2014/03/09/White House pushes back on Ukraine criticism

title/short::White House pushes back on Ukraine criticism "The notion that this is somehow a result of Syria makes very little sense to me," Blinken said on CNN's State of the Union. "This is about Ukraine."
 * when: when posted::2014/03/09
 * author: author::Aamer Madhani
 * source: site::USA Today
 * topics: topic::Obama-Biden administration topic::US Republican Party/propaganda topic::Ukraine topic::Crimea
 * keywords
 * link: URL::http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/09/obama-blinken-gop-criticism-russia-crimea/6230177/
 * title: title::White House pushes back on Ukraine criticism
 * summary: Tony Blinken, a White House deputy national security adviser, said that the Republican argument that Obama has shown weakness on foreign policy — particularly in how he's dealt with the 3-year-old Syrian war — and thus emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to deploy troops into the semi-autonomous Crimean region of Russia was hollow.

Last year, after previously calling the use of chemical weapons by Syria's Bashar Assad regime a "red line" that must not be crossed, Obama declined to take military action against the regime after it was determined Assad had deployed chemical weapons against the opposition.

Despite the headline, this article seems to be focused on damning Obama with faint praise and affirm the "weakness" claims.

via Google+