Putin's Soul No Longer Visible to the Naked Eye

Putin: US orchestrated Georgia conflict, suggests motive was to affect US president election.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of instigating the fighting in Georgia and said he suspects a connection to the U.S. presidential campaign — a contention the White House dismissed as "patently false."

"We have serious grounds to think that there were U.S. citizens right in the combat zone" during Russia's war with the U.S.-allied ex-Soviet republic, he said the interview broadcast on state-run Russian television. "And if that's so, if that is confirmed, it's very bad. It's very dangerous."

"The American side in fact armed and trained the Georgian army," Putin said. "Why hold years of difficult talks and seek complex compromise solutions in interethnic conflicts? It's easier to arm one side and push it into the murder of the other side, and it's over.

The United States has close ties with the Georgian government and has trained Georgian units. The Pentagon has said that the U.S. had about 130 trainers in Georgia when the fighting erupted earlier this month, including a few dozen civilians who were all working to prepare the Georgian forces for deployment to Iraq.

But Russian officials have made statements aimed to convey the idea that Americans may have directly supported Georgia's offensive.

-------- Is Putin serious? Sort of like the old US accusations regarding Russia's backing, arming, training the "commies" around the world and in our backyard - Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc. It's not as if the USSR had close ties with Cuba for decades, oh wait ... Russia did do those things.

Did the US push Georgians into murdering the other side? That's harder to prove. Unless of course you tend to believe Georgians are ignorant backward patsies who can be pushed around by the US, not that Russia would ever push them around.

Doesn't Putin know US rulers don't need no stinkin' conflict to get one party elected over the other - America's ruling class (like Russia's) can count the vote any which way they want?

I think Putin reads "left" bloggers who have been claiming the motive behind the Georgian conflict was to effect the US election (for McCain). And some believers, such as this one claims Russia is in on it. "WE MUST ELECT BARACK OBAMA IF WE ARE TO SAVE OUR WORLD FROM THESE MADMEN!!!!"

Loosen that tinfoil man, you've interrupted the brain's blood flow.