Rice: Russian Reaction To U.S.-Polish Missile Shield Agreement Bizarre

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that Russia's reaction to the U.S.-Polish missile shield agreement "borders on the bizarre" but denied Washington wanted a confrontation with Moscow.

"I hope that there are not people in Russia who are hankering for the days of U.S.-Soviet confrontation because they are over," Rice told journalists in Warsaw after signing an agreement to base 10 U.S. interceptor rockets in Poland. "The Cold War is over."

Asked about a Russian general's threat to target Poland with nuclear weapons because of the anti-missile defence system, Rice said she understood why NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had denounced the remark as "pathetic rhetoric."

"What the secretary general was referring to is fulminating about how you're going to attack Poland because there are 10 interceptors aimed at long-range threats of the future from countries like Iran when you've been offered all kinds of measures to demonstrate" that the missiles are not aimed at Russia, Rice said. "(It) just borders on the bizarre

n an interview with CNN, Rice said Russia knows NATO has a commitment and obligation to defend Poland.

"They (Russia) must know that the United States would never permit an attack on the territory of an ally under Article 5," said Rice, referring to part of the North Atlantic Treaty that says an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.

The Russian Foreign Ministry later announced on its website that Moscow would react to the U.S.-Polish anti-missile deal "not only through diplomatic protests."

MORE...

REUTERS: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1013743.html

and accompanying radar installation for Cuba, then setup seismographs to record the US reaction.

You mean like claiming you need missles in Poland to protect Europe from Iran?

As one whose childhood was eradicated by a Soviet leader from Georgia named Stalin, I have learned to look twice as hard and twice as deep at anything that involves Georgia. Doing so, sure enough, I find that the facts point to the shyster qualities of this administration-- to be extended by a McCain Administration-- and, once again it is overwhelmed by events. Cheaters at checkers cannot compete with deep and sharp players at chess, playing clean or dirty. Bush had encouraged Olmert to attack Lebanon, making a grant of the extra welfare Israel was begging for conditional on it. Similarly, encouraged by Republicans-- especially from Arizona-- whose political careers typically ended switching to influence peddling as foreign-agent lobbyists, similarly encouraged Shakasvilli, for remittance of course, to attack South Ossetia, assuring him that the Bush Administration would exploit the crisis supporting his military venture. A State Dept. run by an inattentive and incompetent bunch of hacks (starting from the top) was totally blindsided by these shenanigans while the Pentagon fished in troubled waters arming Georgia's puny army. I am told six American "advisers" died in this operation. When we invaded Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, invaded Afghanistan, we not only had no plan but no sense of where all these invasions would take us. Now we are with the bulk of our soldiers and reserves spread out in hopeless ventures as if ours was the dying Roman Empire. Corrupt neocons that are nothing but war profiteers are bellowing for more arms in support of war industries that got rich making killing machines and stand to go belly-up if we do not return to Cold War level defense spending. All these dominate McCain, so much so that his "mender" Sen. Lieberman stands at his side whispering in his ear his to be spoken words. And all the while, since Hurricane Katrina, everything this administration that McCain would extend has tackled it completely fumbled, leaving us a Third World nation straddled with insurmountable debt to potential enemies like China. The time has come to end the "vacation from complexity," as EJ Dionne so aptly called the Bush years, and must elect able nimble young futuristic minds to the Presidency so that the generation that has to clean up the mess this generation made can take over. Every problem we are tangled in to date has a Bill Clinton-George Bush over-simplicity to the point of idiocy origin. We should demand more scholarship and expertise that can do complex calculus, not mire us in the consequences of self serving profit oriented "entrepreneurial" arithmetic. We keep setting up new self serving rules of international behavior to suit us and blanketed under the rubric "democracy." Yet it is simple gangsterism (that we would not have accepted from others) that we practiced because we avoid national engagement in meaningful dialog. Dialog, however, is not what hedonic Viagra toxified middle aged boomers searching for get quick schemes are willing to do. From drugs in youth to the new "miracle drug," Viagra, the boomers will vote for anyone who promises that , like Alfred E. Newman, the MAD Magazine character, that they can say: "What, me worry?" Yes, we must worry so long as we old farts decide who rules using only our animalistic limbic brain through which we refuse to accept that we have AGED IRRESPONSIBLE. Georgia may well be our last warning. If we keep pirouetting 180 degrees to excuse our bullying without recognizing our utter self-contradictions, we will call forth the Chinese and Russian dogs of war-- two peoples who outnumber and may well soon outgun us as we go broke drunk on consumerism. If we put America in hock buying trinkets and fuel for our materialist middle-aged bacchanals, we are in no position to threaten war against our bankers. Georgia is a fulcrum where we answer whether we allow small weak and non-productive makeshift states to become our surrogate war starters. We did it with Israel, we are now doing it with Georgia. But Europe will not let NATO be the third tool of our Viagra. We will find ourselves scared bravura bluffers, alone and all bark and no bite other than nuclear holocaust. Before it's too late, let's turn America over to the younger America generation that will have to save it if it doesn't want to be doomed by our boomer generation. The Georgia Crisis is our LAST warning.

...paranoid, or (most likely) simply having a hissy fit because they haven't gotten over the fact that Eastern Europe is no longer their bitch.

...

"The radar station in the Czech Republic can 'screen' virtually the entire European part of our country, while the long-range antimissiles to be deployed in Poland do not have, and won't have in the foreseeable future, any other targets than the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles," the ministry said in a statement.

"It is obvious to us, and the American leadership does not deny this, that the so-called third launch area of the U.S. missile defense system in Europe will be expanded and modernized. Russia in this case will have to respond and will not limit itself to diplomatic demarches," it said.

...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/21/content_9563287.htm

I'm sure they can put Alaska under a "screen" two. *YAHN*

capabilities and a military port in Syria.

Just turn your ear towards israel, then talk to me about 'whiny crybabies' as it will be so.

why do they keep insisting it's more than a vidoegame? It's been proven fake how many times now, I guess they just go to the next village/state/nation & try to sell their vaporware there.

geesh

:scared:

Great column by Tom Friedman in today's New York Times on this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/20friedman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I wish them luck

Condi needs to go crawl back in her hole. Now....where are my razor blades???? :evilgrin:

If she said the her occupying cabinet level jobs borders on the bizarre, she might have a point. But then we have President George W. Bush, a concept that doesn't border on the bizarre but epitomizes it.

Since anyone with 2 brain cells should be easily able to figure out exactly how and why Russia reacted as she did.

DUHHHHH, condi!