I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Wonder if Putin got anything to eat before they kicked him out the door.
Another great diplomatic success for our President! I think ~someone~ is eyeing Ronald Regan's old "Great Communicator" moniker, don't you? 
God, the cheerleader rich kid vs the worked his way up Intelligence Officer. I bet we promised Russia a $10 billion aid package in the deal.
*goes looking for isolated land in the mountains somewhere*
anyone else wanna come with me? we can build a real big cabin...
I wasn't kidding about Putin:
"Putin rose from a relatively obscure position as a Soviet spy during the Cold War.
After graduating from law school in 1975, he began a 15-year career with the KGB’s foreign intelligence arm, stationed in Leningrad and East Germany. With the Soviet Union facing collapse, Putin retired from the KGB at the rank of colonel and quickly began a political career."
Our only hope is that Bush wasn't allowed to take part in the negotiations.
That about concludes the diplomatic route for help, doesn't it. Two days in New York - nada. Now Putin says nyet.
At least, Bush is learning how to recgnize the word *no* in 151 (or so) languages. Education is a good thing.
"And this differs from the state of affairs yesterday how?"
Well, the US is a little more isolated, our prestige a little more diminished, our credibility a little more damaged...and George got to pose for a photo op with a man whose diplomacy has been remarkably effective in pursuit of his national objectives. That's some real quality time, as George puts it.
“I understood his position,” Bush said. “He understood mine. Because we’ve got a trustworthy relationship, we’re able to move beyond any disagreement over a single issue.”
---
I'm not clear how we moved beyond any disagreement, but whatever.
"And this differs from the state of affairs yesterday how?"
The new diplomacy!
The new diplomact, better than the old diplomacy because it is the new diplomacy and not the old.
We are safe safe safe. Whew....
Potential hegemonic rivals are not going to let the US dominate the globe. If I were Putin, I'd watch the US 'empire' self destruct in the Middle East.
Yesterday Putin had to inform Dubya that 25% of the population in the CIS is Muslim. The prez didn't know.
Putin was assiduously wooed by Berlusconi not a few weeks ago in his sumptuous estate on Sardinia. I'm sure Mister Smoove whispered all sorts of tempting proposals in Putin's ear. Then Poppy 41 put Pootie-Poot on his select invitation list to his swank birfday partee. mmmm...most swaying.
Of course Chirac did say to the press before Putin left for Camp David that he was serene in his confidance that Putin was of the same mind on Iraq and implicitly the new world order.
"...obscure position as a Soviet spy..."
Isn't that kinda redundant?
(Unless your name is Valerie?)
A Great Success!
It would certainly be considered a "great success" if it all doesn't turn shit like everything else Dumbya touches
And this differs from the state of affairs yesterday how?
Y'know, Bush shook Putin's hand, looked 'im in the eye and thought "here's an ally in the 'war on terra', and I know he'll kill as many Chechen terr'ists as I can kill Iraqis. Here's a man I can trust." Then they embraced, kissed, and pulled themselves apart...
Putin has chunks of guys like Chimpus in his stool. Gimme a break. It's always great to watch Putin look at Chimpus as if Chimpus was a high school student council member.
Whew! Well, that's a relief. As I posted in the Modest Proposal thread, I think Russia getting involved would've been a very bad idea. Yeah, Putin's pretty savvy. Way more than the Fortunate Son.
Thank God.
To believe that Putin being more savvy than Bush would have some effect on world affairs is to hold a naive view of how state-affairs are managed.
The proper question is whether Bush's handlers are more savvy than Putin's, which is difficult to answer, but probably yes.
The proper question is whether Bush's handlers are more savvy than Putin's, which is difficult to answer, but probably yes.
Yes, and that's saying less than nothing.
...this differs from the state of affairs yesterday how?
Tipsy gets his picture in the papers looking "presidential."
That's all that counts.
I think Putin and others have their own flypaper strategy. As long as Bush is tied down in Iraq, he can't cause mischief elsewhere.
The joint press conference was on the NHK morning news here in Japan. In the bits broadcast, the President looks very haggard and cranky. I'd take it easy on the triumphalism, folks; he is our nation's most visible representative to the outside world, and that unfortunately reflects on all of us. Judging from the whining tone in his voice today, he is not going to present the breakup up the machine in which he is embedded at all gracefully. Brace yourself for further gusts of national humiliation.
"I like him. He's a good fellow to spend quality time with."
What planet is W from? Does he really believe that his crush on Putin is reciprocated?
BWAHAHAHAHA!
What a fucking Dumbass. Oh my fucking God. Impeach now before it's too late. The boy king is not competent to pump gas for my fucking car, let alone wipe the windshield.
We've gone from Monroe Doctrine on Speed to "OK, uh, whatever you say" in two short years. What a fucking joke. Conservatives ought to be tearing their hair out right about now.
IMPEACH.
IMPEACH.
IMPEACH.
Well, I have a great story. I talked to my daughter today at Michigan State. She ran into a couple of young republicans yesterday. One admitted she only voted for Bush because he was a republican. But the girl had an interesting comment:
Bush reminds her of her grandfather. He tells her what she wants to hear.
Well, Michigan isn't doing so well, economically. How does that impact us all, republicans included?
"Putin has chunks of guys like Chimpus in his stool."
Tantalus: Crude, but effective. LOL
There are several things to remember about the current state of our relations with Russia, and Bush's with Putin. The first is that the first time they met Bush said that he had looked into Putin's eyes and seen his soul, the soul of a man who could be trusted. Or something of the sort. Which told us a lot about Bush's ability to judge people and also about what sort of person he felt most comfortable with (i.e. a career KGB agent raised to the presidency by the accident of Yeltsin's political troubles).
So personal relations between Pooty-Poot (yes, that was Bush's clever nickname for Putin) and Bush were warm and friendly. (Much as they had been between Yeltsin and Clinton, two men who had other telling things in common.) Putin saw advantage in pursuing close relations because, especially after 9/11, his claim to be sharing the same war on terror allowed him to continue to get a free pass on atrocities in Chechnya.
(As an aside, while it should be noted that while there are radical Islamists, and even foreign terrorists, in Chechnya now, it started out as a secular nationalist war. The radicals seized on it as an opportunity situation [much in the same way as they now see post-Saddam Iraq, of course, as different as the two places otherwise are.])
The second reason the current Russian government cosied up to Bush is that, however questionable Putin's commitments to Democracy are, he appears genuinely interested in promoting some type of economic reform. (Well, if we wanted to talk in greater depth about this, we might look at the eerie similarities between Russia's crony capitalism and our own.) He is enough a realist (in fact he is nothing if not a realist) to realize that U.S.-controlled international financial institutions, not to mention foreign investment, are absolutely indispensible for this.
So Russia's vocal opposition to our Iraq blunder was in some ways even more noteworthy than that of our longtime allies such as France and Germany. Putin had been defying the strong nationalists and the retrograde Communists in pursuing close ties with the U.S., and he recognized he could only take it so far. Not to mention the obvious financial ties with Iraq that our own wingnuts like to focus on as if there weren't extreme domestic political pressures to bear.
So Putin is in Camp David, and he is promising nothing. That is, he still wants to assure Bush they are buddies, but he still can't do anything in Iraq. When Poland joined the "coalition of the willing," politicians there were remarkably candid about their reasons for doing so: they wanted some of the post-settlement oil benefits. You can bet your first born that Putin would have been happy to do the same (in exchange for their old benefits), but domestic political considerations prohibited this.
Bush probably understood very little of this, which speaks volume, given Condi's supposedly impeccable Russia credentials.
fear is the mind killer - you beat me to it - Tantalus, LOL, indeed. I also second the crude.
(Tantalus - I just used your "Bush's destiny is failure" line over at Kos. You can go over there and get outraged that I failed to credit you, if you want to.)
I think Putin and others have their own flypaper strategy. As long as Bush is tied down in Iraq, he can't cause mischief elsewhere.
Truer words were never spoken, stencil.
I remember when I first heard that line of Bush's about looking in Putin's eyes and seeing his soul. I thought, yes, and Putin looked into Bush's eyes and saw that the man had no brain.
BBC World News did a good preview yesterday of what might come out of a Bush-Putin meeting, and their answer was nothing. Because no matter how much Bush needs Putin to help him out on Iraq and Iran, the fact is that we have no leverage over him or any of our erstwhile friends. We have burned our bridges with all our potential allies: they know we need them right now much more than they need us, and they are happy to let oiius swing.
oiius
That should read "us". Cabernet Sauvignon is an evil thing.
Putin wants: free reign in his sphere of influence. Commies come and go, but Russian dreams of empire live on.
Bush wants: Russian oil, Condi to fix him a warm glass of milk, and for Putin to stop squeezing his Texas prairie oysters.
The visuals were amazing. I had CSpan on with the sound off. Putin looked like the snake, and Bush looked like the bunny. We are sooo screwed.
"I like him. He's a good fellow to spend quality time with."
Yeah, when I heard him saying that line on TV I was like "What is this moron and who let a retarded redneck speak to the mic?"
This idiot was speaking of a guy who controls thousands of nukes and is still one of the major powers on this planet, and was reporting about his meeting with him, where they were meant to discuss the future of the world.
Of course, Putin is always there with his "What a sucker this stupid cowboy is" smile.
Apart from that, you can't say anything about Putin by looking at him, particularly not "seeing his soul in his eyes". He probably has no soul, no conscience, and has been trained as a spy to hide and give false impressions to everyone - that obviously applied even to his superiors.
And he's clearly one of the main reasons why Russia is still a major nation right now, and not a satellite of US capitalism. Definitely the most clever Russian leader since 20 years at least.
The result clearly shows that the Russians are screwing Bush up big time. Probably bigger than most people realise. Like the French, they would've gone to Iraq if they had a good share of the spoils. But given the situation, they can now easily bank on the quagmire option, which could eventually cause a massive blow to US global credibility, if it ends up as the miserable failure it might become.
Russia can get a better place in the sun by 2 ways: getting money and financial help from the West, notably US; downsizing of US superpower, meaning a relative increase in Russian influence and power. Putin is probably playing both cards.
Flypaper strategy: Not exactly. Bush stupidly hopes to kill all the terrorists, when more are spawn than killed each day. If we take the US Army, we'll soon get to the point where more people are killed or resign each week than people enlist.
BushCo is a joke, they have no leverage in the world, they're a-begging hat in hand and everyone outside the US is standing there laughing at us.
is Bush fishing with an empty hook? cause so far he hasn't had a nibble.
Duh, as ifhe has a surpluss to put on the hook.
Bush calls Putin "pooty-poot"?
Well, that's ok, because Putin calls Bush "pussy."
oiius
That should read "us". Cabernet Sauvignon is an evil thing.
Diane | 09.27.03 - 8:23 pm | #
I thought it was Latin for ``Oh, why us?''
Characters Remaining:
Commenting by HaloScan
