Our Deaf President

Bush went to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. There, he received a message from the Russian president: the push to offer Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership was crossing Russia's "red lines," according to an administration official close to the talks. ....

"We have probably failed to understand that the Russians are really quite serious when they say, 'We have interests and we're going to defend them,' " said James Collins, United States ambassador to Russia from 1997 to 2001. "Russia does have interests, and at some point they're going to stand up and draw lines that are not simply to be ignored."

Like all that is a shock. George Bush is an ignoramus. Richard Cheney is an unrepentant ideologue. What happened in Georgia was entirely foreseeable by any sober and objective adult who was paying attention. There were such people in our government, but Chimpy and Vlad the Torturer do not pay attention to them.

Georgia is led by an impulsive hothead who rigs elections, which makes him sort of a cross between Chimpy and the Wrinkly White-Haired Guy. The outcome was almost self-evident, given the clear statements of the Russians and the toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance that is the Bush Administration.

And we are all being ill-served by our own government, for only a fool would trust the statements coming out of Washington as to what the current situation is in Georgia, or anywhere else, for that matter. This Administration, more than most, has demonstrated that it will blatantly lie to the American people whenever they feel the urge. Too many of the "national security" reporters for the larger outfits will just parrot those lies, for otherwise, they run the risk of losing their access to sources at Ft. Fumble.

If you want to know what is truly going on, you are going to have to invest the time to learn the nuances of a situation and read a lot of different publications. It shouldn't have to be that way; our own press should be doing this sort of heavy lifting, that's supposedly their job. But it is clear that sort of detailed analysis is not going to be available until the books come out, months or years later.