Hmmn. Rouhani condemns chemical weapons use in Syria. Is that an admission of a fact or an attempt to get out in front of a controversy should it prove to be a fact? I still say it makes much more sense for the rebels to be behind this whatever this is than for Assad to have made such an ill advised gamble that on the surface of it seemed an unnecessary provocation. But if Assad is behind it, what would that mean? War is going worse than we've been led to believe. Assad is not in complete charge of his forces and an extremist element is making its own decisions. They read Obama's inaction as a carte blanche invitation to do whatever the hell they wanna do. They see some upside to raising the stakes, possibly to draw in other parties? Hmmn. Could be they're just idiotic monsters.
[they see an upside in raising stakes because if after this Obama still doesn't respond it will send clear message to rebels that it's over for them, they have no hope? If that's the case, huge gamble by Assad - but given Obama's seeming desire to absolutely destroy America's reputation as a power to be feared and respected, if this is what Assad's thinking, there is a logic to it - a remorseless and cruel logic, but a logic all the same. Again, I'm not advocating getting involved in Syria - the time for that if there ever was a time for that was at the beginning - now, nothing but bad comes of it and I guess it's the choice of which bad outcome do you prefer - but Obama brought this on himself by making two very foolish mistakes - Libya, which set a bad example begging to be repeated - and drawing a line in the sand viz WMDs which is absolutely something you cannot do if you're President of the United States unless you fully intend on following through on the threat. If he made that threat knowing full well he had no intention of honoring it or naively thinking he could get away with not honoring it then that pretty much ends the debate on who's worst president ever - it's him]
