Putin Lashes Out at the U.S.

President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of undermining Russia's struggle against terror by meeting with Chechen separatists and rejected calls for a public inquiry into whether authorities mishandled the hostage-taking in Beslan.

Putin told a group of Western policy analysts Monday night that his administration has repeatedly complained about meetings between U.S. officials and representatives of Chechen separatists, but to no avail.

Washington has invariably responded with "we will get back to you" or "we reserve the right to talk with anyone we want," Putin told the group during a wide-ranging policy discussion at his residence outside Moscow, according to CNN's account of the meeting.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/08/002.html

Like the Russian equivalent to the Munroe document.

terror.

Get the Russians to join us in our crusade

I always wanted to use that as a subject line.

Either it's bin Laden or another CIA asset gone Col Kurtz*. Their methods are far more sophisticated than, say, Hezbollah or even Spetsnaz. PNAC's to blame in a revisionist sense, in that Cheney and Rumsfeld shook so many hands during the Cold War.


*"You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment."
- Apocalypse Now

while the US is overstretched.

"meeting" with Al Quaida? After all, they have the right to talk to who ever they want to, right?

They want those Chechnya pipelines. An Independent Chechnya can be bargained with. Putin knows this.

as I like to call it "PNAC'ers for Pipelines."

http://www.peaceinchechnya.org/

here's a list of members:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/acpc.php

Check out this IWPR article, "Tug of War - Russia and America play a tense game of political chess in the South Caucasus"
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/cau/cau_200012_61_03_eng.txt

"The South Caucasus has been described as the "last great theatre of the Cold War" with both Russia and America vying for the affections of the three former Soviet republics.

But here the goal is not ideological victory but control over the oil and gas pipelines between the Caspian Sea and the West. And, to complicate matters still further, the newly independent states are proving they have minds of their own.

Russia's Blue Stream ("Goluboy Potok") project -- a planned gas pipeline under the Black Sea between Russia and Turkey -- marks the latest attempt to the break the deadlock. The move is calculated to counterbalance the effects of a US-funded pipeline being built to transport Caspian oil through Georgia and into Turkey. Already ratified by the Russian and Turkish parliaments, Blue Stream could supply Turkey with more than 16 billion cubic metres of Russian gas every year. By 2005, nearly 60 per cent of Turkey's gas would be imported from Russia.

The Russians make no secret of their ambitions. Rem Vyakhirev, chairman of Gazprom, comments, "Apart from the economic sense of the plan, it's vital for Russia to maintain geo-political influence in the region".

The United States, on the other hand, has turned its attention to Turkmenistan in a bid to offer Turkey an alternative to Russian gas. Here plans are afoot to transport Turkmen gas across the Caspian, through Azerbaijan and into Turkey. The cost of the pipeline has been estimated at $2.5 billion."

project. Who wants to bet they have WMD's??

Bush's blatant in your face medeling is
just soooooooo..............
out of control.

n/t

Looks to me that they have decided to make a line in the sand.
It looks like things are reverting to previous alliances.
Wonder where India stands in this.

Eliminate finance for terrorism, Russia tells Pakistan
http://in.news.yahoo.com/040907/43/2fxsl.html

One might infer that he thinks he need not fear us anymore,
but that may be premature, and he may just be pissed off or feeling
squeezed. The attitudes of India, China, and Iran would all
seem, ummm, relevant.

Like Russia is taking back the previous national power as a nation. Putin has changed the anthem back to what it was as the Soviet Union. It happened awhile ago and was not noticed.
He has quashed an intrusion by Exxon into the country's oil.
Now the media has been taken over.
They found themselves being surrounded by a foreign entity that came out of the war on terror and their weak position at the time.
It seems that he has been consolidating things and that now he has to make a decision and he is making it.
If one looks back at the Soviets, they were aligning themselves with India as a force against China. China was supporting Pakistan.

I tend to think Pooty-Poot must feel a bit squeezed 'cause
of his little debacle in the Caucasus, otherwise he might
be our buddy a while longer.

I don't really have the feeling that any of Russia, China,
India, or Iran really want to get into it with each other, and
Pakistan can be nice or get stomped. The rest of them want to
compete in non-military ways, trade and culture, conquest in not
realistic and war is just stupid and they all have big problems
that need to be addressed.

Caucasus is a problem with him.
It was something that he took over and promised to solve.

I don't think that he was anyones buddy. He came from the security service and is intent on restoring the honor that his country once had.
If one looks at this from only within the southern part of North America then we are missing a lot of what is happening.

He is nobody's buddy.
Mother Russia will not allow treason.

One has to look at this as if you were the leader of the country. What would you do to bring your country back to where you could protect it.

Just try it. Put yourself in that position.
As for the other countries, they do exist and are taking similar action to survive.

He has existed for some time in a situation where he has
had to pretend to be the US' friend despite our best efforts to
provoke him, surround him, threaten him, and dismantle Russia as
a major geo-strategic opponent.

What I am interested in here is he seems to feel at this point that
he can remove the mask and talk back. He has talked tough to both
the US and Pakistan in the last day or so. I think this may be in
part because of his problem in the Caucasus. It is the first time
in a long time I have heard this sort of jingo rhetoric from a
Russian leader, and there is nothing like an external threat to
unify a people behind the government, at least that's the theory.

Edit: or at least from Putin, he has always been very restrained.

Him one has to look back into his experience. From what we are told he was in the secret service.
He came on the scene as an unknown.
He came to Texas ready to ride horses and sat in a four wheeler.
To me it seems like he is able to subjugate his personal feelings for his objective. To an outsider it seems like he is calling on the population to stand up for the country.
Not withstanding that they have just removed the security of health and pensions from an obligation of the state.
It seems like a typical case of people trying to stand up for their county. He seems to be utilizing that for the best that he can. It is not a question of standing up to someone, it was only a question of how long would it take.
Don't think that China, India and all others don't realize that the new world order allows pre-emptive strikes.

He was plucked out of obscurity to stop the dissolution of the
Russian empire and restore it to some semblance of former
greatness. He is a Russian patriot, a Russian nationalist,
and was no doubt picked for his perceived competence and loyalty.

He has done a rather good job in some respects, but has not shown
any great creativity or ability to think outside the box. Like
BushCo and Sharon he seems to have an unfortunate tendency to use
violence as a first choice in solving problems. This is a very
bad trait.

His problem is similar to the problem that any leader of the USA
will face at this point. He leads a decadent and corrupt empire
in decline, and the decline in both countries stems from decades,
a half-century or more, of corrupt and self-serving rule by an
insulated and narrowly educated elite.

He is in a no-win situation now with respect to the Caucasus, as
the US is in Iraq, as the US was in VietNam, as the USSR was in
Afghanistan.

I do think Russia is in a better position than the US, some of the
trauma of imperial dissolution is behind them; but we have most of it
still ahead of us here.

It is worth noting that the conflict between the Russians and
the steppe and mountain tribes has been going on for centuries
if not millenia.

This pre-emption think is the soup de jour for politicians much to our dismay and others suffering...

:scared:

What one could easily guess slips out every now and then. Putin knows very well how far he can trust Bush but he does not often show his hand , but especially not his pique. Sure he can spout out against the Iraq War and be consistent with Russian policy. But removing the oil tycoon, clamping down on the media and certain heated comments aimed at DC shows the old spymaster has some very clear idea of the nature of Bushco and its "friendship" and intentions.

There are many root causes of the terrorism that people finally unite against and deplore(without going after the roots). One of the chief causes is precisely the Bush gang and its ilk, in direct and systemic ways just by their very nature if not direct intention.