Not only does it appear as though Putin is "bailing out" Obama in this whole Syrian mess, but he may be doing Assad a huge favor as well (no, not by saving him from an "unbelievably small" assault) by brokering the hand-over of Syria's chemical weapons. 

Of course Bashar al-Assad welcomes the Russian proposal to secure Syrian chemical weapons. Why wouldn't he?  He gets his patron as his overseer, undermines Barack Obama's credibility in the region even more, and gets to go back to his civil war with less chance of any significant international intervention against his regime.

I'm sure Assad welcomes Putin's help in more ways than one.  I for one would certainly welcome Putin's proposal, but applied to my own household.

I have a large cabinet in my garage for storing all of the dangerous chemicals I've accumulated over the years, left over from many a household project.  Even an "unbelievably small" fire could cause a toxic mess out there.  Painting a red line around this cabinet for safety would be of little use, so I hope to dispose of its contents fairly soon.  The fact is, these chemicals are no longer usable and are just sitting around taking up a lot of space that I would prefer to use for other purposes.  But it can get quite expensive to dispose of these toxic chemicals, so I'm holding off for now.

It sure does look as if Assad has got it made with Putin's offer to help offload these chemical weapons, since they really can't be used, are difficult to dispose of, and take up a ton of precious storage space.

As to what Assad will do with this extra space, Putin may have the solution for that as well. 

In return, Putin promised bolstered conventional weapons shipments, "some of which are already on their way" to Syria from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. The TV report did not specify which weaponry Putin is supplying to Assad, but noted that the Syrian regime needs more fighter planes for use to quash rebel forces, spare parts for tanks, and all kinds of other military equipment to replenish stocks depleted during the two-and-a-half years of fighting that have left well over 100,000 Syrians dead. An estimated 1,600 Syrians have died in the three weeks since the alleged August 21 attack.

The next time my local disposal site has one of those "free hazardous waste disposal" days, you can bet I'll be there to get rid of all the toxic chemicals from my garage cabinet.  I can then make much better use of the once wasted space, but certainly for something other than "U.N. approved" Syrian-killing weaponry.   

Scott blogs at www.politiseeds.com.