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Reason to be cynical about the Syrian chemical weapons "timetable"

One might not necessarily like him, nor the views he puts forward, but there are few who can hold a candle to the experience and expertise of Robert Fisk's "involvement" of and in the Middle East now for 30 years plus.   Fisk lives and work from Beirut.   Where hasn't he been or whom hasn't he met?   

So, his latest op-ed piece "There is something deeply cynical about this chemical weapons ‘timetable’" in The Independent needs to be viewed more than just the scribblings of your average pundit.

"What on earth was going on in Washington and Geneva last week? I’m not trying to cheapen the unspeakable tragedy of Syria, nor the apparent common sense that suddenly gripped world leaders on Saturday when the US and Russia agreed a framework for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, but the Obama administration is still getting weirder and weirder.

First – and let’s remember the narrative of events – Obama last year was really, terribly, awfully worried that Syria’s chemical weapons would “fall into the wrong hands”. In other words, he was frightened they would fall into the hands of al-Qa’ida or the al-Nusra front. Seemingly they were still, at that moment, in the “right hands” – those of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. But now Obama and the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, have decided that they are in the wrong hands after all, since they are now accusing the “right hands” of firing sarin gas shells at civilians. And that crosses the infamous “red line”.

I am overlooking, for the moment, the almost magical moment when Kerry told the world that America’s strike would be “unbelievably small”, followed by Obama telling us all that he doesn’t do “pin pricks”. What does all this twaddle mean?

And then – wait for it – as the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, suggested an international collection of all the rusty old chemical shells in Syria, Pentagon “sources” said it would need up to 75,000 armed troops to protect the chemical inspectors. Seventy-five thousand! If that isn’t boots on the ground, I don’t know what is.

And all this amid yet more nonsense in America last week about Hitler and the Second World War. Maybe the Americans should offer 250,000 men and see if Putin won’t pitch in with another quarter of a million and the two great statesman can recreate the Grand Alliance of Yalta – Cameron, I’m afraid, doesn’t get to play Churchill this time round – and do a re-run of the Second World War in Syria with live bullets: D-Day, Arnhem – no, on reflection perhaps not Arnhem – Stalingrad, the Battle of the Kursk Salient, the whole shebang. Believe me, the convoys would stretch for miles."

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