It's still a great line, even if Putin certainly didn't coin it. I had to borrow it above to describe our "gruesome twosome of stupidity"  

I will agree that the Pentagon has no more the high ground where it comes to being forthcoming than the Russians, but like you I find them more credible on this story than I do the Russians.  

Personally I wish just letting them kill each other off and then disposing of the winner was an option, but unfortunately that is just not an option. Like voting for POTUS, our only choice is to try to figure out who is the least offensive party to leave standing and unfortunately that "best worst choice" appears to be Assad at the moment, but I won't claim that my mind can't be changed on this as the true colors of the combatants  show themselves. It's funny how every time we back somebody in the ME they turn out to be worse than who they replaced, just like Castro and Chavez in our own hemisphere. (and yes I know we didn't back them, but they did turn out to be much worse than what we had)