With the just-brokered peace agreement in Darfur having quite possibly cut off the left's latest region of directed moral outrage -- go home, George Clooney -- it sounds as if E.J. wants to make Kazakhstan the next place where the outrage can be directed, because of it's lower correlation to the U.S.'s direct security interests than the Persian Gulf region (plus Nazarbayev's name is even less pronouncable than Milosevec's was when Serbia suddenly became the driving foreign policy issue a decade ago).

"Bush's claims five years ago of spiritual affinity with a Putin who was already showing his authoritarian streak." Haven't we got out of the ABM treaty right afterwards with Putin's consent?

Kazakhstan hosts our largest military base right in China's backyard. By the way, they have some oil too.

ic;

We had no need of Putin's nor Russia's permission to leave the ABM treaty. The treaty itself permitted a unilateral withdrawal via a specific procedure, which the USA followed.