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Saturday, October 11, 2014

Wait. What?

Over a year ago, the Kerry-Lavrov deal was signed to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and infrastructure. It was supposed to be completed by early summer. There's more that Assad didn't declare.

Who could have seen this coming?

The UN Security Council has been told that Syria has revealed for the first time the existence of four more chemical weapons facilities.

Three of the sites are for research and another is for production.

Yeah, in what alternate world are there people who could have seen this coming?

Assad saw Saddam confuse the world with years of cat-and-mouse inspection games over whether Saddam had disarmed. Saddam did that so well that the world forgot that the point of the inspections wasn't for the West to prove Iraq had chemical weapons but for Saddam to prove he did not.

Assad is early in this path, so just slowly rolling out new facilities to be the subject of new diplomatic initiatives is a key part.

And Assad can say, let's not bicker over little things like this now that we are partners in WMD disarmament who should be jointly fighting the real threat of ISIL.

Ah, the nuanced diplomacy we were promised in 2008. Our diplomats see it practiced on us every day, now.