“Not An Easy Time”
That’s the symbol of the Strategic Rocket Forces [Ракетные войска стратегического назначения]. I spent a lot of time watching their Soviet version. They weren’t quite as good as US capabilities, but close counts in nuclear weapons.
If the our so-called “Soviet expert” and Secretary of State keeps it up, we may find the SRF back in the news in a big way. Nobody knows if or when the Iranians will have nuclear weapons, but the SRF already controls the second largest number of such weapons on the planet.
While it is disheartening to hear “No breakthrough for US and Russia” it is very unsettling to hear “US to ignore Russia missile fears“.
Condoleezza Rice cannot be unaware that there are Russian words for irony [ирония] and hypocrisy [лицемерие]. She should certainly know better than to complain that Putin shares the Shrubbery’s views on the “unitary executive”. The only difference is that Putin decided to grab the energy wealth for the Russian government, while the Shrubbery wants it to go to Big Oil.
Basing missiles in Poland without having Russia on-board with the idea displays an incredible lack of diplomatic skill and unnecessarily increases tension in the world.
4 comments
I think you can count on complete incompetence when it comes to the Bush government. I would say an expectation that they might actually engage the Russians and do something that would benefit us both is pretty naive.
OT but from some of your comments it would seem we served in allied positions in the military. I was a CTM mostly doing HFDF but spent a lot of my time in ComSec. I worked with a lot of DLI types and since most of my time was in the Middle East we had Hebrew and Arabic as our main tasking but there was alway as Russian linguist on watch just in case. I left in 73 so you might have been later. Just wondering.
Putin is not exactly Mr. Subtle, and doesn’t require a lot of stroking, but these people seem to go out of their way to annoy the Russians.
OT: I was in 1966-74 as a Russian linguist and analyst. Because of the analyst part I pulled some TDYs that had little to do with the Soviets, other than a check on possible activity.
I had my intermediate and advanced Russian at DLI, basic at Indiana University.
We had a Navy slot at my squadron on Rhein-Main.
FWIW, there was a guy on the flight to Paris seated a couple of rows ahead and on the other side of the aisle from me who seems to have met Bush’s parrot-girl. At least he had plenty of pictures of him and her at the same conference-y shindig that he was showing to one of his seatmates for the best part of half an hour.
She seems to have time for everything except Congressional hearings and her job.
OT: regarding your latest post on the recently departed – unbelievable. They have lost what little mind they had.