For anyone who is concerned about the situation, seeing what is on the Voice of Russia website, and listening to the snipets of radio feed that they supply should be required listening. I've spent some time monitoring www.vor.ru, and it sounds like the bad old days of the Cold War to me. Did you know, for example, that the Russians are doing tit for tat regarding the nonmilitary assistance that they are providing to Serbia? Just like our planeloads landing in Tblisi! And the Russians are being relatively crude in describing the nature of American-Russian relations.

The point of all of this is, any idiot could have known that there were serious territorial issues building between Russia and its Near Abroad for some time, and the State Department (under the leadership of our Russian expert, Condi Rice) just twiddled their thumbs, and even encouraged bad behavior by pissing the bear off too much. Some Russian expert!

Make no mistake about it. The Russian intervention in Georgia is an event of historic proportions with profound impllications for the behavior of the United States in coming years. We can only hope that more intelligent leadership emerges from the swamp of Washington, DC than what we've seen in the last seven years, Hopefully, we can compartmentalize some our policy actions so that we can prevent a rerun of a Cold War. We have enough problems right now as it is.

old new lefty. Your characterization of Doctor Rice on this issue is misrepresentational.

It has been well know around Foggy Bottom, that Secretary Rice disagreed with Vice President Cheney on the issue of Georgia and his insistance of continued shipments of arms and our growing military mission to that country.

She had warned the administration that we were angering the the Russians and they also saw us as meddlers in the region.

She did in fact warn President Saakashvili, in person, to ratchet the tension down. Her only mis-step may have been appearing at a photo op with Saakashvili giving him the impression we were solidly behind him.

Perhaps a phone call from our president to Saakashivil would have been more appropriate as President Bush views personal relationships over statecraft, as it appears President Saakashivil does also?

and that is, that Dick Cheney deliberately encouraged the Georgians to act rashly, hoping for a Russian provocation. He sandbagged Condi to push John McCain ahead in the polls. He knew beforehand that Putin would act like a thug, and he sat on the intelligence information, thus allowing the war to proceed. Talk about wag the dog! Uncle Yet another reason to reserve a cell for Uncle Dicky next to Radavan Karavic in the Hague.