"...When Kerry was asked if Assad could do anything to avoid an attack, he uttered 20 words that set off a rapid chain of events.
"Sure," he said. "He can turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week."
He raised both arms for emphasis and continued: "Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously."
On the flight home, Kerry, now in a faded orange zip-up sweatshirt, spoke on the phone with Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Lavrov told Kerry he had heard his comments in London and Russia was getting ready to make an announcement.
By the time Kerry landed in the U.S., Russia had made its proposal to place Syrian chemical weapons out of Assad's control, Syria had welcomed the idea, other nations and the United Nations had embraced it in principle, and some members of Congress were beginning to see a possible way out of the jam. Kerry's staff initially suggested that the secretary's words were merely a rhetorical flourish. But by the end of the day, though expressing deep skepticism, Obama declared the Russian pitch "potentially a significant breakthrough" that could head off U.S. air strikes....."