“Russia will pay a price” said Rice On Her Way To Brussels
2008/08/18 By 26 Comments
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Aldershot: http://si.wsj.net/public/resou rces/images/WO-AN661_RUSKER_G_ 20130507194232.jpg
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Can't help but feel Nemstov delivered a eulogy for the Opposition today. #russia - If I've said once, I've said it a thousand times: Ariel Cohen belongs at Heritage. In all ways.
- At DSOB 106 for Boris Nemstov. Haven't seen him since Nizhni Novgorod Mayor and IFC small scale privatization (Saratov too).
@DrLeoStrauss They'll put him up in Philby's suite. Hook him up with a new acrobat girlfriend/ - @DrLeoStrauss They'll put him up in Philby's suit.
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Biden is certainly better than the other picks – that were publicly floated. But …
Comment would have suggested someone else besides Biden – Maybe – Hopefully, we are wrong. It certainly seems counter-intuitive. McCain, we guess, will pick Romney. There must be some reasons for the Biden pick – some rationale – that we do not know of. Webb would have been better
Poor Conrad, stalked to the end by his lessers.
It’s just amazing how Maureen Dowd’s stupid and quite unfunny columns are able to get to number one on the Times website – No matter Dowd’s alleged loyalties, her columns advance narratives that are ultimately pro McCain, Yet – the self hating liberals lap it up.
Lord Black may now be gangsta (even though he was acquitted on racketeering)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/aug/21/conradblack
” … a German diplomat said that his government did not consider NATO the best place to discuss a global response to the Georgian crisis.”
Yeah – he’s right, but just saw Fred Kagan on the NewsHour – Fred seems ready to fight – Plus, he said those missile defense batteries facilities better get built BEFORE Iranian missles start landing on Polish cities.
This insulting cover story does no one any good – Putin will just give Iran missles and say the US and Israel shouldn’t worry because they are for defending Iran against Poland.
The Russians seemed to have decided to adopt a GOPish style of sarcastic humor about all of this – Vitaly Churkin joked about playing the worlds smallest violen when he heard Saakashvilli. Lavrov has been rolling his eyes and making sarcastic comments – It’s only a matter of time before they start quoting Maureen Dowd columns to make their point.
“The Russians themselves appeared to ridicule the [NATO] declaration. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the document was a “clear indication of NATO’s interest and NATO’s concern,” Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to the alliance, assessed in his own news conference that “the mountain gave birth to a mouse.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/19/AR2008081900216.html
This is the best review BA got:
http://blogs.ft.com/gapperblog/2008/08/barbara-amiels-laughable-defence-of-conrad-black/
Sorry – Sglover – Didn’t mean to criticise you – it was a poorly worded comment on our part. Just watched the interview w/ Bacevich and it was excellent (though Moyers still was a goober to make those bad initial comments.
Liberals are so bamboozaled by the regime that people like Moyers you cite above end up broadcasting administration propaganda even when they try to refute it.
Yeah, well, whatever. Look, by the standards of TeeVee, Moyers stays pretty much out of the way, and lets the guy he’s interviewing talk. I linked to **Bacevich**, and he got his points across as well as ever.
Doc – you know anything about this google phone?
Just want to note the NYT is full of wusses. We have consistantly tried to post polite comments on their book blog and every time we tried we failed to get them posted. We inquired with someone people and we were told that any comments regarded as critical of some book reviewers post is basically not allowed – It didn’t really matter that our comments were to the point and polite. It was because we criiticised the way one of the book reviewers framed his post. A similar thing happened years ago when we tried and failed to post a critical comment about something Tom Friedman wrote
Btw – Great Leon Hadar piece
http://www.amconmag.com/pdfissue.html?page=16&Id=AmConservative-2008aug25&s=medium#p
Condi said military power should not be used in this century – She said this today, on the plane – She was not worried about being laughed at.
It is sad – but imagine if Saakashvilli was close to Jimmy Carter or Clinton, instead of Bush:
“This tiny nation that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 has deep economic and emotional ties with the United States, so much so that its beleaguered president, Mikheil Saakashvili, attended Columbia and George Washington law schools.”
If there was a Clinton Ave – Republicans would be scoffing at Saakshvilli and they would point out that the Taliban
s Mullah Omar had a number of relatives working in the US – one supposedly at a mall in Poughkipsee. That’s more a sign of AMericaness than Columbia and NYU (hotbeds of sedition in the minds of the GOP)
“TBILISI, Georgia — The road to the airport is named George W. Bush Street. Across from historic Freedom Square, where former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin went to school, is a Marriott Courtyard. And the presidential palace under construction is often called the “white house.”
This tiny nation that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 has deep economic and emotional ties with the United States, so much so that its beleaguered president, Mikheil Saakashvili, attended Columbia and George Washington law schools.
Now this democratic nation of 4.6 million people is looking to the United States for help as a massive military offensive from neighboring Russia threatens Georgia’s existence.
“The dream of Georgia is to be like the U.S.,” says Georgia’s chancellor, or minister of administration, Kakha Bendukidze. “The relationship is based on more than geopolitical considerations. It’s based on values that we share . . .”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-18-georgia_N.htm
Sadly, they forget Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. If only, perhaps, instead of hiring Randy, they had Grover Norquist on retainer and he could pose in front of some mountains (but not the Appalachians, too easy to spot as stand ins) holding a Chinese knock-off AK-47 expressing fraternal solidarity with the peace loving peoples of democractic Georgia.
Snark aside the whole tragic miscalculation is enough to break one’s heart. And the Stiftung for one does not believe the State Department’s self serving recent efforts to claim that they constantly tried to stop the Georgians. (implicitly conceding that Georgia started this tragedy while Cher Condi chatters on about prices, Russia and other nonsense).
Ofcouse – Moyers is trying to be folksy and knowning and pc in pbs kind of way – But the joke is on him,
re SGglover – Liberals are so bamboozaled by the regime that people like Moyers you cite above end up broadcasting administration propaganda even when they try to refute it.
Consider this statement from Moyers:
“America’s in a pickle. Our friends, the Russians, with whom we were about to conduct joint military exercises, decided instead to attack some of our other friends, the Georgians, who not only aspire to democracy …”
Leave aside jejune-isms like “pickle” and faux-semi-sarcasm about Russian “friends.” Moyers basically repeats an administration narrative and implies it is credibile.
He is a bit like those foolish sould – who seeking to defend Obama from smears = just repeat those smears.
Joe Klein highlights Obamas DEVASTATINGLY tough riposte to McCain – Oh no no, Obama won’t be swift boated – no way! LOL
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/a_new_tougher_obamacontinued.html
Aldershot, lol – we may well do that. One certainly has little enthusiasm for McCain’s one fingered salute. “Chief, I demand the cone of silence!”
“We have to deny Russian strategic objectives, which are 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 – We are determined to deny them their strategic objective,”
~Condi Rice
Question Doc – Isn’t Doctor Rice confused? Wouldn’t those be Moscow’s tactical objectives, rather than strategic? Afterall, if Georgian democracy was in Russia’s strategic interests, they wouldn’t care so much.
Why can’t Condi come out and say the dirty words “pipelines and seaports”?
“Mr Putin comes from the transitional generation: career rooted in the old order, but young enough to adapt. Although much has been made of his KGB past, this was not necessarily adisadvantage. The KGB had one asset denied to ordinary Russians: information. A KGB operative stationed in the West and tasked with upholding the superiority of the Soviet system must have felt like a member of the Flat-Earth Society on a round-the-world cruise.”
-Bruce Anderson
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-end-of-empire-is-always-a-muddy-bloody-business-900659.html
The Russian UN ambassador had trouble not laughing when asked to comment about Condi’s dictum
“As for Saakashvili, he’s probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.”
~Pat Buchanan
Not strictly on-topic, but here’s a conversation with Andrew Bacevich. For my money (and I’m guessing visitors to this site will agree), he’s the most lucid and sane political observer in America today. Oh, er, ahem, after the Stiftung, of course…..
And, oh yeah, Rice, “threats”, and so forth — she and this “government” are the embodiment of that great Vonnegut line: “he speaks with the authority of a man with a paper rectum”. But they’re at their most hilarious when they blather on about the Absolute Evil of invading smaller, non-threatening countries. The total obliviousness is almost charming.
Come on, Doc, you know you want to:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/08/07/one-nation-under-a-new-obama-salute.html
Jon Stewart just played a full clip of Rice saying that and the audience just laughed even though it was less in your face than McCain’s arrogant and stupid “nations don’t invade nations ” comment