Gates: U.S. Has Few Options On Russia

Swamp: It didn't seem that long ago that President Bush told the world about looking Vladimir Putin in the eye and "getting a sense of his soul."

Today, Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, brushed aside the question of whether Putin could be trusted, but he didn't exactly give the Russian prime minister a rousing endorsement.

"I have never believed that one should make national security policy on
the basis of trust," Gates said. "I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities.

The Bush administration appears to have few options to pressure the Russians. Gates made crystal clear that U.S. military intervention is not an option and that because of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan--as well as political sensitivities--that the U.S. was unlikely to take part in any peacekeeping mission in the region.

In his first comments since the fighting started in Georgia, Gates warned that Russia's actions could endanger Moscow-Washington relations for years to come." Gates remarks at a Pentagon news conference comes a day after Russian troops drove into the Georgian city of Gori despite publicly agreeing to stop its offensive.

Petraeus Says Al Qaeda Moving to Afghanistan

I would say things are lining up with what Obama has been saying for months now. George Bush is trying to save face and let's let him. No sense in wasting any more time knocking him.
Gen. Petraeus says Al Qaeda may be moving from Iraq to Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan.

CBS: Senior leaders of al-Qaida may be diverting fighters from the war in Iraq to the Afghan frontier area, the top American commander in Iraq told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Gen. David Petraeus also said al-Qaida may be reconsidering Iraq as its highest priority war front.

"There is some intelligence that has picked this up," he said in the interview in his office at the U.S. Embassy along the Tigris River. "It's not solid gold intelligence," he added, stressing that the reliability of the information has not been confirmed.

Nonetheless, he cited the signs as part of a broadly positive review of conditions in Iraq, where al-Qaida fighters have been driven almost entirely from Baghdad and pummeled in other urban areas.

Petraeus said the information was based on human intelligence, meaning informants.

"There are unsubstantiated rumors and reflections that perhaps some foreign fighters originally intended for Iraq may have gone to the FATA," he said, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where militants have a secure staging ground for movements into neighboring Afghanistan.