Whiskey,

A few comments on your comments…

“Putin doesn’t care about things Bush does: domestic opposition, the press, the international opinions. This allows him much more freedom of action.”

True enough but that’s a bug as well as a feature. The things you cite as contraints are also feedback circuits. Sometimes overly sensitive feedback ciruits but feedback circuits all the same. The isolated mind dies in its own wastes for their lack. This may be one of those occasions. In the absence of feedback ciruits what we laughingly call freedom of action is merely freedom to kill oneself by mischance or by hubris.

“3. Don’t bet that Russians have not also learned from failure, not prepared quite well to crush the Georgians, and have not looked very carefully at US tactics and strategy, with their own nasty surprises.”

A good point and worth emphasizing. That said, don’t bet on them not having learned the wrong lessons from failure, prepared the wrong way and finding their nasty surprises weren’t quite as nasty as they had hoped. That’s the thing about war. Both sides are always confident that they will win and at least one is always tragically wrong! ^o^

“Putin is sort of a giant-sized Capone.”

As long as we’re using Chicago metaphors to describe Putin I would take issue with comparing him to Capone. By your own account Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink would be closer to the sort of person Putin really is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coughlin_%28alderman%29

They began by hiring Capone as their henchman’s henchman. They ended by being his stooges and puppets. Perhaps Putin is still more than that. Time alone will tell.

“Bush and Cheney are a spent force. Anyone betting they’ll act is not following political reality.”

Correction! President Bush and Mr. Cheney *will* possible be spent forces in January, 2009. The calendar tells me that this is July of 2008. They can do as they will in this one because Congress has run away from its responsibilities to go on vacation and hop and skip and jump like little children at a certain Democratic Convention. Since a number of them drool from the sides of their mouths as they babble of impeachment no matter what happens it hardly matters if they make that threat yet again. The liberal obsession with political show trials has made all of *their* threats of impeachment a broken reed and there is nothing they can do about it. ^_^
Always remember, the Left are no more than Freedom’s parasites. Their weakness is never the weakness of the West! ^_~