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President Vladimir Putin loves to set traps for U.S. President Barack Obama. The only thing Putin loves even more is when Obama falls smack into one. Trap No. 1. Putin set his latest trap Monday with a seemingly attractive proposal to have international monitors identify and destroy Syrian President Bashar Assad's vast stockpile of chemical weapons. If Obama falls for this one, he and international monitors will be jumping through hoops for years The only question is why was Obama also smiling when he met Putin in St. Petersburg. Regardless of which trap Obama falls into, the last smile and...

<p>WASHINGTON — It was bound to happen eventually. Two tea party allies angling for president can’t agree on everything, and Tuesday, a gaping foreign policy schism came into focus as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul went out of his way to critique Sen. Ted Cruz’s approach to Syria.</p>

Canada’s foreign minister John Baird is calling Syria’s offer to begin providing information on its chemical arsenal 30 days after it signs an international convention banning such weapons “ridiculous and absurd.” Baird said Syrian President Bashar Assad could not be given extra time. Baird said: “This is a man who up until a week ago denied that they had any such weapons.” …

Syrian warplanes struck rebel-held suburbs of the capital on Saturday and government forces clashed with insurgents on the frontlines, residents and opposition activists said. "The warplanes are very busy this morning," said a journalist working in central Damascus who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. Activists said the strikes were focused on Berze, a northeastern part of central Damascus, where rebels have been on the offensive to push further into the city.

September 12, 2013 Elite Syrian Unit Scatters Chemical Arms Stockpile Assad Regime Has Moved Weapons to as Many as 50 Sites By ADAM ENTOUS, JULIAN E. BARNES and NOUR MALAS A secretive Syrian military unit at the center of the Assad regime's chemical weapons program has been moving stocks of poison gases and munitions to as many as 50 sites to make them harder for the U.S. to track, according to American and Middle Eastern officials. The movements of chemical weapons by Syria's elite Unit 450 could complicate any U.S. bombing campaign in Syria over its alleged chemical attacks, officials...

A secretive Syrian military unit at the center of the Assad regime's chemical weapons program has been moving stocks of poison gases and munitions to as many as 50 sites to make them harder for the U.S. to track, according to American and Middle Eastern officials. The movements of chemical weapons by Syria's elite Unit 450 could complicate any U.S. bombing campaign in Syria over its alleged chemical attacks, officials said. [....] The unit is in charge of mixing and deploying chemical munitions, and it provides security at chemical sites, according to U.S. and European intelligence agencies. It is composed...

"He is known to be a merciless butcher," said Mohammed al-Tayeb, an opposition activist speaking by Skype from the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma, among the areas pounded by the 4th Division's assaults. Within President Bashar Assad's circle of trust, Maher Assad has advocated an uncompromising response throughout the uprising. "From the beginning, Maher was convinced that the uprising must be put down before any talks take place," said Fawaz A. Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. "The life of the regime depends on Maher's ability to prevent the rebels from infiltrating Damascus...

Despite calling the available options to secure Syria's chemical weapons "pretty awful," House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said it was possible to transfer the country's massive stockpiles to international control—especially with Arab League troops on the ground."I do think you can get a good percentage of them, because the Assad regime is also worried these things could fall in the wrong hands and could be used against the regime," Rogers told the Intelligence and National Security Alliance summit on Thursday.President Obama this week asked a wary Congress to postpone a vote authorizing force to punish Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad for...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday he considers his views on foreign policy to be “somewhere in between” the poles of libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and hawkish GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). “I agree with Rand Paul that we should not intervene militarily in Syria, because it’s not in defense of our U.S. national security interests,” said Cruz during a question-and-answer session following a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. But, Cruz added, he also agrees “with John McCain that if Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that we...

Senator Ted Cruz spoke at an event for the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, and amidst what was a strong foreign policy speech, Cruz got a little personal and talked about the late Republican Senator Jesse Helms, the first politician Cruz ever gave money to. Cruz touted all the “crazy things” Helms said, not as a negative, but as a positive, declaring that the Senate could use “a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.”Cruz recalled how he sent ten dollars to Helms when he was a kid, joking that he “may have been Jesse Helms’ single largest donor...

Syrian rebels claim that the army of President Bashar Assad again used poison gas in an attack on rebel forces in the Damascus area Thursday, an Israel Radio report said. The report was based on rebel sources, who said the attack took place in the Jobar neighborhood of the capital. The rebel sources said they could not tell what kind of chemical weaponry had been used, but that it was a poison gas of some kind, and was causing injuries, including breathing difficulties.

But … it is a game. That’s the whole point. If the White House takes this disarmament charade seriously at the UN with demands that Assad turn over his arsenal expeditiously and verifiably, it’s going to put Obama right back in the war box the way Ryan Lizza described this morning. Russia’s proposal is attractive to him because it’s a charade, because it can be slow-walked and fudged at the UN while Congress and the American public gradually forget about Syria. To turn this from kabuki into a semi-serious process defeats the purpose.Granted, Kerry has no choice but to talk...

There he goes again -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, portraying himself as the world's champion of peace and democracy. And, of course, doing it at America's expense. This time, Putin's PR machine managed to get him an op-ed in The New York Times, just in time for the start of talks in Geneva, Switzerland, over a plan to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. The column is so filled with hypocrisy, inaccuracies and even veiled threats that it's hard to know where to begin. Putin chastises the United States, which has stumbled badly in Syria, for considering an attack because a...

The head of the opposition Free Syria Army, General Salim Idriss, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday that he has intelligence that the Assad regime is moving its chemical weapons out of the country. “Today we have information that the regime began to move chemical materials and chemical weapons to Lebanon and to Iraq,” General Idriss told Amanpour from inside Syria. It’s a huge claim that would fundamentally shift everything U.S. intelligence officials have in the past said they believe about the situation in Syria, CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr reports.

German surveillance suggests chemical attack unauthorized, Assad also tells PBS's Charlie Rose that he did not gas his own people, as White House continues to press claim. Government forces in Syria may have launched the chemical weapons attack that reportedly killed more than a thousand civilians last month before receiving a go-ahead from President Bashar Assad. According to an article published on Sunday in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, a German spy ship intercepted repeated communications from forces loyal to Assad asking for permission to use chemical weapons; however, their requests were consistently denied. This latest report comes as...

In remarks whose content and timing implied criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, and a concern that Israel could not depend on the US to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday declared that nations that use weapons of mass destruction must pay a price, and said that his own actions as leader of the Jewish state revolved around the conviction that ultimately Israel had no one to rely on but itself when facing enemy threats. Speaking at an Israeli Navy graduation ceremony, Netanyahu cited a 2,000-year-old saying by the Jewish...

Sen. John McCain has warned that President Barack Obama could face impeachment if he put “boots on the ground” in Syria. "No one wants American boots on the ground," the Arizona Republican told Phoenix CBS affiliate KFYI-TV on Thursday. "Nor will there be American boots on the ground because there would be an impeachment of the president if they did that. "The fact is [Syrian President] Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people," McCain added. "The conflict is spreading … The Russians are all in, the Iranians are all in — and it’s an unfair fight."

September 10, 2013 Obama Rescues Assad The President lets Putin outmaneuver him on Syrian chemical arms. What could be worse for America's standing in the world than a Congress refusing to support a President's proposal for military action against a rogue regime that used WMD? Here's one idea: A U.S. President letting that rogue be rescued from military punishment by the country that has protected the rogue all along. That's where President Obama now finds himself on Syria after he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer to take custody of Bashar Assad's chemical weapons. The move may rescue Mr. Obama...

How do you know when an MSM member is pushing pro-Obama spin to the absurd? When even the most partisan of Dems, in the person of James Carville, can't stomach it. On today's Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell, claiming that the world was "coalescing" around Obama's position on Syria, said that there was "a lot of optimism" surrounding the Obama team's negotiations with the Russians. Mitchell said she had seen this kind of thing before back in the 80s, when the US negotiated arms control with the Soviet Union. "It starts slowly but things happen," comforted Mitchell. All this was too...

President Obama never misses a chance to “blame it on Bush,” and last night’s address to the nation on Syria was no exception. The reason Obama has failed to win support military action in Syria, the president declared last night, is not because he has failed to lay out a coherent strategy — it’s because of “the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan.” Obama further slammed former president George W. Bush for presiding over “a decade that put more and more war-making power in the hands of the president and more and more burdens on the shoulders of our troops,...