Vlad the Cunning

This is already old news in certain corners of the blogworld, but is notable nonetheless. From The Moscow Times:

Giving an unexpected boost to U.S. President George W. Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein's regime had posed a threat to the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russian intelligence agencies had received information that Iraq was planning terrorist attacks against American targets and warned U.S. intelligence.

The announcement appeared to surprise the Bush administration, which is under fire in an election year for still not proving Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction or links to al-Qaida, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, intelligence repeatedly received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing terrorist acts against military and civil targets on the territory of the United States and beyond,” Putin told reporters Friday in the Kazakh capital, Astana, where he was attending a summit of several former Soviet republics.

Putin said the information had been passed on to U.S. intelligence and that Bush had personally thanked a Russian intelligence chief for it.

The timing of Putin's remarks is interesting indeed, as last Friday was the height of the widespread misreporting regarding the 9/11 Commission's interim report. But just as curious—astonishing, rather—were Putin's very political comments just a week earlier, at the close of the Sea Island G8 summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped into the U.S. political campaign on Thursday, saying the Democrats had “no moral right” to criticize President Bush over Iraq.

The Kremlin leader, answering a reporter's question in Sea Island, Georgia, suggested that the Democrats were two-faced in criticizing Bush on Iraq since it had been the Clinton administration that authorized the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by U.S. and NATO forces. […]

He went on: “I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same.

“It suffices to recall Yugoslavia. Now look at them. They don't like what President Bush is doing in Iraq.”

I'm trying to think of another example wherein a head of state remarked so pointedly on the internal political affairs of the nation he or she was visiting. But none spring to mind.

Officially, Russia continues to insist that the Coalition invasion of Iraq was unwarranted, and Putin is nothing if not inscrutable. Nonetheless it appears that the list of “allies” that this Administration has supposedly alienated is dwindling. Senator Kerry's springtime claim of support from unnamed foreign leaders is descending to farce.