stirring the pot in Syria

" "In a sense, Obama owns Syria now," says Joshua Landis, a highly regarded Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. "I presume he'll try to go in toe by toe.... But he has to decide what his objectives are, which he hasn't. Does he want to provide just enough arms to keep the status quo and divide Syria in two? Does he want to give them enough to take Damascus and drive the Alawites [President Bashar al-Assad's ruling sect] into the mountains? Does he want he want to see them take over the entire country?" The evidence so far is that the administration will go no further than to try to maintain the bloody standoff, which has cost more than 90,000 lives, for the time being. "I assume they're just stirring the pot at this point," Landis says."