If you didn't know better, you'd have thought the Obama administration changed tacks over the weekend and decided to make the case against action in Syria.

There was the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, passing up numerous chances during a Sunday interview on CNN to say that even one country was prepared to support the U.S. militarily if we attack Syria.

There was Secretary of State John Kerry saying this morning that all the administration wants is an "unbelievably small" action -- as if much of the opposition to President Obama's plan isn't about the possibility it would be too little, too late to accomplish anything like sending a message to Bashad al-Assad, Iran, North Korea and all other WMD-wielding regimes.

There was this metaphor described by a "senior official" and reported by USA Today:

"If Assad is eating Cheerios, we're going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. Will that degrade his ability to eat Cheerios? Yes. Will it deter him? Maybe. But he'll still be able to eat Cheerios."

And this is the case for action. Cereal eaters everywhere are quaking in their breakfast table chairs.

How does this fork-for-spoon trade accomplish our objective, described multiple times by multiple officials, to "degrade" Assad's arsenal and "deter" him from using it again? (And we're going to "give him" the fork? We won't even make him find one on his own?) This policy is of a piece with the "just muscular enough not to get mocked" line from a couple of weeks ago. So at least the administration is being consistent, I guess.

The administration is getting to sound so ridiculous that Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican senator whom critics like to label an "isolationist," is able to be both against the president's proposed action and in favor of a stronger initial response (knowing full well it won't come to that) and not sound as if he's the unserious one.

It's getting so that the operative question is not whether we should "do something" just to save the president's credibility, as former Bush officials are arguing to House Republicans. (New Obama motto: Bush did it! Bush would have done it!) It's whether the damage to his credibility is irreparable at this point.