Last Wednesday, Vladimir Putin once again slipped into a role he seems to relish. Wearing a red-and-blue uniform with a white helmet, he joined prominent athletes, politicians and business leaders for an exhibition ice hockey game -- and fortuitously managed to put the puck in the net fully seven times. It was his 63rd birthday, and Putin spent it in Sochi, the city on the Black Sea coast that hosted last year's Winter Olympics. The city, though, is also the starting point for warships heading for Syria. Day after day, vessels head out to sea -- loaded with weapons and munitions bound for the Russian military, which has joined the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar Assad.
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