US News

Obama evasive on Putin’s Times screed

What a lame duck!

President Obama dodged questions on Thursday about Vladimir Putin’s open challenge to his Syrian policy in a New York Times op-ed — even as members of Congress said it made them want to puke.

Putin used the Gray Lady to blast Obama’s hard line as dangerous and a violation of international law.

Asked by reporters for a response during Cabinet session, Obama just said, “Thank you very much, everybody,” as his staffers hustled the journalists out.

Congressional leaders from both side of the aisle had no problem ripping the Russian president.

“I almost wanted to vomit,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

“I was insulted,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said of the lengthy polemic.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called it “an insult to the intelligence of every American.”

Putin charged that the United States was risking the United Nations’ future by threatening airstrikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian crisis dominated the daily briefing by Obama spokesman Jay Carney, who at least took a potshot at Putin’s use of US media.

Carney said there was a “great irony” that the Russian leader had used America’s freedom of expression to get his message out.

“Freedom of expression has been on the decrease in Russia for the last dozen or so years,” he noted.

But Carney repeatedly refused to reveal Obama’s reaction to the op-ed.

The most important development, Carney said, was that Putin “has invested his credibility” and “Russia has committed its prestige” to placing Syrian poison gas under international control.

“We’re not surprised by President Putin’s words,” he said. “But the fact is that Russia offers a stark contrast that demonstrates why America is exceptional.”

Putin’s article was a direct attack on the speech Obama delivered defending US plans to punish Assad.

“When, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional,” Obama had said in the Tuesday-night address.

Putin warned against such an attitude in his op-ed.

“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,” he wrote.

While Obama was missing in action, others in DC stepped up.

“President Putin should be the last person to lecture the United States about our human values and our human rights and what we stand for,” said Leon Panetta, Obama’s former defense secretary and CIA director.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said: “Putin is trying to make himself out to be a high-minded statesman, but his record of jailing political opponents and censoring the Internet pulls the rug right out from underneath him.”

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) paraphrased a line of Putin’s rant to criticize his crackdown on homosexuality.

“What I found interesting was the closing . . . We are all God’s children. I think that’s great. I hope it applies to gays and lesbians as well,” she said.

Putin’s spokesman said the leader wrote the “basic content” of the essay, which was pitched to the Times by the New York-based Ketchum public-relations firm.

Putin had written for the Times once before, in a 1999 piece defending Russia’s second invasion of Chechnya.

Times editorial editor Andrew Rosenthal disputed a reader’s complaint that the paper was “aiding and abetting a long-term foe of the United States.”

“There is no ideological litmus test” for an op-ed piece, he told public editor Margaret Sullivan.

“Everyone wants to hear from Putin right now,” he told Politico.

The White House did fire back at Putin’s outrageous claim that the gas that killed more than 1,400 people last month “was used not by the Syrian army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons.”

Carney said, “If there were evidence to support that assertion, The New York Times would have provided a little more space to include it in that article.”

He said Russia is the only country that claims the rebels carried out the Aug. 21 massacre.

“Even Iran, which is fighting on Assad’s behalf in Syria, has publicly blamed the Assad regime,” Carney said.