Goose Steps and Hip Wiggles

It was an old-fashioned Soviet-style military parade, complete with propagandist sights and sounds glorifying the Communist, totalitarian rule that terrorized citizens of Eastern Europe for so many decades.

And according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, President Bush was quite taken with it.

McClellan said that Bush considered the parade "a really dramatic moment -- he thought the architecture around Red Square was magnificent, and that the music played by the military bands was powerful. And then he talked about the old Soviet-era trucks that drove by with the World War II veterans. It was very moving. And he talked about what a proud moment that was for those veterans."

Here's the text of McClellan's gaggle aboard Air Force One on its way from Russia to Georgia.

"Q But Soviet songs were sung, and the Soviet flag marched by. What significance did it have for him, to be sitting in that square --

"MR. McCLELLAN: I think it's the way I described it. I visited with him about it, and the way I described it . . . is the way I would describe it. . . .

"Q Any squeamishness about the hammer and sickle flag, and goose-stepping soldiers and the symbols of that era?

"MR. McCLELLAN: No. I think part of this trip has been to celebrate the sacrifice of all those who helped to defeat the Nazis and to defeat fascism. But it's also been a way to look at the lessons of the past, as we move to the future. And I think that's really been the focus of the President's trip."

Peter Baker and Peter Finn write in The Washington Post: "The goose-stepping troops hoisted hammer-and-sickle banners bearing the visages of the Soviet icon Vladimir Lenin. Gray-haired veterans waved red flowers from truckbeds, their chests brimming with medals and ribbons, their faces etched with the wear and tear of hard lives. The boom of artillery fire thundered across the air and jets roared overhead.

"What Russians had never seen at a Victory Day celebration on Red Square until now, however, was an American president. . . .

"If Bush felt unease on the reviewing stand during tributes to the Red Army, he did not show it. President Bill Clinton came to Moscow for the 50th anniversary celebration in 1995 but boycotted the Red Square parade in protest of Russia's offensive in Chechnya. Bush decided to attend in a gesture to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin despite recent tension over the course of Russian democracy, White House officials said."

Steven Lee Myers and Elisabeth Bumiller write in the New York Times: "Mr. Putin expressed no contrition for the Soviet domination of Eastern and Central Europe that followed the end of World War II, as some leaders from that region had hoped he would. Instead, he said the war's legacy demonstrated the need for unity with Russia against new threats."