The Russians are coming

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! How many times during the cold war did these four words strike fear into the hearts of our fellow citizens? Well, guess what, it is about to start again. That is right, you heard it here first, the cold war is going to get cold again.

Well, not really that cold, Russia is but a shell of what it once was. Their military is in disarray and shambles with soldiers and officers on the county's food program. The navy is non-existent; in fact, I recently watched a government sting operation where an undercover agent bought a Russian submarine. The agent was dealing with a known Russian arms smuggler who had turned allegiance when faced with jail and helped the agents, when he spoke to Russian officials about buying a sub, they asked if that was with or without the missiles!

Wow, I could buy a nuclear sub with missiles and crew? I wonder if the bank, oh never mind.

What Russia does have is nuclear weapons and lots of them. In fact, news reports often question the safety and fact of just who has their finger on the button, but they do have them and will point them where needed to tick the west off.

We are caught in a political quagmire with Russia over our country wanting to place star-wars defense missiles in Poland and elsewhere. Russia should not be as worried as they are, we don't even know if the darn things work well or not. If the first Gulf war was any indication of our star wars readiness capability, they should not be worried at all; in fact they should get a kick out of it.

Most of us can remember the sirens going off in Israel, news cameras tracking an incoming scud missile, complements of Saddam and the explosions in the air as we were told that Patriot missiles had taken it down. That was the furthest from the truth, in fact, we did not hit many of them, well, actually none at all, but hey, it sure made for great television!

Russia had offered to share their radar with America and that not only took President Bush by surprise, but the Russian officer corps as well. When you stop and think about it, taking them up on that would have made us something we have not been since WWII, allies. Wow, can't have that happen, where would we get all the press converges from if they were our allies? Besides that obvious reason, Russian military hardware is suppose to be in pretty bad shape, with no money for repairs and the men using them are underpaid, or not paid at all.

We will just have to wait and see how everything plays out, but one thing is clear, this is going to make for interesting reading for a while. I wonder if Putin will take his shoe off and pound on the podium at the United Nations. I guess that would be asking for too much, but it sure would make for great television, perhaps Putin is practicing as we speak.