Washington already preparing to topple Assad

US President Barack Obama has issued a warning to Syria about committing the "tragic mistake" of using chemical weapons. Behind the scenes, however the US has long been pulling strings to "gently" topple Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, according to the liberal daily Corriere del Ticino: "Since the diplomatic solution has definitively failed, Washington is working behind the scenes and pulling strings on two fronts, with the opposition and with the allied nations Israel and Turkey, to get them to help oust Assad. All on tiptoes, because the last thing the US government needs now is a military operation. Obama cannot afford the luxuries of his predecessors... But he can afford an emergency plan firstly to help secure the chemical weapons arsenal before Assad uses it against the rebels, as Saddam did with the Kurds. And secondly to prevent the violence from escalating on both sides of the conflict and turning Syria into the scene of a mass extermination."

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