The West says that it is perplexed by Russia's "aggressive" behavior of late, and suggests that Moscow is desirous to regain its past superpower status, and even a little empire. But if cashing in on oil is imperialism, how do we explain the following U.S. moves:

10. Scrapping the Anti-Ballis­tic Missile Treaty - In Decem­ber 2001, three months after 9/11, U.S. President George W. Bush told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. was pulling out of the 1972 ABM Treaty, a Cold War-era document that specifically forbade the development and deployment of anti-missile defense systems. The treaty ensured that signatory nations adhere to the mutually assured destruction (MAD) concept - if you destroy us we will destroy you formula.

Yes, it was certainly MAD, but it kept the peace for 30 years. Former Defense Secre­tary Donald Rumsfeld attempted to reassure Moscow that the decision was nothing personal. "It [the treaty] failed to recognize that the Soviet Union is gone and that Russia is, of course, not our enemy." Putin called the move "a mistake."

9. "Mission Accomplished" - On March 20, 2003, the United States - without a mandate from the United Nations, and against the heated objections of France, Germany and Russia - invaded Iraq on the pretext that the secular Baathist state of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was a proud sponsor of terrorism. Both accusations were proven wrong. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the BBC in an interview that the attack was a violation of international law. "From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, it [the war] was illegal."

8. Pentagon Spending Spree - The United States, which just put the finishing touches on a $583 billion dollar shopping trip for 2008, accounts for about half of global expenditures (or the next 14 nations). However, as Robert Higgs of the Inde­pendent Institute argues, "the trillion-dollar defense budget is already here." Higgs calculated that U.S. military-related spending in 2006 was actually $934.9 billion if we figure in Home­land Security ($69.1bln), the Dept. of Energy, which oversees nuclear weapons ($16.6 bln) and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs ($69.8 bln), as well as other juicy pork chops. In May, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate approved almost $95 billion for the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through September (Go Dems!). Meanwhile, "aggressive" Russia, with a 48 percent increase in military spending since 1996, still spends ‘just' $85 billion annually on military expenditures.

7. NATO XXL - As Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. diplomat argued in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "The United States and other NATO members have taken some actions along the way to lull the Russians into acquiescence as NATO expanded to include the former Warsaw Pact na­tions... The argument was that these countries wanted to join NATO and that their membership posed no threat to Russia. That line prevailed as NATO membership grew to include also Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former republics of the Soviet Union. Now the Russians see the same argument being advanced for Georgia and Ukraine. That's getting close to home."

6. New Military Bloopers - As the Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf struggles to contain the fallout of an 8-day battle against militants at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), a U.S. official turned up the heat by telling CNN that if the U.S. "had actionable targets, anywhere in the world," including Pakistan, then "we would pursue those targets." Meanwhile, talk about a possible attack on Iran, a nation that ranked on America's axis of evil hit parade, continues.

5. Think-Tank Saber Rattling - Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press write an article in the prestigious U.S. journal Foreign Affairs entitled "Nuclear Primacy" (March/April 2006), which argues, in a nutshell, that "It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike." Is this the sort of article that America should be supporting if it wants Russia to believe that elements of the proposed U.S. missile defense system in Poland and... oops! Don't want to spoil the plot! Anyways, Moscow ‘responds' with very accurate penmanship one year later as it test-fires its new RS-24 ballistic missile that it said could "overcome any potential missile defense systems developed by foreign countries."

4. Cheney Comfort - One month after the above love letter hit newsstands, Vice President Dick Cheney, during a trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, assuaged Moscow's fears by reiterating, once again: "Russia has nothing to fear and everything to gain" by ‘democratic activity' on her borders.

3. Gates' Gated Community - In early 2007, Pentagon chief Robert Gates urged viligance when he warned, "We don't know what's going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere." Was this a simple case of mistaken identity by a former White House Russian analyst? Whatever the case, it certainly helped to provoke Putin's heated Munich speech in February, where he admonished the world's "one master, one sovereign."

2. EU Culpability - As the War on Terror continues, Europe is losing its Snow White innocence. As the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, "On July 19, 2002, a Gulfstream business jet took off from Frankfurt am Main bound for Amman, Jordan. The flight received an AFTM exempt [pilot code for ‘extreme situation'], although it carried neither patients nor politicians. Instead, the jet was carrying a CIA team that took a Mauri­tanian terrorism suspect... to Guan­tanamo." Der Spiegel reported that this "camouflaging of an illegal kidnapping as a rescue flight" was not an isolated event: There were 390 such takeoffs and landings in Germany between 2002 and 2006. And considering Eastern European hotels, it's just too scary to consider those secret terrorist prisons that allegedly exist in Poland and Romania.

1. Don't Worry, These anti-Missile Missiles won't Hurt You, Really - Washington is now incredulous, shocked, mortified that Moscow has the nerve to suggest that there could be less than good intentions involved in the construction of an anti-missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, even though there are no bad-guy technologies on the horizon that such a system could intercept. Go figure!

Moscow News

Editorial Comment: (DepED) I have a member of my family who is Russian and what we read in the newspaper about how awful Russia is, is not the truth.

Corruption and crime are terrible in Russia and most of this was brought about due to the American caused collapse of the Soviet regime allowing the country to sink into a hiatus and of course in such situations, criminal predators and fifth columnists working for America did what they did.

However, democratic process in Russia is being singlehandedly maligned by the western media's for a hidden agenda, in fact Russia's democratic processes are rather different to our own from the election of the local Staross (Village Mayor) to the regional representative and upwards, people turn up, debate and are allowed to speak their mind in public forum and referendum... don't see that happening here in the UK do you???

What Bush wants Russia to do is to open up its system of parliamentary process so that it can be abused by the Americans whose "bought candidate" branding of politics is seen here in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and elsewhere, we have seen how the Americans have thrown elections in Mexico and there is evidence that they helped Blair too and Bush has the temerity to call out the Russians on their democracy when in truth they should look at their own.

And what of the Russian people? Are they living in squalid poverty as portrayed in US and British medias?  Well, the apartment complexes are still there for the most part but the average Russian is a lot better off now than many of his counterparts elsewhere in Europe, the Russian people see what Bush is doing as much as we can and there are many out there who have reason to take issue at the US engineered collapse of the Soviet regime which left millions without money, food or heat and at the mercy of criminal gangs as the infrastructure in outlying Russia itself collapsed.

Yet what we see most is that Russia is not going to follow Bush's lead and that means it is pilloried noon, day and night by pro-Bush cronies and tamed media, turning Russia into the bogeyman once again and setting America off on a confrontational stance with a country that a year ago was fairly peaceful on the world stage and today is screaming towards full scale mobilization.

And being British doesn't mean I'm stupid, I don't trust the Americans and they are supposed to be our "friends", in fact there is nothing more on this planet that I in my own opinion detest as the imperialistic Yank, well maybe the traitors in our own country I despise more...

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