President Obama has won

[brush]

137. Stated intentions and what . . .

. . . he really wanted to achieve may be different. If I may use a boxing analogy — you feint with the right and throw the left.

O could easily have done the strikes under the War Powers Act like Bush/Cheney did so readily. To me it's pretty apparent that the President didn't want to go to war, which is why he flipped the script and threw it to Congress (he knew they would not vote for the strikes)? That was the first feint, which completely fooled the MIC, their congressional puppets and the war drumming media/punditry.

In the meantime he and Kerry and Rice kept up the pressure that they wanted the strikes, while the public was completely unaware that O and Putin resumed their talks of Syrian chem weapons surrender at the recently concluded G20 (it came out also that they had spoke of that a year ago at the 2012 G20).

Kerry's "gaffe of an off-the-cuff remark on Syrian chem weapons surrender was no gaffe but feint number two. It even fooled many in the press, not to mention many here on DU, into thinking it was unplanned — not.

Kerry and Obama are not stupid men. They knew the accidentally on purpose "gaffe" was the olive branch that Putin and Assad needed to get out of a sticky situation. Doesn't it seem odd that Putin would go for something like that so quickly when Russia had been staunchly against any UN resolutions against Syria. IMO Putin was also in on the "gaffe" and feinting himself.

Good result all around. It's called brilliant diplomacy, something we didn't see in the Bush/Cheney shoot-first-mission-accomplished years.