Personally i dont really want to do this...i think russia is in cohoots with the chinese and shit....i think russia thinks they got us by the titty and will pressure us into this...do yall think bush accepts or declines the proposal?

6/7/2007 11:46:01 PM

this is how the mig fighter jets got their engines at the end of WWII

thanks a lot britain

6/7/2007 11:55:39 PM

without knowing the details....

engagement has always proved to be better then isolation.



[Edited on June 8, 2007 at 1:43 AM. Reason : ]

6/8/2007 1:41:44 AM

We'll probably go along with this as a matter of symbolism. Yes, the Russians may get a bit of a boost in anti-ballistic missile technology, but seriously, unless they turn around and sell countermeasures they've developed for it to the Iranians, we don't have much to worry about.

As America likes to point out, both of us have so many nuclear missiles that we could easily overwhelm any shield when we press the red button.

6/8/2007 12:22:35 PM

^ You'll have to excuse me if reassurances by someone with a pinko-commie name like RedGuard don't help.

6/8/2007 12:58:49 PM

Quote :

"i think russia is in cohoots with the chinese and shit"

Doubtful, the Chinese and the Russians have rarely gotten along.

The interesting thing about Russia, is that it is one of the few large / developed countries to still live in the 20th century concept of a nation-state. The real reason for our thawing relationships with former Asian enemies isn't a meeting of two countries, but the meeting of corperations and the potential for profit. Russia seems to see economic prosperity as a path towards political / military strength and not as a goal in and of itself.

6/8/2007 4:35:23 PM

what was the Tom Clancy book about Russian/Chinese conflict? 'The Bear and the Dragon' i think?

Great book...fiction but still a great read, i enjoyed it.

6/8/2007 4:55:45 PM

they are both communist and china devalues their money and pirates all our movies and stuff

lol...i consider russia a communist state again

6/8/2007 4:58:18 PM

If I were Putin, I'd be pretty embarrassed.

If I'm understanding this correctly, we're basically letting them in on technology they're unable to develop so that they won't have a tantrum?

Lame.

6/8/2007 4:59:44 PM

seems like bush kinda ducked giving a definitive answer on it today and went to poland to thank them for letting us put them here

[Edited on June 8, 2007 at 5:22 PM. Reason : i think russia pointing nukes at europe trumps us putting a 10 missles there]

6/8/2007 5:18:47 PM

Quote :

"they are both communist"

Hardly. While China's government is ostensibly communist, its economic system is anything but.

6/8/2007 5:34:32 PM

whats it really matter? Any real ballistic missile attacks would overwhelm the missile shield anyways. The whole damn thing is just another big waste of money. Plus, were supposedly not putting the missiles in to guard against russian attacks, so why not let them in? That might be just the thing to de-thaw some of the tensions between us and them as of late.

6/9/2007 1:19:54 AM

i havent heard about this in the news since the day it came out

looks like thats a no mr putin

6/11/2007 5:29:10 PM

Just what we need, spend $texas on building more missles to help blow people up, yay, when this money could be used to help the american people. typical neo-con policy. I am definitly no socialist but neo-cons bitch about spending on social programs like welfare but have no problem wasting a shit ton of money stupid over the top military projects.

Do not get me wrong I agree with keeping our actual troops well equipped and R&D projects to develop tactical equipment that will be utilized in the field. However, shit like the bottomless pit for funding "antimissle" and other star wars projects seems like a waste. The cold war is over. If anything some towel head is going to sneak a nuke across the border and blow it up. Not hide some inter-continental ballistic missile in a sand dune waiting for the right time to launch

6/11/2007 6:28:53 PM

Quote :

"Plus, were supposedly not putting the missiles in to guard against russian attacks, so why not let them in? That might be just the thing to de-thaw some of the tensions between us and them as of late."

pretty much my opinion

I'd much rather have them as an ally in the 21st century

6/11/2007 6:50:49 PM

good i hope he points nukes at europe...makes him look worse in the situation

6/11/2007 6:57:58 PM

Waste of money. Russia probably already has nukes pointed at them anyway.

6/11/2007 6:59:01 PM

maybe we should just go back to the cold war mentality of "I can build more nukes then you"

First one to have enough missles to destroy the world and every living thing on it 100 times is the winner.

[Edited on June 11, 2007 at 7:06 PM. Reason : l]

6/11/2007 7:06:16 PM

If I were Russia I would just let the US spend it self to death instead of complaining.

6/11/2007 7:07:35 PM

it won't happen

1) would compromise our anti-missile defense technology
2) azerbaijan is too close to Iran and the radar would lose sight of the missiles long before they could be aquired by the our defenses in Poland

On a personal note:
3) Putin is one of the biggest authoritarian power craving fuckwads I've ever seen and I would love to surround his country with democracies touting anti-missile defense systems, not because they would work, but because it would piss him off

hopefully he doesn't estonia my computer

6/11/2007 11:50:05 PM

1. Russia knows that the missile defense won't do a damn thing to counter their arsenal
2. They know that most people don't know or care about that
3. They know the US is desperate to get ABM in place because the Bush admin is monomaniacal about "rogue states"
4. Because of 2, they know they can raise a big stink about it and make it look like the US is violating the spirit if of nuclear disarmament
5. They know if they make enough of a stink, they can get concessions
6. Hence, they can get concessions for free without giving anything up (because 1 is true)

Russia would simply be stupid to pass up an opportunity to gain riskless profits like this. I would hope we would do the same if the positions were reversed.

In fact, our counter to their maneuvering is to try to make russian rights an issue. We are hoping that it can become a bargaining chip that we can use to trade for ABM. That way, both sides can "give up" on something they don't actually care about anyway (America on Russian rights and Russia on weak American ABM).

Unfortunately for us, the rights issue isn't gaining any traction.

[Edited on June 12, 2007 at 12:57 AM. Reason : sf]

6/12/2007 12:42:49 AM

Quote :

"do yall think bush accepts or declines the proposal?"

Accepts. Bush is not mentally strong enough to handle hardcore diplomacy. I hope his advisors talk him out of it but most of them have left in the past couple years and he's probably surrounded by yes-men. Case in point, Condoleeza Rice is Secretary of State. When Condi tries to do a Kissinger, gets on an aircraft to "get the deal", has she ever actually "got the deal"? Read this article. It shows how absolutely inept we are at playing hardball with the Russians. I took out the summarizing quote.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18945566/site/newsweek/

Quote :

"Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conventional wisdom in Washington has been that a new cold war wasn’t possible because the vast ideological differences that separated America and Russia no longer existed. But is that so true any longer? Once an eager student of Washington’s free-market, democratic reforms, the Russia of today has become another beast entirely, says a senior Bush administration official. The Putin government has come to operate by the rules of a new form of fascism, a blend of open markets and state control. And don’t try to talk to elite Russians about the glories of democracy any more: they’ve had their earful of advice from America. But perhaps nothing is more worrisome than the current clash represented by Bush’s missile shield and Putin’s countertest. Russia is “slowly becoming a revisionist power, seeking to revisit the settlements of ’89 to ’91” that ended the cold war, the official said. “That’s an unsettling thought.” Among these: the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty limiting troops and weapons in Europe. This is, sadly, a shift in the post-cold war world that is becoming all too familiar. Compared to a decade or so ago, the belief in the messianic power of democracy and markets has reached a new low. Bush has helped the trend along by allowing Iraq to disintegrate from a would-be model into a morass, turning the country into perhaps the most powerful example of democracy’s drawbacks since the Weimar Republic, and by hypocritically embracing the rhetoric of democracy while giving big hugs to its most flagrant detractors, like Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Not only Russia but China—Washington’s other great cold war rival—has pressed the idea of an alternative model on the world (Beijing has shown, at least for the moment, that you can have a booming market economy with totalitarian rule). "

[Edited on June 12, 2007 at 10:25 AM. Reason : .]

6/12/2007 10:21:31 AM

Quote :

"The Putin government has come to operate by the rules of a new form of fascism, a blend of open markets and state control."

I thought authoritarian governments with open markets are the US's favorites. As long as we get good business deals and can invest in their economy who gives a fuck about any human rights abuses by the government. Unless of course it is Iraq, then we must invade to liberate the Iraqi people.

6/12/2007 10:34:58 AM

Just because Putin actually punishes Russia's 'Enron' type thieves instead of giving them a slap on the wrist like the US does doesn't mean he is oppressing anyone.

6/12/2007 2:14:05 PM

yeah we tend to show favoritism to corporate leaders guilty of white collar crimes affecting finances of 1000's of people.

Clinton even pardoned some of them!


[Edited on June 12, 2007 at 2:36 PM. Reason : l]

6/12/2007 2:34:34 PM

^^ummm you should read up a little on putin and russia these days. it's a little more than him punishing corporate criminals.

6/12/2007 2:36:52 PM

^ exactly

6/12/2007 3:25:55 PM

^^^^wow

6/12/2007 8:52:52 PM

both....?

perhaps offer to assist russia in developing them for their protection from china/n. korea? (one or two sites?)

6/13/2007 10:10:04 AM

i must say i'm pleased with the way bush handled this whole situation

6/13/2007 11:22:49 AM

...russian police

harsh, but fair

6/13/2007 3:51:22 PM