It sounds nutty, sure, but you know this will end up in a DNC press release sooner or later.

MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of instigating the fighting in Georgia and said he suspects a connection to the U.S. presidential campaign — a contention the White House dismissed as “patently false.”

[...]

Putin, the former president and architect of an assertive foreign policy that has stoked East-West tension, suggested in an interview with CNN that there was an American presence amid the combat with a potential domestic U.S. political motive.

“We have serious grounds to think that there were U.S. citizens right in the combat zone” during Russia’s war with the U.S.-allied ex-Soviet republic, he said the interview broadcast on state-run Russian television. “And if that’s so, if that is confirmed, it’s very bad. It’s very dangerous.”

I think Putin is the one playing the game here.  Does the US have close ties to Georgia?  Yes.  Has the US been instrumental in modernizing and backing Georgia’s military?  Yes.  But did the United States instruct Georgia to use such blunt force against separatists in the areas Russia now wants to be independent?  Absolutely not.  That was Georgia’s call as a sovereign nation, and Putin’s attempt to lay the blame with President Bush is simply a feint to cover his own country’s aggression in this matter.

A feint that smells suspiciously Soviet.  Remember when the Soviets would back rebels and invade countries all over the world and then claim they were just opposing American imperialism?  Well we’re back to that again.

The truth is that the Georgian government has not handled the situation in Ossetia well.  Their approach has been ham handed, and overly forceful, to put it mildly.  But be that as it may, it did not justify Russia’s response.  And let’s not kid ourselves. Russia is using Ossetia as a pretext to reestablish parts of the old Soviet empire.

For all the condemnation of America’s invasion of Iraq, let’s not forget that our invasion came as no surprise to the world.  President Bush gave Iraq terms to meet to avoid war.  Saddam Hussein himself was given ultimatums and alternatives.  A case for the war was made before the United Nations itself.  And while ultimately Bush bucked popular international opinion and went ahead and invaded Iraq at least there was an attempt at diplomacy.

Russia just rolled tanks into Ossetia and started killing people, both soldiers and civilians alike.