For Mr. Obama, these ideas could, at least in theory, be a way out of what many White House officials fear is a looming disaster.

 

Kerry is saved by the bell, even as he tried to downplay his solution to the administration's unwinable dilemma and later crawfish from.  But he had something, the cat was out of the bag, and America will jump right on it.

From The Wall Street Journal:

After Secretary of State John Kerry suggested in off-the-cuff comments that President Bashar al-Assad could avert an attack by promptly handing his chemical weapons to the international community, Russia declared its support and quickly got Damascus on board.

"My intention throughout this process has been to ensure that the blatant use of chemical weapons that we saw doesn't happen again," Mr. Obama said on PBS. "If in fact there's a way to accomplish that diplomatically, that is overwhelmingly my preference."

The Assad regime is believed to have vast stockpiles of mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and VX stored in at least a half-dozen sites, according to U.S. officials.

Damascus never acknowledged maintaining such an arsenal before it allegedly began to use sarin on Syria's opposition last year. Mr. Assad's government also had a secret nuclear weapons program that Israel's air force destroyed in 2007.

 

From The New York Times:

 

For Mr. Obama, these ideas could, at least in theory, be a way out of what many White House officials fear is a looming disaster. A growing number of senators . . . came out on Monday declaring that they could not support the White House request for an authorization for a strike, at least in its present form.
 

Mr. Obama’s allies in Europe are similarly hesitant. “Everyone is looking for an answer to the question, ‘How does a strike lead you to a diplomatic solution? ' ” a senior European diplomat, who has been sympathetic to military action, said over the weekend. “He hasn’t connected the military action to a broader strategy.”
 

But even if Mr. Assad was willing to go along with the concept of turning his arsenal over to international control, the hurdles would be considerable. A senior American official who has been briefed extensively on the intelligence noted in recent days that Washington has firm knowledge of only 19 of the 42 suspected chemical weapons sites. Those numbers are constantly changing, because Mr. Assad has been moving the stores, largely for fear some of them could fall into the hands of rebels.
 

“If Assad said he was turning this stuff over, how would we know if he has really complied?” asked the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.
 

Moreover, chemical weapons are so unstable that moving them is incredibly dangerous; most American contingency plans, officials say, call for burning them on site, a process that could take years.
 

But at this point, Mr. Obama is looking for a way to avoid defeat in Congress, Mr. Kerry is looking for a way to drive Mr. Assad and the rebels to the table, and the Russians are looking for a way to keep their Syrian client in power. And so the pressure seems likely to build to find a way for Mr. Assad to make a gesture that could avoid a strike, or at least an immediate one.