quick on the Parliamentary vote...

Well, dear Oksanochka is being an ass here, though this is kinda her job, but that Roth guy... what a hypocrite.

Why everybody mentions sarin? I guess because every average Joe knows what sarin means. But Syria doesn't have sarin as its main weaponized chemical agent in service, it's R-33 (VX/VR clone), which is far-far more lethal. Of course it could produce it, like everyone else. Mentioning possible rebels responsibility for chemattach makes him to pull off old trick by discrediting it as a consipracy theory. Really? Absolutely not possible? But "Assad did that" is accepted with no further arguments. And the best part: "Doesn't represent any goverment... represent the truth"... sure, just like Freedom House :D And after all these we're the bad guys by saying "Nyet" in UNSC (google it up how many times the opposite side has used their "No" on many occasions).

Ok, enough with the rant. Nothing revealing here, but Oksana got him off balance couple of times, he reacted emotionally.

Here's some interesting news on the subject btw:

Last weekend, italian journalist Domenico Quirico was being released, after being kidnapped by syrian rebels for 152 days. He says it was absolutely horrible, they were being treated simply as goods with a certain value. Somewhat surprisingly, he says the only time he was being treated at least somewhat like a human was during one week when they were being sentineled by the Al-Nusra Front, a syrian Al-Qaida spinoff of extremely radical and aggressive islamists and considered a terrorist organization by the UN etc.

But the really interesting part is this: The journalist states that he overheard a Skype call during which it became clear that the recent chemical weapons attack had been staged by rebels, for the purpose of dragging international forces into the conflict that would attack their enemy's forces.

http://www.oggi.it/attualita/cronaca/2013/09/09/domenico-quirico-libero-dopo-5-mesi-di-prigionia-in-siria-il-ritorno-a-casa/

EDIT: The original article above is in italian, which most people probably don't understand. There's an article about it in english here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2418378/Syrian-hostage-Domenico-Quirico-overheard-rebels-blame-Damascus-chemical-attacks.html

Strangely, german news media are so far not mentioning the interesting parts. Famous german newspaper "Der Spiegel" for example has an article about Domenico Quirico's kidnapping, but there's not even a single word in it about the spicy part, the false flag chemical weapons attack. Seeing that the Daily Mail made this part the headline, I find it hard to believe that the german journalist who wrote the article simply failed to realize the relevance of this.

^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.

I know nobody cares about the topic by now, but this piece is note-worthy.

Those who're still following the war in Syria should be aware of TOWs jundallahs managed to lay their hands on, here's the video:

The interesting part is this:

and this:

Compare stock numbers (NSN).

Thanks for the find goes to Charles Lister. As he said it  -- needs verification -- but this specific TOW was listed as property of USMC in 2012, in other words most likely a direct supply of weapons from the US to islamists in Syria.

Since Assad is on a winning streak, Syria news isn't mainstream anymore.

It had be known for a while that America had supplied weapons. But i didn't think they would hand those things out...
Pretty stupid move.

Pretty much. It's a long waiting game to see where the new equilibrium is going to be in all of this.

It wont change the game.

Assad still relies heavily on air superiority, and a couple of tankbusters wont do much to change the sittuation. Untill Russia suplies spare part for those outdated MIGs, Ilyushins and Sukhovs, they will dominate the combat zones. Especially now that the jihadist elements turned every popular support agains the "rebbels" (lets face it, at this point nterrorist is a far more realistic word to use).

As Ive said from day 1: Assad is no angel, and his regimee commited some terrible deeds, but the "revolution" was a farce that had almost 0 popular support from when it started. This is not Lybia, where Gadaffi had no support outside the elite circles. Even there, they needed and illegal no-fly zone and bombing campaign to topple the regime. Toppling Assad in the short term is a dream, and the manslaughter will continue for years to come.

Thus far only humanitarian catastrophies came out from the western backed Arab Spring and pretty much every Color revolution thus far.

You people can't be satisfied -- first, you deny the fact States supports terrorists with weapons, now it's been known for a while :D I understand that by now even the slowest person realized that, but it's still good to have a proof, or at least as close to a proof as we could get, we aren't in courtroom after all. That's the damn nature of it, when you need smth like this, it's never there and appears long after when nobody cares.

Say, I know for a while that current Ukrainian secret service chief is, simply put, a CIA plant, but it might take a while before this will be accepted as common truth.