Diplomacy Is The Art Of Saying "Nice Doggie...

...until you can find the Nameless One to shoot the dog."(h/t Hullabaloo)

In his address to the conference of global political and business leaders, Cheney issued a strong rebuke of Russia. He described Moscow's actions in the conflict with Georgia as an "affront to civilized standards," and called on Western nations to jointly prevent Russia from using its position as a dominant energy supplier to intimidate its neighbors.

He also spoke of Russian arms sales to hostile Mideast nations, saying Moscow "has sold advanced weapons to regimes in Syria and Iran. Some of the Russian weapons sold to Damascus have been channeled to terrorist fighters in Lebanon and Iraq."

According to the Israeli daily Maariv, Cheney touched on the same theme during talks with the Israeli President Shimon Peres, also attending the conference.

With the election seven weeks away, Condi Rice and her State Department realist pussies aren't being allowed anywhere near the Georgia crisis. This is alllllll the Dickster, as Fourthbranch desperately tries to build us a fourth war (in case the attack on Iran by Israel takes longer than expected). Also, if you're wondering what's going on in Georgia in general, here's a good article on the basics.

It is difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against US wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a huge breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the deployments of Russian forces or knew of them but—along with the Georgians—miscalculated Russia's intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when its military was in shambles and its government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s and 1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that they would not risk the consequences of an invasion.

If that was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: the Russians had changed dramatically, along with the balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia, and the United States and Europe could not meaningfully respond. They did not view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no force to counter them. Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well—indeed, the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans need the Russians more than the Russians need the Americans. Moscow's calculus was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been building up to it for months, and they struck.

Just like Iraq, "we didn't expect the situation on the ground to go like that, etc." Plausible deniablilty is a wonderful thing 3 months before a Presidential election, yes?