Discourse.net

Putin urges voters to back Bush. Actually the strangest part of this story isn’t that Putin supports a fellow Putinizer, but rather the reasons given for that support.

Putin claims to oppose the Iraq war, but to think that the ‘terrorist attacks’ against US forces “are aimed at preventing the re-election of U.S. President George W. Bush and that a Bush defeat ‘could lead to the spread of terrorism to other parts of the world.’”

In other words, if you were to substitute “US” for “Bush” in that statetment, Putin’s postiion on Iraq is much more like Kerry’s than like Bush’s: it was a mistake to go in, but now that we’re there a pullout would be an error too.