No, a radar blip on the radar screen that can be distingushed between sea return and a patrol boat ... ala 1964.

Which was a sad day in American history, but enlisted men just fight em ... The higher ups start em.

Well, lets hope that "blip" will not be the beginning of a other sad day for American history. :hmm:

No offence taken

Putin doesn't need to make fools of 'our self' as I believe the American leadership has that ground firmly covered :/\\x:

Very good point, and I'd like to make it a point for distinguishing Putin (and why he's liked in his country, quite aside from "cult of personality") - I see the US conservatives acting largely out of principles and idealism, whereas Putin tends to act pragmatically and with concern for specific & real (rather than ideological) interests.

Again, though I'm not a fan of Putin, I sincerely wish we could have a world where pragmatic forces seek a balance than a world of great ideological struggles between "good and evil" that the American leadership is trying to build a frenzy around. This is why I think Putin is very right in that speech. :hmm:

Putin can't really be accused of personality cult. If we took the usual criteria used for actual valid accusations, some of them would fit, but I think there are two fundamental conditions without which a personality is not a valid target for the accusation:

1. To hinder or to have hindered communism.
2. To actually be a ruling personality, to become a King.

Putin fits neither. He's not doing anything to hinder communism and as far as I'm aware he's not planning to remain personally in power forever, nor does all power concentrates on his person.

True, it's a paradox. He's the most popular Russian politician ever, or at least appears to be, or we believe him to be, or all of them were, while he's not using this popularity to perpetuate his person on power. But that's of the nature of the accusation itself. Somebody has to sit in the head chair and he'll have a name and will be a person, like him or not.

Thus my use of it in quotations (it was brought up in the thread before).

You're quite right, except that I should note that Russians are quite used to having one choice of leader so I wouldn't say his popularity is massively out of proportion (paradoxical though it may be, many Soviet-era leaders were relatively popular; Yeltsin, perhaps Russia's worst leader ever, even had overwhelming popularity for the early part of his career).

But that does bring me back to the question of elections. Putin has stated that he will not be running in 2008, but then he made some rather ominous remarks that he is not planning to step away from public/political life afterwards.
My personal prediction is Ivanov, in which case I think we can safely expect him to continue along Putin's lines, and even perhaps more forcefully.

The other way of looking at things is that maybe Russia thinks that Nato hasn't any power. Say America invaded Iran? Would Nato really be able to do anything about it?

Or maybe Russia thinks that Nato is America because America is the most powerful nation in it.Therfore Nato moving into Eastern Europe is a threat to Russia.

I think that there are some good points raised here on both sides, the one thing we can't dispute is that Russia is arming up, question is why?

My God ! in the time it took me to write this you lot have gone bonkers! Page two already!

Hope it still makes sense.

I know. (where's the "attempting to hold grin" smiley?) I brought it up! :rotfl:

And when I say some criteria would fit, it is implied but perhaps it's best to make it clear that whoever sits in the leading chair will always fit into something. Even if a head of state rejects attention or attempts to hide his figure, which probably means political suicide, this would still be a display of an individual personality. The damn thing is inescapable. It goes round and round :ping: and never reaches anywhere.

Reading this thread has only reinforced my isolationist tendencies.

Where's this president again?
http://www.bvml.org/webmaster/patton.html
Shame such a president doesn't exist.

the U.S ever since it has been created needed war to survive, they were created from the civil war, they needed to "re-invent " themselves so they stay a superpower, and to stay a superpower they created their disgusting foreign policy(which i spit on:down:) and all the wars they been at, ww1,ww2, korean, vietnam, somalia, yugoslavia, cold war, gulf war 1, gulf war 2, aghanistan , "war on terror:roll::roll:" there never wudda been extremists if america wa never so violent in the first place, obviously theywudda been there but not america haters, then 9/11 never wudda happened:roll:, so i spit on NATO, UN and NAFTA, UN for being puppets and not even trying to punish america for their crimes, NATO for not trying to stop america and being puppets, and nafta for taking away jobs and giving them to lousy illegal aliens who dont have the balls to back to their country and legally get a passport.

FINALLY SOMEONE SAYS SOMETHING THAT 10000000000000~% should be U.S right now, then there wud be no kosovo crap, no tearaparts of countries, no iraq problem , no north korea proble, no iran problem etc.. all these problems go away lol :doh:

I wish my worldview was ^this ^ much fun :(

last I recall, war is what caused a majority of our national debt...

bingo!!! so heres a helpful tip stop bombing other countries, and fix ur economy
few good things come out of that

1. rest of the world doesnt hate u anymore, thus no or little terrorists left,
2. good relations with rest of world so then economic prosperity
3. economic prosperity= surplus thus better social in ur country thus less crime this better country to live in overall

then with all that extra money and little unemployment rate, concentrate on enviroment nd global warming.

thus america becomes the "dream land" again.

Lol, right on :smug:

Putin's mad and I am glad
 

A quite remarkable view on the foreign policy of the US as a Superpower...
:rotfl:

Never mind that the War of Independance was not the Civil War, never mind a couple of Zero's and Val bombers above Pearl Harbour on Dec. 7th 1941, a couple of civil air planes flown in some builings on Sept. 11, 2001 and a handfull of other historic facts.
:o

Some stupids over here in Holland still celebrate each year that those wicked Americans came over - together with British, Canadians, French and Polish troops - to occupy our country after the Second World War.
Mind you!

And 8302 of those occupiers are still here!
http://www.digitalefotosite-corenjoke.com/margraten.htm
Mind you!
:hmm: