The presidents recent "re-framing" of the famous "red line" regarding WMD is some unintentional comedy gold, and I'm pretty sure this is not a good thing.
Depending on the angle chosen to view it from, it can appear either admirably logical or uproariously tortured.
My knee jerk reaction was the former, then after it sunk in I started cracking up because it began to remind me of Eric "Otter" Stratton's speech from the "Kangaroo" court scene in Animal House, wherein Mr. Stratton is seen "gamely" trying to defend the "Deltas" regarding their myriad campus transgressions.
Just to refresh, Mr. Stratton heroically tries to draw a logical inference between the Delta's
"unfair" punishment of having their charter revoked to essentially embodying an indictment of the entire United States of America!
Trust me, if you haven't seen it, it's one of the great scenes in movie comedy history.
When the president tried to persuade us that this was the "worlds red line", not his, this speech popped into my head and I started to laugh.
With a George W. Bush, this was part of the package, not with a guy as thoughtful and careful as President Obama. Bush was a non-stop malaprop and gaffe machine, and didn't really seem to care what he said or what people thought about it.
This is not a good sign when a man like President Obama is not only out of options, but apparently out of even plausible things to say about it that aren't dangerously close to absurdity.
Yes, it is the worlds "red line", but it's yours too, and you just can't dance away from it with logic that's cribbed from Animal House.