Transcript via The Hotline

Richardson: “My view is that the United States — if we had a stronger relationship with Russia, we could exercise strong diplomacy to stop this effort against Georgia. We should immediately go to the United Nations Security Council, condemn Russia’s action, and then get the Security Council to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint [emphasis mine], and possibly at the same time generate some U.N. peacekeeping troops.

The problem, though, is that we don’t have the kind of influence and strength in our relationship with Russia to persuade them. This has been one of the failures of the Bush administration, failing to build a strong relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia, so we’d have the kind of influence to persuade them to stop some of these very, very dangerous efforts within their territory” (“This Week,” ABC, 8/10).

Two points on this. Russia is a member of the UN Security Council so even if we were their best friends the odds of that relationship being parlayed into a rousing self-condemnation are fairly remote.

The second point. We know Russia’s stance on this from a meeting which was held on August 10, in which our UN Ambassador Khalizad reveals that Russia has demanded that Georgian President Saakashvili must resign to end the fighting.

What are we to make of this startling departure from reality? If Barack Obama is elected we’d better get used to this sort of Orwellian nonsense.