Putin Has His Own Candidate for Pre-emption nytimes.com
On that topic, there was this background article in the Sunday paper.
While working to slow down the Bush administration's campaign against Saddam Hussein, Russia has for weeks waged a campaign of accusation and intimidation against neighboring Georgia, where some Chechen fighters have taken refuge. It's not the first such outburst by Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, against his Georgian counterpart, Eduard A. Shevardnadze. But Russia's pitch-perfect parody of American antiterrorism policy has commanded Washington's attention and could even derail Russian-American cooperation.
On the eve of President Bush's Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations on Iraq, Mr. Putin wrote Secretary General Kofi Annan charging that Georgia's passivity toward Chechen fighters on its territory violated Security Council resolutions. Russia might therefore have to act unilaterally. The chief of Russia's general staff insisted that Mr. Shevardnadze was "in no way" different from Mullah Omar of the Taliban.
Well, what the heck. Since the official "nuanced" local line seems to be that essentially the whole Arab/Muslim world is "in no way different" from bin Laden and the Taliban, may as well throw Georgia in there too, there must be a few Muslims in there someplace. Whack 'em good, that'll show 'em who's boss.
Oops, important edit on the author of that article:
Stephen Sestanovich is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international diplomacy at Columbia.
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