Obama to tell Putin: Time to move past Cold War

[warpig]

My Way News - Obama to tell Putin: Time to move past Cold War


WASHINGTON (AP) - Days from his first Moscow summit, President Barack Obama declared Thursday that former Russian President Vladimir Putin "still has a lot of sway" in his nation and needs an in-person reminder the Cold War is over.


On next week's trip, Obama will meet not only with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev but with Putin, the prime minister who hand-picked Medvedev as his successor. Said Obama: "I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated. ... Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."






this should be good..............

[Bucks]

Yeah, you tell'm BO, just like you told the G-20 nations;

Sarkozy and his main ally, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, did not risk confronting the United States head-on at the summit, as they had threatened to do.

They got their way in blocking U.S. President Obama's demand for yet another $1 trillion-plus global economic stimulus plan to pump demand back into the world system.

However, Sarkozy and Merkel did agree to pump $1 trillion in funds from the major national governments into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to boost world trade.

It remains to be seen if that will do any good. The World Bank's general record has been very poor over the decades.

And none of Obama's trillion-dollar nostrums have worked so far.

Obama, G20 claim success; joblessness up - UPI.com

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I think BO would wet himself if he had to staredown Putin.
And Putin knows this.

[Volk]

We have to keep one foot in the "old ways of doing business". The west hasn't kept its promises to us on things like NATO expansion (and is supporting our more aggressive neighbor, Georgia- I'd hate to see what Saakashvili would think he could do with no consequences if he got into NATO), and Yeltsin basically bowed down to them. This is one of the things that makes Putin so popular.

[ping]

We have to keep one foot in the "old ways of doing business". The west hasn't kept its promises to us on things like NATO expansion (and is supporting our more aggressive neighbor, Georgia- I'd hate to see what Saakashvili would think he could do with no consequences if he got into NATO), and Yeltsin basically bowed down to them. This is one of the things that makes Putin so popular.

That whole incident when Russia invaded Georgia was Georgia's fault?

[Volk]

That whole incident when Russia invaded Georgia was Georgia's fault?

Yea. Why don't you show me a reliable source that says it wasn't Georgia who started the invasion, because NATO officials, OSCE monitors, and an investigative commission from the EU all agree that Georgia started the conflict and there is nothing to back up Saakashvili's claims that Russia invaded first.

On 8 September Dana Rohrabacher (a senior Republican member of the United States House of Representatives) Foreign Affairs Committee, argued at a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, according to The Daily Telegraph, that "the Georgians had initiated the recent military confrontation in the on-going Russian-South Ossetian conflict", citing unidentified U.S. intelligence sources. Further, Telegraph reported that "Mr. Rohrabacher insisted that Georgia was to blame", citing him: "The Georgians broke the truce, not the Russians, and no amount of talk of provocation and all this other stuff can alter that fact."

[ping]

Yea. Why don't you show me a reliable source that says it wasn't Georgia who started the invasion, because NATO officials, OSCE monitors, and an investigative commission from the EU all agree that Georgia started the conflict and there is nothing to back up Saakashvili's claims that Russia invaded first.

To be honest I wasn't sure who started it. All I know is the media over here says it was Russia but you can't always trust the media which is why I asked you.

[Volk]

To be honest I wasn't sure who started it. All I know is the media over here says it was Russia but you can't always trust the media which is why I asked you.

Oh. Well the media at the start of the war mostly made it seem as if Russia had started it, but investigations later by all of these organizations and intelligence agencies came to the general consensus that Georgian troops did start it. Shortly after it began Saakashvili said he was "restoring constitutional order" in the republic (as in, he was doing a full invasion to bring it back under his control). Saakashvili probably thought that our government wouldn't dare retaliate against a US ally. Now he's done nothing but hurt both of our economies, make the regions irrecoverable for Georgia, and give Russia two new proxy states to base troops in. Tanks can get from the South Ossetian border at Leningor to the Georgian capital in around an hour, if I remember correctly.

[ping]

Oh. Well the media at the start of the war mostly made it seem as if Russia had started it, but investigations later by all of these organizations and intelligence agencies came to the general consensus that Georgian troops did start it. Shortly after it began Saakashvili said he was "restoring constitutional order" in the republic (as in, he was doing a full invasion to bring it back under his control). Saakashvili probably thought that our government wouldn't dare retaliate against a US ally. Now he's done nothing but hurt both of our economies, make the regions irrecoverable for Georgia, and give Russia two new proxy states to base troops in. Tanks can get from the South Ossetian border at Leningor to the Georgian capital in around an hour, if I remember correctly.

Makes you wonder why the US would back Georgia on this. Is there an attempt to encirlce Russia?

[Volk]

Makes you wonder why the US would back Georgia on this. Is there an attempt to encirlce Russia?

We see NATO working towards membership for the Ukraine and Georgia as an attempt to encircle us.

The US backed Georgia partly I think because our response was "disproportionate", since we held parts of Georgia proper for a while after kicking them out of the two separatist republics, I suppose. In my view it was necessary or else they would have just amassed troops on the border and done a counter-counter attack. They tried multiple times to capture Tskhinval, the capital of South Ossetia.

By 11 p.m. on Friday night, the Georgians had retreated for a second time.
Later, "we tried to enter Tskhinvali again, a third time," Kezerashvili said. "But when we entered, we got a very heavy attack. What the officers are telling me is that it was something like hell."

They were ordered to retreat to Gori, which is in Georgia proper, on August tenth. After that there was not really any more actual armed combat, but Russian forces continued to push forward and Georgian troops retreated without fighting until the 12th when the war ended.