"Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power," [Condi] Rice told reporters en route to an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers set for Tuesday. "That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."
Or maybe she thinks we moved into a new century after invading Iraq?
I was recently pondering the stupidity of Georgia's Saakashvili in at least the timing of his attack on South Ossetia. (Of course you are still hearing on the news all about Russia attacking Georgia as though it were not in response to Georgia's actions.)
Now I read that John McCain, who is spouting about throwing down on Russia, has been talking to Saakashvili "every day". But that's not all - he may well have been advising Saakashvili to make that ill-advised move, maybe even the one telling him that the US would send in the guns to back him. Because John McCain's foreign policy adviser has been on the payroll as an adviser to none other than Georgia's president Saakashvili.
McCain hasn't even gotten into the oval office yet and he's mucking up foreign affairs.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
The Georgian leadership, and indeed a whole generation of Georgians, tethered their hopes to George W. Bush and the hollow promises of his administration. Now at the moment of truth, Bush will almost certainly let them down. He has overextended America’s military presence around the world, whittling down America’s uniformed professional military just as he has undertaken two simultaneous wars. The Pentagon is telling Bush that he has stretched the nation’s fighting force perilously close to the breaking point. A conflict involving a major military power, like Russia, is beyond the realm of contemplation. Vice President Cheney, whose bellicose rhetoric has done much to provoke the problems now bubbling in the Caucasus, says that the Russian acts of aggression in Georgia “must not go unanswered.” But thanks to the serial strategic misadventures that make up Bush-Cheney foreign policy, there is little prospect of Russia’s actions being answered by a flex of military muscle of the United States or of NATO. Putin’s calculation is that an America bogged down in two conflicts in the Middle East will let him give the Georgians a whipping. Putin is probably right.The world now enters a new phase. Russia has reasserted itself as a military power which will not tolerate backtalk and independence on the territory of its old imperium. The foreign policy and national security calculus of the United States and of Europe have just gotten much more complicated.
And if all that’s true, as it seems to be, then I’d say it was a damned sight stupid of Georgia’s president to pick now to jump into a military affair with South Ossetia.
And, unfortunately, I don’t think a conflict involving Russia is beyond the realm of contemplation for the likes of Cheney and Bush. Or McCain.
Still, Pooty Poot must be all smiles tonight.
Isn't it interesting, to borrow a Bush favorite, that while Condi and Crew were intent on worrying about Russia when they should have been concerned with al Qaeda at the beginning of the Bush Regime, now at the end of it, they have helped to create the situation they imagined existed then?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
With all the moral authority George has earned in the last eight years, he is now lecturing Russia about its treatment of the situation between Georgia and South Ossetia. Russia attacked a sovereign nation! You don't hear much about the fact that it was in response to Georgia attacking South Ossetia. (A little history of the issue.)
And loudmouth McCain has jumped right in.
Perhaps it is fortunate for us that Putin seems to be taking them as seriously as a buzzing gnat.
For now.
We live in a season of risible "3 AM moments", where the breathless commentariat in this country overhear strange countries names--with tales of military action underway--and rush off towards dim-witted debates about what candidate would better handle that red-phone ringing in the middle of the night.[...]
[I]f the horrors inflicted on varied Abkhazians, Ossetians and Georgians this past week (by both sides) must be seen from these provincial, grossly self-interested shores merely through the lens of the U.S. Presidential election, let me chime in very briefly w/in these contours. Re: the 3 AM sweepstakes, Obama has taken it by a mile [...] Witness this incredibly poor reasoning by McCain, jaw-dropping even by the standards of the incredible policy ineptitude we've become accustomed to during the reign of Bush 43 and his motley crew of national security miscreants. Here is McCain:
Mr. McCain urged NATO to begin discussions on “the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to South Ossetia,’’ called on the United Nations to condemn “Russian aggression,’’ and said that the secretary of state should travel to Europe “to establish a common Euro-Atlantic position aimed at ending the war and supporting the independence of Georgia.’’And he said the NATO should reconsider its previous decision and set Georgia – which he called “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion’’ — on the path to becoming a member. “NATO’s decision to withhold a membership action plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision,’’ he said. [my emphasis]
First, what does it matter in this context that Georgia was "one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion"? If it had been the first to adopt Islam, or Judaism, or Buddhism, would the situation be different?
YES! It certainly would have been. McCain wouldn’t be able to get any campaign traction out of that.
And of course, like others before them, the Georgians thought, having been led to believe so, that when they got themselves into a situation, they could count on the military backing of the U.S. Too bad Saakashvili wasn't a little more alert to our history.
Meantime, a Georgian soldier tells a U.S. reporter in the same piece: "Write exactly what I say. Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us." They are, aren't they? They had no business making the cheap promises and representations that were made. No business on practical policy grounds. No business on strategic grounds (though I guess it got Rummy another flag, near the Salvodereans, say, for the Mesopotamian "coalition of the willing"). And now our promises are unraveling and nakedly revealed for the cheap little lies and crap policy they are, with the emperor revealed to have no clothes, yet again.
But what about the oil? Better fill up on that "cheap" gasoline tonight.
European election monitors said Monday that Russia's parliamentary ballot was unfair, hours after President Vladimir Putin's party swept 70 percent of the seats in the new legislature.The victory paves the way for Putin to remain Russia's de facto leader even after he leaves office next spring. On Monday, Putin described the weekend's election as a vote of confidence in him.
[...]
Opposition leader Garry Kasparov denounced the legitimacy of the vote.
"There are no illusions that what is being called elections was the most unfair and dirtiest in the whole history of modern Russia," the former chess champion said at a news conference.
Kasparov, who heads the Other Russia coalition of opposition groups, was arrested and jailed for five days for leading a protest rally in Moscow on Nov. 24. His group wasn't allowed to run for parliament.
[...]
Many Russians complained Sunday about being pressured to cast their ballots, with teachers, doctors and others saying they had been ordered by their bosses to vote.
"People are being forced and threatened to vote; otherwise they won't get their salaries or pensions," said Boris Nemtsov, leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party.
Dozens of voters reported being paid to cast ballots for United Russia, said Alexander Kynev, a political expert with election monitoring group Golos. In the town of Pestovo in the western Novgorod region, voters complained they were given ballots already filled out for United Russia, he said.
Isn't that the way it's done?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
President Vladimir Putin dissolved Russia's government Wednesday in a major political shakeup ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections, the Kremlin said.The dissolution is expected to result in a new prime minister, who will be seen as Putin's choice to succeed him after he steps down next spring.
[...]
Fradkov said he asked for the dissolution of the government because with elections approaching, Putin needed to have a free hand to make decisions, including those concerning appointments.
The Russian military has successfully tested what it described as the world's most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb, Russia's state television reported Tuesday.Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the "dad of all bombs" is four times more powerful than the U.S. "mother of all bombs."
Well, if you can't find sexism in military affairs, you just don't have your eyes open.
"The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability," said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, said in televised remarks.Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn't hurt the environment, he added.
Except for the trees and critters at ground zero, the immediate environment, of course.
An environmentally friendly bomb.
And you might argue that if it doesn't hurt the environment, it really is not as efficient as a nuclear weapon.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Cutting through the self-styled "war president's" aw-shucks, "my friend Vladimir" sugar-coating of his disingenuous-sounding claims that the missile-defense facilities he wants to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic would never be meant for use against Russia itself, Putin instead proposed "that the United States and Russia jointly use a radar in Azerbaijan as part of an anti-missile shield that would protect all of Europe." So much for Bush's need or desire to set up sites that would be too close to Russian soil for the Kremlin leadership's comfort.Putin said of his proposal: "We can do this automatically, and hence the whole system which is being built [by the U.S.] as a result will cover not only part of Europe but the entire Europe without an exception....This would also...allow us not to redirect our rockets [to targets in Europe] and, on the contrary, allow us to create conditions for joint work." ("Joint work" with the Russians is obviously not what Bush originally had in mind.)
Bush, taken by surprise by Putin's unexpected, measured response to his own latest, thinly disguised saber-rattling, remarked sheepishly to reporters: "He made some interesting suggestions."
I don't believe he said...
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
US President George W. Bush met this week with a Russian general linked to atrocities in Chechnya, the White House said Thursday, while suggesting that the meeting should not have taken place.Bush would have been "unlikely" to sit down with Russian General Vladimir Shamanov had the president known about allegations tying the general to the massacre of Chechen civilians, said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Bush met with Shamanov as part of an effort to "reinvigorate" the work of a Russo-US commission on prisoners of war and missing-in-action soldiers, Perino told reporters.
"The president was attempting to reinvigorate that commission. That's why he agreed to this photo-op(portunity) with the official. The president was not aware of the allegations made against him (Shamanov)," said Perino.
Shamanov was one of three Russian generals in charge of a federal intervention against separatist rebels in breakaway Chechnya launched on October 1, 1999, now nearly into its 15th month.
He was removed from duty in January 2000 following allegations he turned a blind eye to the massacre of civilians in a Chechen village southwest of Grozny. But officially he quit his job for reasons for ill-health.
Yes, we are all too familiar with the old "quit because of my health" defense.
Did anybody check? Where was Karl? Was this more CIA vetting?
Lordy.
You think???Russia and China on Thursday launched joint military exercises involving air, sea and land forces that they say aren't aimed at any third country, instead symbolizing the two nations' warming ties since the end of the Cold War.[...]
Analysts say Russia and China are unlikely to team up against a common foe in any real conflict despite their shared concern over US dominance in world affairs. Instead, experts say the maneuvers are more of a sales pitch to the Chinese of Russian-made arms -- including the country's long-range strategic bombers, which can carry nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, they have named these exercises "Peace Mission 2005".The US Defense Department said in a report in July that China's military was increasingly seeking modernisation and could become a threat to American and other forces in the Asia-Pacific region as it looked to spread its influence.[...]
The United States said it has been advised of the exercises by both governments but isn't sending any observers.
[...]
Analysts have noted the involvement of Russia's Tu-95 strategic bombers and Tu-22M long-range bombers in the exercises -- warplanes that can carry conventional or nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and are not usually part of peacekeeping operations.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
