And, therein may lie the problem for Putin. He has become a major impediment to the grand neocon vision of "regime change" across the Middle East in any country considered hostile to Israel. That vision was disrupted by the disaster that the American people confronted in the Iraq War, but the vision remains.
Putin also is an obstacle to the even grander vision of global "full-spectrum dominance," a concept developed by neocons in the two Bush administrations, the theory that the United States should prevent any geopolitical rival from ever emerging again. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Grim Vision."]
Thus, Putin must be portrayed as unstable and dangerous even though much of his account of the Ukraine crisis fits with what many on-the-ground reporters observed in real time. Indeed, many of the key facts are not in serious dispute despite the distortions and omissions that have permeated the U.S. mainstream press.
For instance, there's no factual dispute that Viktor Yanukovych was Ukraine's democratically elected president. Nor is there an argument about him having agreed to a European-negotiated deal on Feb. 21, which included him surrendering much of his power and moving up elections so he could be voted out of office.
After that agreement -- and Yanukovych's order to pull back the police in the face of violent street demonstrations -- it was widely reported that neo-Nazi militias spearheaded the Feb. 22 coup d'etat which forced Yanukovych to flee. And no one is credibly saying Ukraine's constitutional rules were followed when a rump parliament stripped him of the presidency.
Nor is there any serious doubt that the people of Crimea, which has historically been part of Russia, voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to separate from the coup regime now governing Ukraine. The difference between exit polls and the official results was 93 percent in the exit polls and 96 percent in the final tally.
Only in the neocon-dominated and propaganda-soaked U.S. news media is this factual narrative in dispute -- and mostly by ignoring or ridiculing it.
American Hypocrisy
However, when Putin politely takes note of these realities, he is deemed by the Washington Post's editorialists to be a madman. To hammer that point, the Post turned to one of its longtime neocon writers, Charles Lane, known for his skills at bending reality into whatever shape is needed.
In his column, Lane not only denied the reality of modern American interventionism but cleverly accused Putin of doing what Lane was actually doing, twisting the truth.
"Putin presented a legal and historical argument so tendentious and so logically tangled -- so unappealing to anyone but Russian nationalists such as those who packed the Kremlin to applaud him -- that it seemed intended less to refute contrary arguments than to bury them under a rhetorical avalanche," Lane wrote.
Lane then suggested that Putin must be delusional. "The biggest problem with this cover story is that Putin may actually believe it," Lane wrote.
Lane also was offended that -- when Putin later spoke to a crowd in Red Square -- he concluded his remarks by saying "Long live Russia!" But why that is so objectionable coming from a Russian politician is hard to fathom. President Obama -- and other U.S. politicians -- routinely close their remarks with the words, "God bless the United States of America!"
But double standards have always been part of Charles Lane's repertoire, at least since I knew him as a fellow correspondent for Newsweek in the late 1980s. Before Lane arrived at the magazine, Newsweek had distinguished itself with some quality reporting that belied the Reagan administration's propaganda themes in Central America.
That, however, upset Newsweek's executive editor Maynard Parker, who was a strong supporter of U.S. interventionism and sympathized with President Ronald Reagan's aggressive policies in Central America. So, a shake-up was ordered of Newsweek's Central America staff.
To give Parker the more supportive coverage he wanted, Lane was brought onboard and dispatched to replace experienced reporters in Central America. Lane soon began getting Newsweek's field coverage in line with Reagan's propaganda themes.
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