Andrew Sullivan: “Well, we don’t yet quite know what’s in the works – but once you start arming one side of a civil war, you become part of that civil war; the other side may target you; and as this sectarian conflict deepens across the region, the US will be seen as a Sunni power fighting Shiites. I cannot think of a worse policy position for this country – to take stand on the sectarian fault-line of the Muslim world and back one side over another. You think the other side won’t notice? You think Americans wouldn’t be targeted for this kind of meddling? Let Putin get bogged down in this hell, if he remains so 19th Century he feels he must. But we should have zero interest in that ancient religious dispute; zero.”

North Korea “proposed high-level talks with the United States, saying that it was ready to discuss easing tensions and eventually denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula,” the New York Times reports.

“The North’s proposal indicated that it was shifting to dialogue after months of bellicose language, including threats to launch nuclear strikes at the United States and South Korea, that have raised tensions to the highest in years. North Korea had also proposed dialogue with South Korea this month, though their initial agreement to hold high-level dialogue in Seoul collapsed last week over a difference over the level of their chief delegates.”

“Until we have a commander in chief who knows what he is doing… let Allah sort it out!”

— Sarah Palin, quoted by The Hill, saying the United States should not intervene in Syria.

New York Post: “New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft revealed the real story behind a 2005 meeting with Vladimir Putin, during which the Russian president pocketed his Super Bowl ring, worth more than $25,000. Kraft, at the time, claimed the diamond-encrusted bauble was a gift, but he now admits Putin stole it, and the White House intervened when he demanded it back.”

Wall Street Journal: “The Obama administration tied its dramatic shift in favor of arming Syria’s rebels to findings that chemical weapons had been used in the civil war–but the decision, according to people familiar with it, was the product of two months of increasingly unsettling assessments about the war that convinced the president to do something he had previously argued would be a mistake.”

“It was more than a week ago, according to American officials, that U.S. intelligence agencies reached their conclusion that 100 to 150 Syrians have been killed by chemical weapons. Thursday’s public about-face in American policy toward Syria’s two-year civil war was driven by other factors as well… These included growing U.S. concerns about large-scale battlefield deployment of militants from the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah–an appearance that alarmed Israel and caught the Americans by surprise–and President Bashar al-Assad’s battlefield gains.”

Micah Cohen: “The shift in administration policy on Syria seems reflective of public opinion. Polls have consistently shown Americans are deeply wary of the United States becoming involved in the fighting in Syria. But they also show that public support for intervention increases sharply under circumstances where it is confirmed that the Assad regime used chemical weapons.”