McCain: 'We are all Georgians'


By Foon Rhee, Boston Globe
August 12, 2008

Article Excerpts:

Republican John McCain didn't let up today on the heat on Russia and its former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin for the incursion into neighboring Georgia.

Even though Russia said today that it is halting its offensive, Georgia says that shelling is still going on, and McCain said "the situation remains fluid and dangerous."

Campaigning in York, Pa., McCain said that Russia intended to "send a signal" that any neighboring country that wants to ally with West, and that the West "learned at great cost" the price of allowing aggression to go unchecked.

The United States should stand with the democratic government in Georgia, he said, adding that he had offered Americans' prayers and thoughts in a conversation with Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili.

"We are all Georgians," McCain declared. . . .

McCain has long been more strident on Russia than President Bush. Bush once said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul as a "straightforward and trustworthy" man, McCain likes to say: "I looked into Mr. Putin's eyes and I saw three things -- a K and a G and a B."

"I don't think there's any doubt who is still by far the most powerful and influential person in Russia," McCain told WITF radio in Harrisburg, Pa., saying that Putin has "personal control" of the military.

"Of course we have to deal with Russia and we deal with Putin," McCain said. "But it has to be on a very realistic basis. And not one that there's any illusions about his ambitions."

And those ambitions including restoring Russia's czarist prominence. "I think it's very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old Russian Empire," he said in the radio interview. "Not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire."

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