Pootie-Poot Comes Home to Roost

"'Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike -- 100 percent,' Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying."

At yesterday's White House press briefing, spokeswoman Dana Perino said "the President is very pleased with this development."

Oops

Jonathan S. Landay writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday.

"As of late Thursday, Ankara, a NATO ally, hadn't cleared any U.S. naval vessels to steam to Georgia through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the officials said. Under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, countries must notify Turkey before sending warships through the straits. . . .

"Pentagon officials told McClatchy that they were increasingly dubious that any U.S. Navy vessels would join the aid operation, in large part because the U.S.-based hospital ships likely to go, the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, would take weeks to arrive.

"'The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank,' said a senior administration official."

My question: Why didn't he talk to anyone who knew what they were doing beforehand?

Opinion Watch

Joseph L. Galloway writes in his McClatchy Newspapers opinion column: "Only someone with a tenuous grasp on reality and a poor knowledge of history and the world could have looked into the flinty eyes of a onetime colonel in the Soviet KGB and 'found him very straightforward and trustworthy.'

"That was newly elected President George W. Bush's pronouncement in June 2001, on his first meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

"This week President Bush got another look into the eyes and soul of Putin, as did the rest of the world, as Putin sent Russian T-72 tanks and Su-25 fighter-bombers roaring into the independent neighboring state of Georgia."

Galloway concludes: "If there's any silver lining to these dark clouds, it might be that Bush and Cheney will be so preoccupied grumbling at Bush's buddy Vladimir and issuing empty threats that they won't have time to issue other threats or take some irrational action against the Iranians."

Paul J. Saunders writes in The Washington Post that Bush is being played by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili: "Throughout history, weak nations with powerful neighbors have energetically sought strong allies. . . .