Does Bush Know Something We Don't?

Bush today said he was "hopeful we'll have some breakthroughs -- we'll see."

But when it comes to the Putin-Bush relationship, it's pretty clear that Putin generally holds the upper hand.

Back in October, when Putin renounced his promise to give up power in 2008 -- announcing instead that he would become prime minister -- Peter Baker wrote in The Washington Post: "The prospect of Putin's remaining in charge in Moscow in whatever position after next year's Russian presidential election would cement one of the greatest U.S. foreign policy setbacks of the Bush era and could trigger a 'Who lost Russia?' debate in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. Instead of the democratic ally Bush envisioned after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Russia has become a challenge and an embarrassment for a president who made the spread of democracy a central mission of his administration."

Also in October, Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers called attention to Bush's first meeting with Putin in June 2001, when Bush declared that he'd looked in the Russian leader's eyes, found him "trustworthy" and "was able to get a sense of his soul."

Landay wrote: "Bush and his aides 'grossly misjudged Putin,' considering him 'a good guy and one of us,' said Michael McFaul of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

"The former KGB officer created that illusion partly by appearing to share Bush's political and religious convictions, standard tradecraft employed by intelligence officers to recruit spies, he said.

"'Putin . . . is a brilliant case officer,' said Carlos Pasqual, a former senior State Department official now at The Brookings Institution, a center-left policy organization in Washington."

Bush himself talked about his relationship with Putin at his Feb. 28 news conference: "[I]t makes it easier, by the way, when there's a trustworthy relationship, to be able to disagree and yet maintain common interests in other areas. And so we've had our disagreements. As you know, Putin is a straightforward, pretty tough character when it comes to his interests. Well, so am I. And we've had some head-butts, diplomatic head-butts. . . . [A]nd yet, in spite of that, our differences of opinion, we still have got a cordial enough relationship to be able to deal with common threats and opportunities."

A Defining Moment Indeed

Charles Crain writes for Time: "The Iraqi military's offensive in Basra was supposed to demonstrate the power of the central government in Baghdad. Instead it has proven the continuing relevance of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. . . .

"That apparent authority is in marked contrast to the weakness of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki."

Ross Colvin writes for Reuters: "Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's crackdown on militias in the southern oil port of Basra appears to have backfired, exposing the weakness of his army and strengthening his political foes ahead of elections.

"U.S. President George W. Bush has praised the crackdown, calling it a 'defining moment' for Iraq, but it has unleashed a wave of destabilising violence in southern Iraq and in Baghdad that risks undoing the security improvements of the past year. . . .