I believe that it was common knowledge here on FR that this was an al Qaeda false flag operation. And it almost worked. Someone must have told Obama to back down or face yet another embarrassing “You Can Keep It” moment when the truth eventually came out.
I’m not rah-rah’ing for Putin, but he did step in and derailed obama fumbling about in Syria. I don’t have to like Putin to respect him on that one. IMO, he stopped obama from sending our troops into Syria (because that was where it was going).