I Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

The New York Times reports that John Edwards gave a speech at the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council last night, in which he stated the following…

Then, from the crowd, a question about Russia. “What Putin has done,” Mr. Edwards began, then interrupted himself.

“And I know Bush has looked into his eyes and saw his soul,” he said sarcastically. “That gave me great comfort. I wonder if he saw in his soul that he was going to completely take over the government.”

And by the way, I thought the first comment to this Times post was interesting; regardless of how everyone not belonging to the investor class is “taking it in the neck,” the weapons industry will never have a thing to worry about with the guy taking up space in the Oval Office.

Well, as it turns out, our fears about Putin have been well-founded, since our ol’ buddy Vlad has now decided not to abide by the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, as noted here…

The 1990 arms control treaty set limits on the deployment of heavy conventional weapons by NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, to ease tensions along the border between the old Eastern bloc and Western Europe. The treaty was revised in 1999 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia ratified the updated treaty in 2004, but the United States and other NATO members have refused to follow suit, saying Moscow first must fulfill obligations to withdraw forces from Georgia and from Moldova's separatist region of Trans-Dniester.

Hmmm, 1990 was when the original treaty was signed? That fell during the administration of Dubya’s dad, as I recall (revised under Clinton in ’99, of course). And is it naïve of me to wonder why we tried to use the Conventional Forces treaty as leverage in pursuing the issue of Russian troop withdrawal, which appears to be an entirely other matter?

Even though “no one could have foreseen this,” Putin’s actions should come as no surprise given our ridiculous pursuit of a missile defense shield in Europe over his objections, as well as Vlad’s own disposition to act as a potentate anyway.

And just for good measure, we also have a disagreement with Russia now involving the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, since Vlad and his pals believe that we’ve managed to hurt the election-monitoring mission of the OSCE and thus interfere with monitoring State Duma elections Sunday (I have to admit that I’m not inclined to believe Bushco on much of anything, but Vlad’s protestations sound weak here - I'll update this if I learn anything further).

Oh, and did I mention that China is also mad at us because we honored the Dalai Lama and recently sold arms to Taiwan (here)?

Actually, is there a country out there that likes us at this point?

And gee, ya’ think the Iraq war has something to do with it also (and the fine folks at Think Progress have more on that here).

And by the way (on another matter), though I support Edwards of course, he did not distinguish himself on bankruptcy legislation while serving in the Senate (Chris Dodd, though, is substantially better, as noted here). However, I believe Edwards has come around on this because there is no way he could do otherwise given his campaign rhetoric; call me what you want and believe what you will, but that’s where I stand (and by the way, as important as legitimate bankruptcy "reform" is, made necesssary by that horrible law, health coverage is more important, and Edwards has another good idea here).