Sign "O" the Times

Forget concrete actions — we still haven’t exhausted all of our diplomatic photo ops:

Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan visited Kiev at the weekend, the White House said Monday, amid US ire over the storming of official buildings in eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian gunmen.

“We can confirm that the director was in Kiev this weekend,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Brennan’s visit was part of a routine trip to Europe, and any claims that it was anything other than that by Russia were “absurd,” he added.

The kind of thing the CIA might prove useful at doing in Ukraine doesn’t exactly require the Director’s presence. It could be argued I suppose that the White House is attempting to “send a message” to the Kremlin, but it’s going to take something more serious than a furtive visit by Brennan to un-send the message sent by last year’s Red Line Debacle.