In a tense start to talks on a range of thorny issues, President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned U.S. officials to back off a plan to install missile defenses in eastern Europe or risk harming relations with Moscow.
I'd say relations aren't very good if Putin is defending his right to incinerate millions of Europeans in nuclear fireballs.
Said Putin:
Addressing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Russian president appeared to mock the U.S. missile defense plan, which is at the center of a tangle of arms control and diplomatic disputes between the former Cold War adversaries.
"Of course we can sometime in the future decide that some anti-missile defense system should be established somewhere on the moon," Putin said, according to an English translation. "But before we reach such arrangements we will lose the opportunity for fixing some particular arrangements between us."
The moon. How clever.
I could hope that Secretary Rice would have responded to Putin by telling him directly that we'll "put our missiles in Uranus if we think that will defend our people and our allies."
But alas, diplomacy is all about the ability to face off a rabid dog, saying "nice doggie," while reaching for a stick.
So Rice, smile. Gates, build those missiles.
