On the one hand, things have quieted down in South Ossetia. This is a good sign—especially as I still hope to research in Georgia next month. On the other hand, things don't look so good for the longer term. As I predicted in an earlier posting, Georgia has emerged as the new rallying cry for American neocons, while Vladimir Putin is slowly being fitted to play the role of the next Adolf Hitler. That role has been vacant ever since we captured and executed Saddam Hussein, who five years ago was being described by the neocons in precisely the same terms. As in the United States, journalists in Russia have been doing their best to stir up public indignation. Tonight on the state-run Rossiia channel there was an hour-long documentary on "Georgian aggression" and the history of "genocide" against the Ossetians. Every three or four minutes, the United States and George W. Bush were invoked in sensationalistic and rather unflattering terms. According to the New York Times, Russia is paving the way towards recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Indeed, on the news two nights ago, a lot of attention was paid to the "declarations of independence" made by leaders of both republics on Friday, even though the two republics had actually declared their independence back in the early 1990s. Back in the States, McCain crony Lindsey Graham has been ratcheting up the rhetoric against Russia, calling on NATO to "stop war-gaming on tables in Brussels" and begin conducting military exercises in Europe. Like many other Americans beating the war drums against Russia, Graham was brazenly deceitful about the circumstances leading up to the crisis in South Ossetia, which began when Georgian forced launched an unprovoked attack on the breakaway republic, killing at least several hundred civilians. "It is clear that the Russians tried to create this provocation," declared Graham, ignoring the fact that the Russian government had consistently supported the status quo, in place since the early 1990s, of de facto (but not de jure) independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia under Russian protection. Even more disturbing was Graham's claim that Ukrainian leaders had told him that the Russian government has already issued passports to 75,000 ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. If this is true (it might be), I would be interested to learn how many of those passports had been issued to residents of the Crimea. Indeed, as I wrote on August 13, the Crimea could end up being a potentially disastrous point of conflict between the United States and Russia. Indeed, the Crimea was on the Russian news tonight, with state television showing dozens of people waving Russian flags to greet the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the Crimea until 2017, back to Sevastopol. I'm not the first person to say this, but I agree with the statement completely: were it not for the fiasco in Iraq, surely the destruction of what were—eight years ago—generally sound relations with Russia would go down as the major foreign policy debacle of the Bush administration. Then again, there's still time.