Bush Affirms Intent to Go to Russia Summit

President Bush expressed concern Wednesday about the Kremlin's crackdowns on internal dissent but declared ``I haven't given up on Russia'' and said he would not boycott a summit in St. Petersburg. Bush made clear he has differences with President Vladimir Putin on his increasingly authoritarian stand on issues such as political, religious and press freedoms and the emergence of democracies on Russia's borders. But he said he feared that scolding Putin might cause the Russian to turn a deaf ear to criticism.

``I need to be in a position where I can sit down with him and be very frank about our concerns,'' Bush said,
saying he would ignore calls to boycott the Group of Eight summit of industrial nations, being held for the first time in Russia in Putin's home city in July. There is pressure on the administration to toughen its approach toward Russia. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has urged Bush not to attend the summit. A bipartisan task force led by former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., and former housing secretary Jack Kemp, a Republican, concluded that democracy was in retreat in Russia.

``U.S.-Russian relations are clearly headed in the wrong direction,'' the task force wrote. ``Contention is crowding out consensus. The very idea of 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic.'' Bush outlined his concerns during a question-and-answer session after a speech to Freedom House, a more than 60-year-old independent organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world. ``I haven't given up on Russia,'' Bush said. ``I still think Russia understands that it's in her interests to be West, to work with the West and to act in concert with the West.''
Bush has been a fan of Putin's since 2001 when they first met and Bush declared that he had gotten a sense of Putin's soul. The bond was strengthened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when Putin allowed U.S. forces into Central Asia.

``I remember meeting with human rights groups in Russia,'' Bush said. ``And I asked them what strategy should I take as the president of the United States. Should I be in a position where I can engage the president in frank discussion? Or should I, you know, publicly scold him? In which case he may turn a deaf ear. ``And the universal consensus for them kind of played to my own instincts, which is that it is important for the United States to be in a position to be able to express our concerns,'' Bush said. The president said he has spent a lot of time with Putin ``making it clear that he should not fear democracy on his border, nor should he fear democracy within his borders. I like to make the case to him that democracies don't war with each other.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5720283,00.html

:patriot:

Narcissist....

I, I, I, I, I, I, I

To put it mildly...

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re "crackdown on internal dissent" ... "increasingly authoritarian" ... fearing "democracy within his borders" ...

Will Putin ask why Cheney's Halliburton is building detention gulags?

Diebold voting?

Unitary executive?

1st Amendment zones?


The Bu$h Administration weakens our security by virtue of its illegitimacy; and, by its actions.



“Don’t you know that some of the American journalists were fired because of their positions on Iraq or the presidential election campaign?” says Putin. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/06/60minutes/main693422_page2.shtml

US reporters also said that Washington had supposedly made Russia withdraw its offer to let Iran conduct uranium enrichment works. “I do not know whether the sources, from which the information was taken are negligent or the US media are lacking professionalism, if professionalism implies an ability to tell people the truth but not to fulfill someone else’s instructions. I console myself with the fact that US reporters have not outstripped the Russian newspaper Zhizn, which wrote that US President George W. Bush had supposedly invited me to visit his ranch but then changed his mind. Our freedom of speech or “freedom of fantasy” is stronger than that in America ,” Sergei Lavrov concluded. http://english.pravda.ru/russia/kremlin/10-03-2006/77125-Lavrov-0

If George W. Bush considers "liberty" as invading a sovereign nation based upon lies, committing an act of mass murder, slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians in the name of "freedom and democracy", winning "hearts and minds" through "shock and awe" tactics, it is evident that he is intellectually constrained to the table upon which he threw a record number of Texans. He is intellectually, diplomatically and legally moribund, he is limited to uttering Cold War Slogans and he has a retentive understanding of the dossiers.

Who is governing the USA? It certainly isn't George W. Bush. He doesn't even know what he is speaking about. http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/399/15015_summit.html

How can he look them in the eyes, indeed. They know he is a lying criminal.

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Regarding the freedom of the press in Russia, what exactly is Bush talking about? The author of this article has written for Russian press outlets for many years and not once has any article been suppressed or indeed have I ever received any guidelines as to what I should say or not say. I go further, and George Bush had better listen to this: I even contacted the Kremlin asking for such guidelines and the answer was "we cannot give you guidelines. You must write what you want to write. It is your affair, not ours".

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Surely, this is common knowledge? Surely someone in the US administration could have warned George Bush about what was really happening before he made an idiot of himself (yet again).

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nobody has anything to learn from chimpy
and his demockracy rhetoric is as hollow as his presidency