This Way to Russia

From a Russian perspective, George Bush has 'colossal audacity' to suggest that Russia pull back from Georgia.

Listening to you, your Vice President, Condi Rice and US and western officials complain about "regime change," "invasion," "bloodshed" and "suffering civilians" (in the light of their crimes across the world) have become nothing but laughable at best and highly infuriating and enraging at worst.

You are an idiot!

We seem to recall that when your Israeli friends were absolutely devastating the people of Lebanon, wantonly killing civilians, destroying their country’s infrastructure and destroying their environment also….the flapping jaw of your representative, Condoleezza Rice and your entire administration were saying no ceasefire, no nothing, just keep on going, keep on committing acts of state terrorism on innocent people, keep on committing your war crimes, you have them covered.

Well, Mr. Bush, this is it. Moscow better get this one right: No limited engagement nonsense. Moscow has the moral and legal right to carry out full scale military operations within Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia to ensure the safety of its citizens, to ensure the protection of Abkhazians and Ossetians and to finally destroy NATO plans for the Caucasus region.

No sane, informed, honest, rational person can blame Russia for reacting to a genocide against their own citizens in Georgia. But then you are NONE of those things.

The problem is not what Russia is doing, but how the US is reacting to it. If you were sane, if you were informed, if you were honest, if you were rational, if you were even marginally fair, you should be happy to see Russian forces put an end to the killing of Russian citizens by the Georgian military. But no, your government is advised by lunatics who belong in psychiatric wards instead of the Pentagon and White House. And you, Mr. Bush, belong in an international criminal court to be judged for your crimes against peace and your crimes against humanity.

Indeed. It has been noted in many places that Saakashvili is a puppet of the US/Israel, attached to both John McCain through his foreign policy adviser and Barack Obama through Brzezinski, that the attack was premeditated and initiated by Georgia against civilians, and that the US corporate media has grossly and blatantly distorted the entire situation for the main purpose of demonizing Russia. This is reality.

In reality, that very strange place which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the holographically indulgent creation of the propaganda machine, this Russian perspective noted above aligns with things called facts. These pesky fact thingys can be very challenging for some people to grasp, even when they have big important jobs like Secretary of State. Now before we go on, let's just recall the Bush Dirty Diapers piece. You must go read that if you haven't see it yet. It will help you appreciate just how incredibly obnoxious Condoleeza Rice is to those of us who live in reality.

From her remarks En Route to Brussels, Belgium: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2008/08/108552.htm

RICE: The alliance has spoken with one voice, as has the United States and Europe, about the importance of Russia honoring its commitments, about the fact that this was a disproportionate Russian response to what happened in the zone of conflict in South Ossetia. And this is the first opportunity for the alliance to look at, really, three elements. First, to look at what we can do to support Georgia. Because. after all, we have to deny Russian strategic objectives which were clearly to undermine Georgia’s democracy, to use its military capability to damage, and in some cases, destroy Georgian infrastructure, and to try and weaken the Georgian state. Well, that is an objective that will be denied, because Georgian democracy stands and it will stand with the help of its allies around the world. Georgian infrastructure will be rebuilt. Georgia’s economy will be reinforced. And quite clearly, the efforts to intimidate the Georgian people by bombing Georgian infrastructure and attacking Georgian civilians is producing a backlash not just in Georgia, but in the region. So the first is to support Georgia so that that Russian strategic objective is denied. Secondly, we have an objective in the alliance to reaffirm the support of the alliance for those states that are now well outside of Russia’s reach; that is, those that have been fully integrated into the transatlantic structures, states like - the Baltic states like Poland, which are fully integrated members of the transatlantic community. And that just shows how far we’ve come since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and certainly how far we’ve come since 1968 when one of the countries that will be sitting around that table was brutally attacked and its government overthrown by Soviet forces. But we are also going to send a message that we’re not going to allow Russia to draw a new line at those states that are not yet integrated into the transatlantic structures like Georgia and Ukraine. And so the alliance will need to consider what it wishes to do to clearly indicate that we’re not accepting a new line. The Bucharest Declaration, in effect, said that. And I think you will see a reaffirmation of Bucharest as you saw with Chancellor Merkel when she was in Tbilisi. Finally, we, of course, have to look at what this means for – in terms of the strategic choice that Russia seems to be making. This alliance has kept open a road for a strategic choice of Russia as friend, not adversary. That’s why we have a NATO-Russia Council. That’s why there have been so many efforts to pull Russia toward the international institutions like the WTO and the OECD and the G-8, and, as I mentioned, the NATO-Russia Council. But frankly, Russia can’t have it both ways. It can’t act in a way that it did during the Cold War when it was the Soviet Union and expect it to be treated – expect to be treated as a responsible partner as President Medvedev outlined in the speech that he made just a few weeks ago. And so we will discuss the choices that Russia seems to be making and the appropriate response to them.

Is she for real? What planet is this woman on? Some of her spinning, such as how we've supposedly bent over backwards to accommodate Russia but they just can't seem to be satisfied, bears a marked resemblance to the way the Israelis portray the Palestinians. (More on that 'negotiating' style here if you're interested.) By all means, if you have time go and read dear Condi's complete remarks. And look at a map to see the absurdity of these claims about the Poland missile defense system being in place to protect against Iran. Here's an actual map (pdf) that you can zoom in and see the utter absurdity of this claim and many others which stem from this map (below), the one Condi and George want all Americans to carry around in their heads because it makes their job so very much easier:
























But I'd also like to draw your attention to another item in her Q&A session, near the end, which she brought up herself and then quickly deflected when pressed.

RICE: Now, I think everybody recognizes that this is not the first time that we’ve seen this problem. We’ve had difficulties between Britain and Russia. We’ve had Russian Bear flights along the Norwegian coast. We’ve had Russian strategic aviation challenging in ways that they haven’t, even along borders with the United States which, I might note, is a very dangerous game, and perhaps one the Russians want to reconsider. This is not something that is just cost-free. Nobody needs strategic – Russian strategic aviation along America’s coasts. And so this effort to somehow assert Russian power or influence by military means is something that we’ve been seeing for a while. And it’s unfortunate, because everyone knows that Russia has certain military capabilities. The hope had been that Russia was going to build its foundation and its relationships with Europe and the United States on the basis of Russian economic, political, cultural, and other kinds of assets. And reminding people that Bears can fly next – near Norway or near Alaska and that you can use military force among – against a small neighbor is not a particularly appealing message or image.

QUESTION: Could you just clarify what the flights (inaudible)?
RICE:I – no, no. You know that we have these problems with Blackjacks and Bears. You’ve been asking Sean about them practically daily. Yeah, Sean will tell you what you’ve been asking him. (Laughter.)

What's this all about? I did a little looking around, and here is some more information.
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2007/08/tracking-bears.html

We're standing by that forecast, because all indicators suggest that Russian bomber crews are still preparing for such a flight. According to Sky News, a Bear H flew a mission over the North Atlantic last Friday, prompting an intercept by RAF "Typhoon" fighters. It represented the first operational intercept for the Typhoon since the new fighters assumed Britain's air defense alert mission earlier this summer. The Typhoon is replacing the RAF's aging fleet of Tornado F3's, which have performed the air defense mission for more than 20 years.

By our count, this is at least the second "Bear" mission flown against the U.K. so far this year. Russian bombers have also flown profiles against Norway, Alaska, and earlier this month, they passed within 300 miles of U.S. air and naval bases on Guam--their most aggressive mission in more than a decade. The sudden spike in bomber activity came after a decade of inactivity, when Russia's Bear, TU-22M Backfire and TU-160 Blackjacks flew infrequently, the result of cutbacks in Moscow's military budget.

Winter is on the way. Europe depends on Russia to stay warm. The Middle East is already getting excited that Russia's resurgence may mean the end to US/Israeli hegemony over their affairs. Look at the (real) map again and see how Russia is neighbors with China, the Middle East and Europe. Why on earth would any of those countries want to be lashed to the US/Israel now that Bush has pissed away every asset we've ever had, most importantly our nation's moral authority? One of these days soon there's going to be a stampede for the exits.