It begins: State Dept says Syria’s 7-day deadline for chemical weapons list not really 7 days
Syria basically says: So sue me. State Dept. says: Pretty please.
We’ve been rolled.
Via L.A. Times:
The U.S.-Russian plan for the removal or destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough just days ago, appeared to run into trouble Wednesday as the Obama administration backed off a deadline for the Syrian government to submit a full inventory of its toxic stockpiles and facilities to international inspectors.
The State Department signaled that it does not expect Syrian President Bashar Assad to produce the list within seven days, as spelled out in the framework deal that Washington and Moscow announced last weekend in Geneva.
Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday that “our goal is to see forward momentum” by Saturday, not the full list. “We’ve never said it was a hard and fast deadline.”
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had described the deadline as the first of a series of “specific timelines” that would indicate whether Syria is committed to the pact, which demands that Assad’s government give up its chemical weapons in exchange for the United States shelving the threat of airstrikes.
“We agreed that Syria must submit within a week – not in 30 days, but in one week — a comprehensive listing,” Kerry said Saturday. He said the U.S. would allow “no games, no room for avoidance or anything less than full compliance.”
I don’t see the seven days in the written framework, but it clearly was the agreement as quoted by Kerry above.
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Comments
Just like the Obamacare deadlines. Enforcement of laws/rules is subject to the whim of the Executive.
And we had an expectation of exactly what?
Remember Lucy and the football?
Most people expected Syria to do exactly what it just did. It seems only the Administration believed that Syria would play by the Marquess of Queeensberry Rules.
Queensberry* rules. Ugh, hate typos 🙂
“We’ve been rolled” or something.
What do you mean “we”? I doubt many here expected anything else. What was ‘promised’ or as likely suggested to Obama / Kerry was obviously impossible without significant numbers of boots on the ground. And both sides don’t much like the US even though the opposition will happily take weapons, money, etc. from us. So we would put people in there to be shot at by both sides. Not going to happen, I pray, although with Obama and Kerry, who knows. Smart diplomacy, right?
Putin plays chess and Obama and Kerry, well who knows.
WASHINGTON — Senior House Republicans on Wednesday accused the State Department of failing to hold senior department officials accountable for security failures that contributed to the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year in which four Americans were killed.
“No State Department personnel have been fired or even disciplined,” said Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “No one has missed a paycheck.”
Mr. Royce’s comments opened the first of three hearings this week that the House Republican leadership has scheduled as part of its scrutiny of the administration’s conduct before, during and after the attacks on the mission and on a nearby C.I.A. annex on Sept. 11, 2012.
Republicans have accused the administration of ignoring requests from American diplomats in Libya for additional security in the months before the attack and of failing to launch a military response to blunt the attacks once they were under way. They also say the administration has placed blame on midlevel officials for mistakes they say may have extended all the way to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/us/politics/house-republicans-see-no-discipline-over-benghazi-attack.html?_r=0
Do you remember baby last September
How you held me tight each and every night
Oh baby how you drove me crazy
But I guess it doesn’t matter any more
Fer crissakes, now even BASHAR AL-FREAKIN’ ASSAD gets a waiver from President Bumblef*ck.
Wrong Henry…. if Obama really wanted Assad dead, he would force him onto Obamacare.
That deadline was not humanly possible, and we all knew it at the time, so of course it would have to be extended.
It’s the saud’s fight! And, Assad turned the tables on their foreign bought jihadists. To the point where someone cooked up this idea … that American will bomb Syria back to the stone age. Not that all these years of fighting hasn’t taken its toll.
Hardly likely that Americans are liked in any muslim country.
And, the saud’s don’t deserve to be “serviced.”
Yes, I know they own the politicians. Journalists. And, other access to brainless propaganda.
Talking of “lines to pass” … Obama certainly knows his reputation can end up under the bus … And, he doesn’t want to “be like Nixon.” Ending up accused of crimes … When he was hoping he’d have a “clean record.”
I think Obama is incompetent. And, the unintended consequence is that he can win when strategy is needed. He’s not even surrounded by anyone bright.
Doubt if Putin would respond to American military action, done unilaterally … with just a shrug of his shoulders.
Ugly can of worms if there ever was one.
Besides, we’re still watching ObamaCare running out domestic agenda off the tracks.
GOP isn’t helping. McCain’s a bigger hyena than the President. Saud’s paid for a lot of what you’re watching on TV.
OB = Obama
JK = John Kerry
—————————-
Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-n-n-g!
OB: “Hello.”
JK: “Hey, O-Dog. Lurch here…”
OB: “Excu-u-u-use me?”
JK: “My apologies, Mr. President. Secretary of State Kerry here, sir.”
OB: Silence……
JK: “Aw geez! Sorry! YOUR HIGHNESS!, Your Highness, this is John Kerry!”
OB: “A’ight, then. Whassup?”
JK: “I’m over here at the Syrian consulate. I asked them about the chemical weapons report due Saturday.”
OB: Silence……
JK: “Your Highness! Due Saturday, Your Highness!”
OB: “Yeah? OK. And?”
JK: “Uh-h-h, yeah. They.. uh.. they’re not gonna have it ready, they said.”
OB: “How much time do they need?”
JK: “Well, Your Highness, I don’t think it’s a matter of more time.”
OB: “Whaddaya mean?”
JK: “They said we’ll get it when you make certain concessions, sir.”
OB: “Hold on a minute…… F-O-O-O-R-E! ….What ‘concessions’?”
JK: “They offered you a menu of choices. The least difficult involves you kissing Assad’s ass in the middle of the Red Square while Putin twerks like Miley Cyrus in the background. They insist on both American and Russian media coverage. The rest of the choices get a little disrespectful, sir.”
OB: “I see. Hold on a minute….. (three iron, here? Wedge?) ….. So, would Assad be wearing pants?”
JK: “Your Highness, surely you can’t consider actually doing this.”
OB: “What, I gotta teach diplomacy to my own freakin’ Secretary of State?!”
JK: “Your Highness….”
OB: “Shut the f*ck up. Look, you better get over here to the White House. FOX will have a field day with this – we need to make this look like our idea.”
JK: “Um-m-m, I’m afraid I can’t just at the moment, sir.”
OB: “Are you refusing a direct order from Your Highness-In-Chief, boy?”
JK: “No, sir, not at all. It’s just that…”
OB: “Hold on a minute…. Get that dog out of the way while I’m putting! ….So what’s the problem?”
JK: “The Syrians, sir. Here at the consulate.”
OB: “Yeah?”
JK: “They took my pants, sir. They won’t give them back.”
OB: “Lord help me, I’m the King of Moronistan.”
JK: “They’ve painted my name across the seat and are stringing them up the flag pole out front.”
OB: “Get over here pronto, mister!”
JK: “I can’t be seen riding around Washington without my pants, sir! I’ll never be president!”
OB: “John, America has been aware of your shortcomings since 2004, so just get.. your.. ass.. over.. here NOW!”
JK: “Yes, Your Highness. I suggest staff be directed to come up with some reason why we’ve ‘waived’ the Saturday deadline. Make it look like our idea.”
OB: “I just said that, moron! ……DOUBLE BOGIE. Goddammit!”
Hey HH, good buddy, you are aware that this blog is monitored, right? ‘Cause this little piece is mighty funny to us peons but geez, putting it out in public …
Well, maybe they’ll be too distracted by the Weeper of the House reciting tea party talking points today.
S’ok. In high school I was voted Most Likely To Be Snatched Off A Water Tower With Rifle And Hauled Off To Government Gulag.
The opening sentence is: We’ve been rolled.”
I beg to differ. You can’t be rolled UNLESS you have expectations that an opponent/enemy will behave in a moral manner that fits with your ideas. The only people who have been “rolled” are the incompetent idiots sitting in high places in the government. The American people, save the TV-and-videogames crowd, saw this for what it was – Vladimir Putin showing President Large Baby how the game is played.
Point, Set, Match — Vlad.
This pathetic, pompous ass ties Obama in loving to hear himself talk — and say nothing.
Oh! I hear the “Slow Road Shuffle” music beginning!
Vladimir and Bashar are having a great laugh over all of this. I don’t think either one of them was ever worried that Syria would be attacked.
Well, I, for one, was never enthusiastic about going to war to save a bunch of Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers who are busily emptying Syria of Christians. Not that I like the Ba’athists (they are truly a band of Fascists wannabes, as planned by Michel-cum-Muhammad Afleq, their founder), but the Syrian rebels are people of the same stripe that brought us 9/11. I can’t see what our administration is hoping to achieve by supporting them, especially after the same sorts of people from Eastern Libya showed their gratitude for the O’s moral support and bombing of Qaddafi by murdering our ambassador and 3 others.