With friends like Nikolia Patrushev, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be able to hold off his enemies, at least for the time being.
My morning paper tells me that Patrushev is the head of the Russian Security Council, and he's quoted as having inside info that NATO is plotting a "Gaddafi Solution" to the problem of this latest Arab dictator trying to prevent Spring from blossoming in his land.
So Patrushev authorized the shipment of 60 tons of ammo to the evil dictator, which would have gone undetected had not the cargo vessel Chariot been forced into port in Cyprus due to stormy weather.
There a great hoo-ha ensued when the Cypriots discovered the ammo, the shipment of which is a violation of the EU arms embargo of Syria, which Cyprus is obliged to honor but Russia is not.
This left the Cypriots with a dilemma. Do they piss off their EU cohorts? Or do they curie favor with Europe and piss off the Russians instead?
After a day or two of head-scratching, a brilliant cover-our-asses compromise was hatched up. The Cypriots released the shipment after having the Russian captain sign a pledge that he would deliver the 60 tons of munitions to Turkey instead.
The captain had of course been crossing the fingers of his other hand even while signing the pledge, so he immediately changed course for Syria the moment he was over the horizon.
So the news media got a great story and al-Assad got 60 tons of ammo, which by my calculation works out to about 1,500,000 rounds.
Not nearly as newsworthy was the visit to the same Syrian port only a few days earlier by three Russian warships.
No word on how many rounds they dropped off.
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