All were Warsaw Pact prisoners (to call them “allies” of the Soviets would be an insult to all three); all are now NATO allies that have removed Germany from any front line.

With a modernizing Polish army, and agreements to station American troops in Romania and Bulgaria, our Forward Defense is in fine shape.

Should we have some troops in Germany? Perhaps, but they are desperately needed preventing al Qaeda from coming through our porous border.

Even more troubling is that you place the blame for this Divine retribution on promiscuous women. What about the men? As the lesbians aren’t responsible for an increase in the abortion rate, one has to assume that there are an equivilent number of promiscuous men ticking off the Almighty. Why no mention of them?

Your misogyny is showing.

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin fast-tracked the transfer of power to his newly elected protege Monday and signaled the Kremlin won’t back down from its pull-no-punches anti-U.S. foreign policy or ease up on its critics at home.

President-elect Dmitry Medvedev credited his overwhelming election victory Sunday to Putin’s policies that have “so effectively been pursued in recent years.”‘

Medvedev has stressed he will pursue Putin’s foreign and domestic agenda, and in a sign that little would change, Russia squeezed natural gas supplies to Western-leaning Ukraine, and police in Moscow manhandled opposition protesters who denounced the election as a farce.

Also in Moscow, a pro-Kremlin youth group kept up criticism of the United States, a frequent target of Putin’s wrath in eight years as president. Hundreds of young people took aim at the U.S. Embassy in a march to denounce American foreign policy.

In his rhetoric, Medvedev has presented a softer image. But in his dual role as an official and simultaneously chairman of state-controlled natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom, he has helped implement Putin’s drive to give the Kremlin a near-monopoly on political power and energy resources at home and increase its clout abroad through energy supplies.

On Monday, Gazprom made good on a threat to reduce gas supplies to Ukraine in a debt dispute that Moscow says is strictly financial.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/03/news/Russia-Presidential-Election.php

http://www.spankthatdonkey.com/spankthatdonkey2/2008/3/17/why-we-shouldnt-pull-down-troops-in-germany.html

We agree on the border situation, but I think you will find this argument persuasive also.

McCain wouldn’t allow that situation to go unchallenged (or would he?)

Moscow, Feb 16 : Russia has strongly criticised US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her recent comments that Moscow was “intimidating” its post-Soviet neighbours.

“The words about intimidation from Russia are, at the very least, inappropriate,” Mikhail Kamynin, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said Friday.

Responding to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent statement that Russia could retarget its missiles against Ukraine if the former Soviet republic joined NATO, Rice said Wednesday that the “reprehensible rhetoric that is coming out of Moscow is unacceptable, and it’s not helpful to a relationship that actually has some positive aspects.”

Rice also said that the US was “devoted to the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and of other states that were once a part of the Soviet Union”.

Commenting on Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership, Putin said during a meeting with Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko in Moscow earlier this week that it was the country’s internal affair, but called on Kiev to think about the consequences of the move.

“It is terrifying even to think that in response (to Ukraine allowing anti-missile defences to be deployed on its territory) Russia could target its nuclear missile systems against Ukraine. This is what worries us,” Putin said.

http://www.newkerala.com/one.php?action=fullnews&id=23044

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2008 – A weekend incident in which a Russian bomber “buzzed” the Nimitz battle group in the Pacific raises concerns about Russia’s intent and the message it was meant to send, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress today.

Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright told the Senate Budget Committee the encounter — in which U.S. F/A-18 jets scrambled to intercept a Russian Tu-95 Bear bomber as it flew at 2,000 feet above the battle group — ended without incident but raises big questions.

U.S. forces detected two Russian Tu-95s early Feb. 9 as they flew south of Japan, U.S. Pacific Fleet officials reported. The aircraft turned inbound toward USS Nimitz, and Carrier Air Wing 11 aircraft were launched to intercept them. Four F/A-18 fighter jets intercepted and escorted the Russian aircraft until they left the Nimitz’s operating area, officials said.

In total, four Russian Tu-95 bombers were involved, a Navy spokesman said. Two remained about 500 miles east of the U.S. ships, and another orbited about 50 miles away as one Tu-95 did two low passes over the Nimitz carrier group, he said.

“Now what we are concerned about is, ‘What are the indications of this return to a Cold War mindset?’” Cartwright told the committee in response to a senator’s question. “What are the implications of that activity, and how do we best address that?”

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48943

In the face of renewed Russian provocations, I don’t think removing our troops from Europe would be a good idea right now, and hardly “Reagan-esque.” General Cartwright doesn’t seem to think so. I am stunned that Marshall favors this sort of appeasement.

After casting himself as a “Maverick” in 2000, the new John McCain is walking in lockstep with President Bush, pandering to the right wing of the Republican Party, and embracing the ideology he once denounced. On the campaign trail McCain has callously abandoned many of his previously held positions, even contradicted himself, in a blatant attempt to remake himself into a candidate Republicans can accept in 2008. So just who is the real John McCain? The Democratic National Committee will present a daily fact aimed at exposing the man behind the myth.

http://www.democrats.org/a/2008/03/mccain_myth_bus_20.php

Isn’t he a great leader and deserves to be President (NOT!)

you really believe we need U.S. troops in Germany to deter Russia?

Hint…….we dont.

A U.S. military official says that one Russian Tupolev 95 buzzed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 50 nautical miles out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

The Saturday incident, which never escalated beyond the flyover, comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over U.S. plans for a missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Such Russian bomber flights were common during the Cold War, but have been rare since.

The bombers were among four Russian Tupolev 95s launched from Ukrainka in the middle of the night, including one that Japanese officials say violated their country’s airspace over an uninhabited island south of Tokyo.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330362,00.html

“For thus saith the Lord GOD; How much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast? / Yet, behold, therein shall be left a remnant that shall be brought forth, both sons and daughters: behold, they shall come forth unto you, and ye shall see their way and their doings: and ye shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, even concerning all that I have brought upon it.”

ITS A PESTILENCE! Should we have any doubt that promiscuous women have brought ovarian cancer and breast cancer and rape upon this nation? THERE ARE 50 MILLION ABORTIONS PER DAY!! I’m amazed God hasn’t killed every first-born son yet (though quite a few are dead through abortions so maybe we did that to ourselves)!.

“And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them.”

February 11, 2008
Russia on the March: The Return of the Red Square Parades
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.

As Yogi Berra once said, “This is déjà vu all over again.” On May 9, heavy military equipment will once again roll down Moscow’s Red Square for the Victory Day military parade. Tanks, missiles, and 6,000 troops will be joined overhead by Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft and military helicopters. The last time Moscow saw such a display of military hardware on Red Square was in November 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The world should take notice of Russia’s increasing militarism. The parade is designed to generate nostalgia among the Russian people and to signal to the U.S., NATO, and Russia’s neighbors that Russia’s power is back. Most importantly, it illustrates President Vladimir Putin’s emphasis on the military and security services at the expense of modern, democratic institutions.

Putin justified Russia’s revived military muscle in his recent speech to the State Council, claiming that the new arms race has been triggered “by the world’s most developed countries”—a clear reference to the U.S. and the West. Russia’s rearmament, said Putin, is not caused by Russia but forced upon it by its adversaries. In response to this alleged challenge to Russia’s security, the Kremlin plans to produce and deploy in the next years new weapons claimed to match or best their Western equivalents. Russia will continue to research and develop revolutionary biological, nano, and information technologies with military applications. Putin also wants a new defense strategy for the Russian Armed Forces and the formation of an “innovative army” based on more professional and better trained servicemen.

Russia’s rearmament, the parade, its global maneuvers, and its new weapon systems are designed to make others respect Russia as well as deter NATO and the U.S., which Putin sees as a hegemonic superpower seeking to harm Russia. Russia wants to signal that it again has the military means to counter both perceived strategic threats, such as the U.S. missile defense system, and conventional military challenges, such as NATO expansion and the West’s superior air power. Fanfare communicates Russia’s intentions to tilt the global “correlation of forces” in Moscow’s favor and encourages Russia’s neighbors to do its bidding and not to challenge its security or its interests.

Russia is back on the world stage with all the attributes of power, including wealth and military might, for all to see. The next U.S. administration will have its hands full dealing with a resurgent Moscow.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/RussiaandEurasia/wm1805.cfm