Bush and Putin

[Guest BDC]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/28/...a.tm/index.html

 

George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush's four-day, three-city tour of Europe.

 

But when Bush talked about the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs?

 

Bush was openmouthed.

 

"Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather," says a senior Administration official. "It was like something out of 1984."

 

The Russians did not let the matter drop. Later, during the leaders' joint press conference, one of the questioners Putin called on asked Bush about the very same firings, a coincidence the White House assumed had been orchestrated.

 

The odd episode reinforced the Administration's view that Putin's impressions of America are often based on urban myths fed to him by ill-informed aides. (At a past summit, according to Administration aides, Putin asked Bush whether it was true that chicken producers split their production into plants that serve the U.S. and lower-quality ones that process substandard chicken for Russia.)

 

U.S. aides say that to help fight against this kind of misinformation, they are struggling to build relationships that go beyond Putin.

 

"We need to go deeper into the well into other levels of government," explains an aide.

 

I would like to believe that other countries are a little more informed than this. I'd expect it out of some posters around here, but the Russian Prime Minister?

 

Anyway, discuss.

[Justice]

I think it's obvious now that INXS is actually Putin in disguise.

[2GOLD]

I think it's obvious now that INXS is actually Putin in disguise.

 

Ouch. That's an insult even to Putin.

[Guest MikeSC]

Yet people call Bush the dumb one.

 

Odd.

 

And hearing dictator-to-be Putin criticizing anybody is comical.

-=Mike

[tommytomlin]

I can't believe the guy with his finger on the button doesn't keep up with the right-wing blogs.

[2GOLD]

Someone should have informed Putin that Rather was fired for being a piss poor reporter.

 

I like seeing the quotes from lots of reporters talking about how Dan Rather was easily the laziest man they ever encountered and were shocked he lasted this long without being canned. It's beautiful.

 

Guys like Dan Rather make me glad I decided to take the lower paying sports reporter job than the sell your soul for a buck news reporter job.

[kkktookmybabyaway]

Putin was probably surprised our government has let Rather live...

[Hogan Made Wrestling]

World's Biggest Hypocrites:

 

1a. Vladimir Putin

1b. George W. Bush

1c. Jacques Chirac

[Guest MikeSC]

Do I dare ask what Bush is hypocritical about?

-=Mike

[Dobbs 3K]

The rest of the world actually thinks George W. Bush has dictatorial-like powers, because their media distorts things, and the liberal side of our own media makes him out to be a lying war-monger. George W. Bush is a lot of things, and I didn't vote for him, but he's not a dictator and the US government definitely doesn't control the media (of course they influence some of the pundits, etc, but that's not what we're talking about).

 

The rest of the world makes the US out to be the devil, so that their own people don't think the governments they live under are so bad.

[Hogan Made Wrestling]

Do I dare ask what Bush is hypocritical about?

-=Mike

Free trade is the most obvious thing.

[DerangedHermit]

The rest of the world actually thinks George W. Bush has dictatorial-like powers, because their media distorts things, and the liberal side of our own media makes him out to be a lying war-monger. George W. Bush is a lot of things, and I didn't vote for him, but he's not a dictator and the US government definitely doesn't control the media (of course they influence some of the pundits, etc, but that's not what we're talking about).

Yeah, they definitely give him too much credit. Bush is just inept, not really evil.

[Dobbs 3K]

Anyone who actually thinks Bush is evil is cracked. I think he does have good intentions most of the time, but the ways he has gone about initiating his policies has been, as you said, inept...and I think it has cost the US credibility in the world. Whether that matters is another debate entirely.

[Guest MikeSC]

I actually think Bush has done almost as much good for the world as Reagan has. You can't ignore the changes sweeping the Middle East right now --- and Bush is the one who triggered ALL of that.

-=Mike

[Zorin Industries]

I'd say its still way to early to judge that Mike

[Guest MikeSC]

I'd say its still way to early to judge that Mike

As things stand, he brought democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Lebanon is tossing Syria out. Egypt is taking the first rudimentary steps towards democracy. Ditto Arabia.

 

Things could end up collapsing, true. But what Bush has started cannot be easily ignored.

-=Mike

[Vyce]

I'm pretty much in the "it's too early to tell" camp myself, since everything that's happening is still tenuous and could fall apart at the drop of a hat. And even what we have now is not truly a "success", YET, because Afghanistan is still a shithole, Iraq seems to be on the "right" track but has a hell of a lot of growing pains to go through before it's a stable democracy, Syria ain't out of Lebanon just yet and the reforms in Egypt aren't near what they REALLY should be.

 

All of that said, if everything does click into place? BAD for Democrats. Bush really will have a legacy much like Reagan, in that everyone said his methods were wrong until those same methods yielded exactly the results that he promised they would.