Between you and me, I don't think this Russian buys Bush's risky missile scheme.
I have located the complete transcript to Russian President Vladimir Putin's 9-June press conference in front of the G8 Newspaper Journalists. I have produced my own excerpts from the same because I think they are relevant to the record, they will not be available in the MSM and they apply to the discussion in previous thread. In doing so, I follow my previously established practice of attaching preponderant importance to Q and A. Prepared statements don't interest me because I really want to know what is said as opposed to what is read to journalists. Here, then, are my cuts from the 6 June record:
To save space the transcripts have been moved to Files.
Please click to read!
Please click to read!
Competing gangs seldom tolerate turf infractions.
ReplyDeletePutin is a transcendent character in the intellectual 'chops' department, compared with our 'leader'.
-Nixon went to China when in trouble.
Bush goes to Albania ?
Thankyou for the extensive quotes. To me, this is all so frightening. On one hand, it's almost a beautiful thing to listen to a leader, Putin, who actually has a grasp on what is going on and an ability to talk about it. On the other hand, it's scary that he is being pretty much ignored by our Bushwacked media.
ReplyDeleteAnd when you consider that Putin is basically giving us fair warning that our current direction and leadership situation is like looking for trouble, and WE AREN'T LISTENING, that neary every single one of our Presidential candidates is more interested in threatening Iran than they are in picking up on Putin's signals about multilateralism...
And from what I understand, the guy likely to replace Putin is likely to make Putin look like a teddy bear. Putin is being pretty blunt, pretty much saying "we've tried to play nice, but you guys seem to want some hardball."
I agree with both of the above. Putin is a better President than Bush - by far! And he might be better than we get from Russia in the near future.
ReplyDeleteIt's another reason to imagine how differently things might have been over the past six years, how much progress towards peace might have been made.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to drop in quick and say excellent post Vigil, got back several hours ago but have been busy taking care of issues around the house.
ReplyDeletePublic Service Announcement:
ReplyDeleteBeach Bum is now hanging out at The Life and Times of a Carolina Parrothead. His old blog is now at an undisclosed (and probably insecure) location. I'm sure he would be happy if his favorite readers were to adjust their bookmarks and links.
Very thoughtful post, thanks! Putin scores internationally, pales nationally.
ReplyDeleteDon't mean to bust up this Putin love in but are you all aware of who Putin is? The very things people blast Bush about they can do for Putin ten times over. He's hardly a guy you should be using as a yard stick to further debate opposing Bush's policies - justified or otherwise. If you think the Russians are into multilateralism for its own benevolent sake, I have some frozen tundra to sell you.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Commentator about Putin's nature and how he is running Russia. If Bush was not on the scene Putin would still be making the same waves both in his own country and internationally. Its just that while Putin can be compared to James Bond the best comparison I can come up with for Bush would be Ernest T. Bass from the old Andy Griffith show.
ReplyDeleteLOL, Parrothead. I've missed you!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe the comments of The Commentator. The thrust of this piece is obviously about how the world is visualized, not how you would want it to be. That's what polarity is all about. A short lecture:
ReplyDeleteDuring the Cold War the world was BIPOLAR. That's when the USA had a partner in the USSR, keeping the world in some kind of order. After the Soviets' meltdown, the MIC - starting in the 1990's wanted the USA to assume the responsibilities of running a UNIPOLAR war so the so-called peace dividend would disappear in their coffers. Whereas, a more realistic perception of the REAL world - not to mention America's finite resources - would yield to the REALization that we live in a MULTIPOLAR world. It's not about how you want it; it's about how it is.
Most of your fellow Canadians realize this, Commentator. You should get off your neoconservative bus at the next stop.
Boris, aside from your specious mislabellings, you are most defintitely not in a position to "lecture" anyone.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Vigilante - good work as usual.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, thanks Boris for taking the presumptuous time to let me know what my fellow Canadians are thinking. I was in the dark. Interestingly, on one end we are encouraged to think for ourselves - but the minute we think differently from an established ethos (whatever color, stripe or ideology) we get lambasted. It's all so terribly confusing for a simpleton like me.
ReplyDeleteCheck out the LA Times lead editorial, Listening to Putin: Bush should pay more than lip service to the Russian president's proposal to put a missile defense shield in Azerbaijan.
ReplyDeleteYou're getting read, Vigil!
Thanks, Emily, but I'm sure I can't take the credit. The truth should be self-apparent to anyone who reads the front sections of their newspaper. Take for example, James Carroll in his The Paradox of Missile Defense:
ReplyDelete. . . Across eons, every warrior's improvement in defense was followed by a breakthrough in offense, leading to yet new countermeasures, ever more lethal. This ancient offense-defense cycle was made modern by the machine gun and the tank, then by warplanes and anti aircraft guns, and, ultimately, by ballistic missiles and anti ballistic missiles. . . .
At the end of his Pentagon tenure, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had arrived at the central paradox of the nuclear age -- how defense and offense had taken on opposite meanings, with the former having become the inevitable precursor of the latter . . . and analyzed the structure of this dynamic to argue for a halt to it. "Were we to deploy a heavy ABM system . . . the Soviets would clearly be strongly motivated so to increase their offensive capability as to cancel out our defense advantage."
. . . . Defense could no longer be simplistically defined as moral, with offense as immoral, because the two were halves of the same nut. . . .
Carroll thanks Paul Wolfowitz for leading Bush into unilaterally abrogating the ABM Treaty in 2002. That was when the first shoe dropped. The second shoe dropped a few days ago (29 May) when the Russians test-fired the first of its new generation of long-range multiple-warhead missiles which stands "to cancel out" [McNamara's phrase] any imagined defensive advantage of America's shield at a fraction of our cost.
Carroll concludes:
A consensus has lately developed that the Bush administration's worst legacy will be tied to the disastrous war in Iraq, but that may be wrong. The resuscitation of the fantasy of missile defense, and with it the raising from the dead of the arms race, may result in catastrophes in comparison to which Iraq is benign.
Thus, Carroll has answered the rhetorical question asked at the end of my previous column, What if invading Iraq is not the greatest mistake Bush has made?