Bush: 'We will not cast' Georgia 'aside'

"We will not cast Georgia aside, but East Dakota and West Carolina, well, that's another matter."

G. #43 B.

P.S. "Besides, the presumpteous Republican preidential nominee has already dispatched Secretaries Lieberman & Graham to Atlanta."

One more reason why we should not have gone into Iraq: we've used up all our chits that would have been better spent in Georgia.

The UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and other pro-Western nations should be ashamed for not being more vocal against the Russian atrocities in Georgia. These countries could be the next victims of Russia's illegal aggression.

Putin is a deadly Punk, who acts like a hot-tempered and spoiled little kid who doesn't get his way. However, this "kid" and his associates -- are killers.

Anyone opposed to Russia's actions, should avoid future purchase of Russian-made goods or any travel to Russia or its allies.

Ah, that good, old " Military-Industrial complex " rag !! It's music to their ears; wars and rumors of wars !! If only the proper leadership were in place, here in America, when the Great Appeaser, former President Reagan, was reciting what was one of his more hollow declarations, " Bring these walls down, .. " Instead, we had barracuda capitalists, from every quarter of the global, descending on the Soviet for the spoils. Instead of forming an assisting partnership, the opportunists focused on sucking the marrow from the bones of the good Russian people. It was not enough that they had just come out of a great communist winter of subjugation, they were now submerged in an avalanche of goods and services that they couldn't afford nor properly enjoy, not with the basics of modern life still missing !! That is one of the main reasons we are now about to re-engage in the Cold War !! Ah, those Republicans and their extremely poor leadership abilities. They are so busy filling their or their cronies pockets, they disregard what they were elected for, to govern and to govern fairly !! Not them, it's the Money, Money, Money, that is all they really care about ! Isn't our present state, a glaring example of that incompetency? I sure think so !!
The Republicans need a rest from national politics. America, let's give them that rest. Lets vote out of Office, all of those Republicans, that followed the Bush-Cheney regime blindly into the Occupation of Iraq and her Oil Fields !! That is the least we can do for the Party, the Republican Party, for getting America in the mess she presently finds herself.
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

More bluster..LOL...What a loser...It's not just that nobody is listening to him, it's also that nobody CARES what this loser says...

Talk about out of touch....bye..bye...

"Bush in Texas": The headline says it all.

I too fully support Georgia. It is of my favorite of all the 59 states. They grow peanuts in Georgia. Peanuts are my favorite snack food. We must stand firm to protect the forests of beautiful peanut trees! The Russian Army must withdraw!

The days of wine and roses where the United States dictates policy around the world is over. Why does Bushie think that Putin 'cares' what Bushie thinks? Bushie invaded Iraq in spite of a slew of nations 'warning him' not to proceed. The 'do as we say, not as we do' mentality is going over like a lead balloon in Russia right now. Putin is probably having a good laugh over the hypocrisy.

Bush is right to support Georgia. The matters within Georgia are NONE OF RUSSIA'S BUSINESS period. Russia already gave those wanting to be part of Russia passports so they can go back and forth. Why should Georgia have to give their land away....couldn't these folks just go move to Russia. It's over land. Russia wants the land.

Great posts, Zook and Fitzgerald!
Folks -- Bush is not saying these things to Putin; he is addressing them to the single- and double-digit IQ supporters who he thinks will hopefully support the Republican candidate -- so he can let them think he is "standing tall." Does anyone in their right mind think that the sociopathic ex-director of the KGB gives a flying fig about what the Resident Select thinks or says? Oh..to be able to look into his soul once again...those were the days!

Bush is going to save the world. He is going to get rid of the population. With no people left after www III, no more pollution or hunger.
"No room for debate" These are the words of a politician?
What can he do if Russia tells him to get out of Iraq and Afganistan, and there is no room for debate?

Here's a story of how we have meddled elsewhere in the world. Ask yourself, do you really wan't to send your child or someone else's child off to a war where it doesn't matter? Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. helped midwife a terrorist

Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity. He is the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. This is an excerpt from his book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (Yale University Press).
By Ahmed Rashid
In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.
The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI [PakistanÕs Inter-Services Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI's favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.
Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea. President Zia aimed to cement Islamic unity, turn Pakistan into the leader of the Muslim world and foster an Islamic opposition in Central Asia. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors. And the Saudis saw an opportunity both to promote Wahabbism [their strict and austere Wahabbi creed] and to get rid of its disgruntled radicals. None of the players reckoned on these volunteers having their own agendas, which would eventually turn their hatred against the Soviets on their own regimes and the Americans.

Thousands of radicals come to study
. . . Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan Mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad.
In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other for the first time and studied, trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism. None of the intelligence agencies involved wanted to consider the consequences of bringing together thousands of Islamic radicals from all over the world. "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?" said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security Adviser. American citizens woke up to the consequences only when Afghanistan-trained Islamic militants blew up the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, killing six people and injuring 1,000.
"The war," wrote Samuel Huntington, "left behind an uneasy coalition of Islamist organizations intent on promoting Islam against all non-Muslim forces. It also left a legacy of expert and experienced fighters, training camps and logistical facilities, elaborate trans-Islam networks of personal and organization relationships, a substantial amount of military equipment including 300 to 500 unaccounted-for Stinger missiles, and, most important, a heady sense of power and self-confidence over what had been achieved and a driving desire to move on to other victories."

A young Bin Laden
. . . Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jihad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent. Bin Laden, Prince Turki and General Gut were to become firm friends and allies in a common cause.
The centre for the Arab-Afghans [Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Uighurs from Xinjiang in China who had all come to fight with the Mujaheddin] was the offices of the World Muslim League and the Muslim Brotherhood in the northern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The center was run by Abdullah Azam, a Jordanian Palestinian whom Bin Laden had first met at university in Jeddah and revered as his leader. Azam and his two sons were assassinated by a bomb blast in Peshawar in 1989.
During the 1980s, Azam had forged close links with Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan Islamic scholar, whom the Saudis had sent to Peshawar to promote Wahabbism. Saudi funds flowed to Azam and the Makhtab at Khidmat or Services Center, which he created in 1984 to service the new recruits and receive donations from Islamic charities. Donations from Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and private donations from Saudi princes and mosques were channelled through the Makhtab. A decade later, the Makhtab would emerge at the center of a web of radical organizations that helped carry out the World Trade Center bombing and the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998.
Until he arrived in Afghanistan, Bin Laden's life had hardly been marked by anything extraordinary. He was born around 1957, the 17th of 57 children sired by his Yemeni father and a Saudi mother, one of Mohammed Bin Laden's many wives. Bin Laden studied for a masterÕs degree in business administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah but soon switched to Islamic studies. Thin and tall, he is 6 feet 5 inches, with long limbs and a flowing beard. He towered above his contemporaries, who remember him as a quiet and pious individual but hardly marked out for greater things.
His father backed the Afghan struggle and helped fund it, so when Bin Laden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He first traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided to settle in Peshawar. He brought in his company engineers and heavy construction equipment to help build roads and depots for the Mujaheddin. In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border. For the first time in Khost he set up his own training camp for Arab Afghans, who now increasingly saw this lanky, wealthy and charismatic Saudi as their leader.
. . . Bin Laden later claimed to have taken part in ambushes against Soviet troops, but he mainly used his wealth and Saudi donations to build Mujaheddin projects and spread Wahabbism among the Afghans. After the death of Azam in 1989, he took over Azam's organization and set up Al Qaeda or Military Base as a service center for Arab-Afghans and their families and to forge a broad-based alliance among them. With the help of Bin Laden, several thousand Arab militants had established bases in the provinces of Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan, but their extreme Wahabbi practices made them intensely disliked by the majority of Afghans. Moreover, by allying themselves with the most extreme pro-Wahabbi Pashtun MuMeddin, the Arab-Afghans alienated the non-Pashtuns and the Shia Muslims.

Upset by U.S. role in Gulf War
. . . By 1990, Bin Laden was disillusioned by the internal bickering of the Mujaheddin and he returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family business. He founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan veterans. Some 4,000 of them had settled in Mecca and Medina alone, and Bin Laden gave money to the families of those killed. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait he lobbied the Royal Family to organize a popular defense of the kingdom and raise a force from the Afghan war veterans to fight Iraq. Instead, King Fahd invited in the Americans. This came as an enormous shock to Bin Laden. As the 540,000 US troops began to arrive, Bin Laden openly criticized the Royal Family, lobbying the Saudi ulema to issue fatwas, religious rulings, against non-Muslims being based in the country.
. . . In 1992, Bin Laden left for Sudan to take part in the Islamic revolution under way there under the charismatic Sudanese leader Hassan Turabi. Bin Laden's continued criticism of the Saudi Royal Family eventually annoyed them so much that they took the unprecedented step of revoking his citizenship in 1994. It was in Sudan, with his wealth and contacts, that Bin Laden gathered around him more veterans of the Afghan war, who were all disgusted by the American victory over Iraq and the attitude of the Arab ruling elites who allowed the US military to remain in the Gulf. As US and Saudi pressure mounted against Sudan for harboring Bin Laden, the Sudanese authorities asked him to leave.
In May 1996, Bin Laden travelled back to Afghanistan, arriving in Jalalabad in a chartered jet with an entourage of dozens of Arab militants, bodyguards and family members, including three wives and 13 children. Here he lived under the protection of the Jalalabad Shura [an advisory body or assembly], until the conquest of Kabul and Jalalabad by the Taliban in September 1996. In August 1996, he had issued his first declaration of jihad against the Americans, whom he said were occupying Saudi Arabia.
"The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets," the declaration read. Striking up a friendship with Mullah Omar, in 1997 he moved to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and came under the protection of the Taliban.
By now, the CIA had set up a special cell to monitor his activities and his links with other Islamic militants. A US State Department report in August 1996 noted that Bin Laden was "one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world." The report said that Bin Laden was financing terrorist camps in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt and Afghanistan. In April 1996, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allowed the US to block assets of terrorist organizations. It was first used to block Bin Laden's access to his fortune of an estimated US$250-300 million. A few months later, Egyptian intelligence declared that Bin Laden was training 1,000 militants, a second generation of Arab-Afghans, to bring about an Islamic revolution in Arab countries.

CIA tries snatch operation
In early 1997, the CIA constituted a squad that arrived in Peshawar to try to carry out a snatch operation to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan. The Americans enlisted Afghans and Pakistanis to help them but aborted the operation. The US activity in Peshawar helped persuade Bin Laden to move to the safer confines of Kandahar. On 23 February 1998, at a meeting in the original Khost camp, all the groups associated with Al Qaeda issued a manifesto under the aegis of "The International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders." The manifesto stated "for more than seven years the US has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsular, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbours, and turning its bases in the peninsular into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples."
The meeting issued a fatwa. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to." Bin Laden had now formulated a policy that was not just aimed at the Saudi Royal Family or the Americans, but called for the liberation of the entire Muslim Middle East. As the American air war against Iraq escalated in 1998, Bin Laden called on all Muslims to "confront, fight and kill, Americans and Britons."

1998 U.S. Embassy bombings
However, it was the bombings in August 1998 of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 220 people which made Bin Laden a household name in the Muslim world and the West. Just 13 days later, after accusing Bin Laden of perpetrating the attack, the USA retaliated by firing 70 cruise missiles against Bin Laden's camps around Khost and Jalalabad. Several camps which had been handed over by the Taliban to the Arab-Afghans and Pakistani radical groups were hit. The Al Badr camp controlled by Bin Laden and the Khalid bin Walid and Muawia camps run by the Pakistani Harakat ul Ansar were the main targets. Harakat used their camps to train militants for fighting Indian troops in Kashmir. Seven outsiders were killed in the strike -- three Yemenis, two Egyptians, one Saudi and one Turk. Also killed were seven Pakistanis and 20 Afghans.
In November 1998 the USA offered a US$5-million reward for Bin Laden's capture. The Americans were further galvanized when Bin Laden claimed that it was his Islamic duty to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons to use against the USA. "It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims. Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded for it by God," he said.
. . . After the Africa bombings, the US launched a truly global operation. More than 80 Islamic militants were arrested in a dozen different countries. Militants were picked up in a crescent running from Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Yemen to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Phillipines."
In December 1998, Indian authorities detained Bangladeshi militants for plotting to bomb the US Consulate in Calcutta. Seven Afghan nationals using false Italian passports were arrested in Malaysia and accused of trying to start a bombing campaign." According to the FBI, militants in Yemen who kidnapped 16 Western tourists in December 1998 were funded by Bin Laden. In February 1999, Bangladeshi authorities said Bin Laden had sent US$l million to the Harkat-ul-Jihad (HJ) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, some of whose members had trained and fought in Afghanistan. HJ leaders said they wanted to turn Bangladesh into a Taliban-style Islamic state.
Thousands of miles away in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania in West Africa, several militants were arrested who had also trained under Bin Laden in Afghanistan and were suspected of plotting bomb explosions. Meanwhile, during the trial of 107 Al-Jihad members at a military court in Cairo, Egyptian intelligence officers testified that Bin Laden had bankrolled Al-Jihad. In February 1999, the CIA claimed that through monitoring Bin Laden's communication network by satellite, they had prevented his supporters from carrying out seven bomb attacks against US overseas facilities in Saudi Arabia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uganda, Uruguay and the Ivory Coast -- emphasizing the reach of the Afghan veterans.
. . . But it was Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the original sponsors of the Arab-Afghans, who suffered the most as their activities rebounded. In March 1997, three Arab and two Tajik militants [from Tajikistan] were shot dead after a 36-hour gun battle between them and the police in an Afghan refugee camp near Peshawar. Belonging to the Wahabbi radical Tafkir group, they were planning to bomb an Islamic heads of state meeting in Islamabad.

Fighting in Kashmir against India
With the encouragement of Pakistan, the Taliban and Bin Laden, Arab-Afghans had enlisted in the Pakistani party Harkat-ut-Ansar to fight in Kashmir against Indian troops. By inducting Arabs who introduced Wahabbi-style rules in the Kashmir valley, genuine Kashmiri militants felt insulted. The US government had declared Ansar a terrorist organization in 1996 and it had subsequently changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. All the Pakistani victims of the US missile strikes on Khost belonged to Ansar. In 1999, Ansar said it would impose a strict Wahabbi-style dress code in the Kashmir valley and banned jeans and jackets. On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts. Ansar had previously respected the liberal traditions of Kashmiri Muslims, but the activities of the Arab-Afghans hurt the legitimacy of the Kashmiri movement and gave India a propaganda coup.
Pakistan faced a problem when Washington urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to help arrest Bin Laden. The ISI's close contacts with Bin Laden, and the fact that he was helping fund and train Kashmiri militants who were using the Khost camps, created a dilemma for Sharif when he visited Washington in December 1998. Sharif sidestepped the issue but other Pakistani officials were more brazen, reminding their American counterparts how they had both helped midwife Bin Laden in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. Bin Laden himself pointed to continued support from some elements in the Pakistani intelligence services in an interview. "As for Pakistan there are some governmental departments, which, by the Grace of God, respond to the Islamic sentiments of the masses in Pakistan. This is reflected in sympathy and co-operation. However, some other governmental departments fell into the trap of the infidels. We pray to God to return them to the right path," said Bin Laden.

Conundrums for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Support for Bin Laden by elements within the Pakistani establishment was another contradiction in PakistanÕs Afghan policy. . . . The US was PakistanÕs closest ally, with deep links to the military and the ISI. But both the Taliban and Bin Laden provided sanctuary and training facilities for Kashmiri militants who were backed by Pakistan, and Islamabad had little interest in drying up that support. Even though the Americans repeatedly tried to persuade the ISI to cooperate in delivering Bin Laden, the ISI declined, although it did help the US arrest several of Bin Laden's supporters. Without PakistanÕs support, the United States could not hope to launch a snatch by US commandos or more accurate bombing strikes, because it needed Pakistani territory to launch such raids. At the same time, the USA dared not expose PakistanÕs support for the Taliban, because it still hoped for ISI cooperation in catching Bin Laden.
The Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince Turki had visited Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates. The Saudis also gave cash for the Taliban's cheque book conquest of the north in the autumn. Until the Africa bombings and despite US pressure to end their support for the Taliban, the Saudis continued funding the Taliban and were silent on the need to extradite Bin Laden.
The truth about the Saudi silence was even more complicated. The Saudis preferred to leave Bin Laden alone in Afghanistan because his arrest and trial by the Americans could expose the deep relationship that Bin Laden continued to have with sympathetic members of the Royal Family and elements within Saudi intelligence, which could prove deeply embarrassing. The Saudis wanted Bin Laden either dead or a captive of the Taliban -- they did not want him captured by the Americans.
. . . By now Bin Laden had developed considerable influence with the Taliban, but that had not always been the case. The Taliban's contact with the Arab-Afghans and their Pan-Islamic ideology was non-existent until the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Pakistan was closely involved in introducing Bin Laden to the Taliban leaders in Kandahar, because it wanted to retain the Khost training camps for Kashmiri militants, which were now in Taliban hands. Persuasion by Pakistan, the Taliban's better-educated cadres, who also had Pan-Islamic ideas, and the lure of financial benefits from Bin Laden, encouraged the Taliban leaders to meet with Bin Laden and hand him back the Khost camps.

A life with the Taliban in Kandahar
Partly for his own safety and partly to keep control over him, the Taliban shifted Bin Laden to Kandahar in 1997. At first he lived as a paying guest. He built a house for Mullah Omar's family and provided funds to other Taliban leaders. He promised to pave the road from Kandahar airport to the city and build mosques, schools and dams, but his civic works never got started as his funds were frozen. While Bin Laden lived in enormous style in a huge mansion in Kandahar with his family, servants and fellow militants, the arrogant behaviour of the Arab-Afghans who arrived with him and their failure to fulfill any of their civic projects antagonized the local population. The Kandaharis saw the Taliban leaders as beneficiaries of Arab largesse rather than the people.
Bin Laden endeared himself further to the leadership by sending several hundred Arab-Afghans to participate in the 1997 and 1998 Taliban offensives in the north. These Wahabbi fighters helped the Taliban carry out massacres of the Shia Hazaras in the north. Several hundred Arab-Afghans, based in the Rishkor army garrison outside Kabul, fought on the Kabul front against [the Mujaheddin leader Ahmad Shah] Masud. Increasingly, Bin Laden's world view appeared to dominate the thinking of senior Taliban leaders. All-night conversations between Bin Laden and the Taliban leaders paid off. Until his arrival, the Taliban leadership had not been particularly antagonistic to the USA or the West but demanded recognition for their government. However, after the Africa bombings the Taliban became increasingly vociferous against the Americans, the UN, the Saudis and Muslim regimes around the world. Their statements increasingly reflected the language of defiance Bin Laden had adopted and which was not an original Taliban trait.
As US pressure on the Taliban to expel Bin Laden intensified, the Taliban said he was a guest and it was against Afghan tradition to expel guests. When it appeared that Washington was planning another military strike against Bin Laden, the Taliban tried to cut a deal with Washington -- to allow him to leave the country in exchange for US recognition. Thus, until the winter of 1998 the Taliban saw Bin Laden as an asset, a bargaining chip over whom they could negotiate with the Americans.
The US State Department opened a satellite telephone connection to speak to Mullah Omar directly. The Afghanistan desk officers, helped by a Pushto translator, held lengthy conversations with Omar in which both sides explored various options, but to no avail. By early 1999 it began to dawn on the Taliban that no compromise with the US was possible and they began to see Bin Laden as a liability. A US deadline in February 1999 to the Tatiban to either hand over Bin Laden or face the consequences forced the Taliban to make him disappear discreetly from Kandahar. The move bought the Taliban some time, but the issue was still nowhere near being resolved.
The Arab-Afghans had come full circle. From being mere appendages to the Afghan jihad and the Cold War in the 1980s they had taken centre stage for the Afghans, neighbouring countries and the West in the 1990s. . . . Afghanistan was now truly a haven for Islamic internationalism and terrorism and the Americans and the West were at a loss as to how to handle it.

Dear Michael J.

It is unwillingly comical to depict Vladimir Putin as a sullen and spoiled little kid, because it defies any sober analysis of this man. You are talking about the number one technocrat and sole savior of Russian pride in the 21st century. This man is famous among his people because he makes policy for Russia and it's economical elite. He gives them a pride has been stripped from them ever since the Soviet Union broke apart. If you followed the development closely, you would recognize that the situation had been boiling already in 2004. The democratic president of Georgia was then busy to shut down opposing radio stations and kicking out his vice president for warning him not to start a territorial conflict with Russia.
Tonight, German and British news anchors in Tiblisi were summoned to an "emergency" meeting with the Georgian president. A girl called their hotel and told them to "Hurry up, Mike (the president) is waiting for you."
Georgian democracy is a stand up comedy with this "president" giving offices to 20 year old girls he likes, only to drop them and the office they held after they have done duty to their country!!
The west has made but one mistake: Encourage Georgia's president to engage into adventures in the name of democracy and it has gotten them nothing but trouble!
Further more: If it wasn't for a Bush administration that desperately needed to meddle in Russian affairs, this entire conflict would never have happened.
It's Russia's turn now and they know it. If G.W. had any idea what *not* to do, he would let go of this idiotic missile shield. It will bring again: NOTHING BUT TROUBLE!
If the Poles think that they will serve as anything else but cannon fodder for the acting administration they are sadly mistaken.

repeating democrat main stream media lies doesn't make them true..McCain did not dispatch anyone to Georgia....leave it to ObamaDrones like Doug to believe whatever it's told..

sheesh..Obama has it easy

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Posted by: DaveK | August 16, 2008 5:06 PM
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Dave,
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If you reject the message just because you dislike the speaker, then you are not only in the single digits in your IQ, you are a flat-liner. Dislike him all you want, but what Duh'bya is saying is true. If you don't like the President, that's your gig. Don't believe it because he says it. Believe it because you own eyes and ears tell you what he is saying is true. If that isn't the case, then educate yourself because it is true.
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As for Putin: He cares very much what Duh'bya has to say. You see, Putin knows something that you do not: Duh'bya still has the power to inflict a lot of damage in the last few months of his presidency - despite his lame duck status and lack of popularity. Duh'bya doesn't need Congress' help or a popular support to torpedo Russia's chances of getting into the WTO, or to jeopardize Russia's status in the G8, or to work for getting the rest of the non-aligned countries in Europe into NATO. Nor does it take congressional or popular support to join the growing number of voices in Europe and the rest of the world that are telling Russia that it cannot, without suffering ostracism and isolation, pursue its foreign policies by dismembering adjoining states (as in Georgia) or trying to politically dominate them (as in the Ukraine).

Unfortunately, George Bush has lost all credibility, and is the laughingstock of the world. What he says is just bluster, and will be ignored by Russia.

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Posted by: Skynet | August 16, 2008 7:58 PM
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Well, I'm glad to see the Russian delegation has finally shown up. Only one who fully agrees with the Russian perspective on all of this would have had the gall to write what you just did.
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For instance, you characterize Putin as "the number one technocrat," and the "sole savior of Russian pride in the 21st century" who is "famous among his people because he makes policy for Russia and it's economical elite. (Sic)." You also mention that he gives (the Russian people) "a pride has been stripped from them ever since the Soviet Union broke apart." To the extent that one believes any of this is true, it only goes to prove - sadly - that everything Nicolai Gogol wrote about the Russian people is still valid today. Let us take these one at a time.
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1. It is false to describe Putin as a "technocrat" - as he has no formal training in any technological field. His formal education at Leningrad State University was in international law. His re-training in the various schools of the Committee for State Security (KGB) was in the field of foreign intelligence. Neither discipline qualifies as a technological field. Thus, he could be considered a "technocrat" only in the limited sense that he favors decision making based on data rather than public opinion. However, there is a better word for such a person that is more at home with the Russian people: an Autocrat.
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2. That he is an Autocrat - like the Tzar used to be - fits in perfectly with the description of one who makes policy for Russia and its economic elite. In other words, he tells people what to do and they do it. Dissenters have no recourse, and the Duma is his vassal. Democracy and republicanism are just as illusory as they were under the communists.
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3. That he could give "pride" to the Russian people and serve at pride's savior is something to give one long reason for pause. It is true that corruption has dwindled and the economy is better. But what price did the Russian people pay for having another Autocrat to give them pride? Putin has trashed the core elements of Russia's fledgling democracy. The press and news are not free. Opposing political organizations are forced out of the public square, marginalized in the news; and their members are intimidated, assassinated, involuntarily committed to mental hospitals, and the like. The end result is that democracy has become a farcical caricature of itself because hardly anyone other than a Putin loyalist is ever heard from during elections. If people in Russia could ever be proud of this, it is only because, as Gogol said in "Dead Souls," they view themselves as needing someone to whip them from time to time to behave.
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4. It is also because Putin has re-invigorated the military, and has used Russia's military and economic power to bully and intimidate Russia's neighbors - that people can now have "pride" in their powerful nation. It is a Russia that can inspire fear in its neighbors - in which Russians have historically taken "pride." That was most of the "pride" they lost at the breakup of the Soviet Union. So, now they have it back. It that a good thing? Is the ability to terrorize other countries something in which one ought to take pride? It takes a Cold War mentality to believe so.
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5. You are correct that the dispute between Georgia and Russia was already warming up in 2004. But that was Russia's fault, and not Georgia's fault - as you suggest. It was Russia that started giving out passports to the people in South Ossetia, and recognizing the demands of the people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia - which was a dramatic turnaround from prior CIS sanctions. It was a deliberate plot on the part of the Russian government to keep Georgia a vassal state by threats of military intervention. And they did this, in large part, by refusing Georgia the right to police its own territorial integrity. Every free and sovereign nation under the sun has the right to territorial integrity. That is, every sovereign nation except Georgia has that right - according to the Russian government.
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6. You attempt to make a caricature out of Saakashvili because of his womanizing. But western nations don't care whether their presidents are philanders. Bill Clinton kept his office after it was revealed that he took liberties with one of his interns. Ronald Reagan was once divorced. France's Sarkozy was divorced twice and then married again - once while in office. It seems as though we wouldn't care if our presidents had a line of women from their office door out to the street and around the corner - as long as they do they job for which they were elected. In this regard, your complaint about Saakashvili is defective - because you haven't offered to tell us how he is either incompetent or corrupt. Your only complaint seems to be that he prefers alliance with the West to that of a Russian vassal. And then you blame him and his U.S. allies for the events in Georgia. Only Russia is upset with Georgia's alliances, only Russia planned to use force to disrupt Georgia as far back as 2004, and only Russia recently invaded Georgia to keep it from retaining its sovereignty. Neither the U.S. nor Georgia can be blamed for this. Georgia's previous efforts at reining in breakaway provinces were basically bloodless, and only Russia's violent intervention - twice - stopped it from being that way again.
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7. And you still have the audacity to repeat Russia's threats regarding the missile shield. (This is what gives you away as part of the Russian party.) Maybe it never dawned on you that Russia's deliberate failure to help rein in Iran - indeed its sales of weaponry to Iran - is part of what has made the missile shield necessary in the first place. The missile shield is only a problem for Russia's leaders because they have chosen the traditional Russian leadership path of paranoia that has dominated foreign policy since before the days of Peter the Great. The shield isn't for Russia. It is to protect against rogue nations. Think about it. Do you seriously believe that a "missile shield" could fend off a nuclear attack from Russia? I don't. And neither does our civilian and military leadership. Russia simply has too many missiles. Any level headed person would recognize that mutually assured destruction would still ensue in any exchange of nuclear weapons. A missile shield, therefore, could only have potential value to interdict an attack from countries that do not possess the weapons stockpiles as enormous as those of Russia and the U.S. That is common sense to anyone except the paranoid.
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I am descended from a Russian family of St. Petersburg, and I approve this message.

telling Russia that it cannot, without suffering ostracism and isolation, pursue its foreign policies by dismembering adjoining states (as in Georgia) or trying to politically dominate them (as in the Ukraine).

Posted by: John W. | August 16, 2008 9:22 PM

Please tell that to any nation in the Carribean or Central America.. Russia is pusuing it's own version of the Monroe Doctrine. We regularly interfere in the internal politics of our neighboring soveriegn states and have done so for most of our history. We regularly intervene militarily to remove neighboring governments we do not like.

We are hypocrites when we castigate Russia for actions that we would not hesitate to replicate.

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Posted by: UFC | August 18, 2008 10:01 AM
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You wrote, "Russia is pursuing its own version of the Monroe Doctrine." That would be funny were it not so tragically false. The Monroe Doctrine stated that European powers were no longer to colonize or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas. The Monroe Doctrine was about opposition to colonialism, and not the kind of re-enslaving and intimidation that Russia is perpetrating among its neighbors and former satellites.
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As for America's "regular" intervention in neighboring sovereign states, I am dying to find out which countries we have routinely invaded and dismembered in the Western Hemisphere. You can't include Central America (including Panama or Grenada), because they always had their own uninterrupted self-government. By my calculations, our last land grab came during the Spanish-American War when we acquired Puerto Rico, the Philippines Guam and the Caroline Islands from Spain. We also occupied Cuba, but allowed it to attain independence in 1902. Of all the other territories we gained in that war, we only still possess Puerto Rico. So, how is that "regular?"

Panama exists because of US intervention to sever it from Colombia to get a more favorable deal for the building of the canal.

We don't have to claim the territory in order to have interfered in the internal affairs of soveriegn Nations. Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic have all been militarily occupied by the US and had governments replaced by the US. We tried with Cuba in 1961 and failed. That's just direct military intervention. If you add more covert involvement we can add Guatemala, El Salvador and Chile to the list of countries in this hemisphere that we have grossly violated the soveriegnty of. That's just touching on the highlights.

http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/interventions.html

I hope that helps fill some of the rather large gaps in your knowledge of US history in this hemisphere.

Try not to be such a jingo in the future. The US is not without fault, especially in the are of violations of the soveriegnty of other nations.

Europe at peace..OMG.
Where did you get that crazy idea from?
Europe is one step away from becoming one huge islamo/fascist free trade area for muslim/Arab states.
We have a new European flag the stars replaced by smiley's the centre a car on fire!
Thats' a peace we'd rather do without!
Freedom is a stranger now, freedom allows choice a choice, we are denied by the Fabian elite that rule.
A REFERENDUM WOULD SEE THE EUSSR ENDED!
CENSORSHIP PASS??????