Sure, he's a former KGB cutthroat, but he's a laff riot!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/07/15/russia.g8/index.html?section=cnn_world

Putin makes a funnny.

 

Strategically, that wasn't a smart thing to say. How about Romania or one of those countries that gladly got out from under the Iron Curtain?

 

Romania's not the best example, either. It was pretty bloody. Czechs or Poland or even East Germany is better.
The whole colloquy is a prettty good measure of the high esteem in which our leader is held around the world.

 

What wasn't a smart thing to say?

 

The smackdown of Bush when Putin said he didn't really think he'd like to have the kind of democracy that's flourishing in Iraq right now.

 

Actually, Romania is a pretty good example of the people dealing with tyrannical despots the way they deserve to be dealt with: by fucking ventilating them.

Iraq, Cuba, N. Korea, please take note. Libya, Saudi Arabia, you too.

 

I don't think it affects Putin at all.

 

Yes. It's always a good thing when we ask other faraway people to strike for their freedom.
Look at all we did for the Kurds.
And the people most likely ro ventiliate the Saudi royals are people we don't want running that place.

 

Bush was critical of Putin for rolling back democratic reforms in Russia, for clamping down on TV, radio and newspapers, for cracking down on dissent. And Putin's point was that Dubbya hasn't done such a bang-up job of bringing democracy to civil war-ravaged Iraq, so who is he to be giving advice. THAT's how it affects Putin.

 

"I LOOKED the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul."