McCain Was On Top of the Georgia Situation Long Before it Happened

Politico reports that John McCain not only issued the most forceful statement on the shooting war between Russia and Georgia, but saw this coming as far back as 1999:

When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama and much of the West.

But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama and others have moved closer to McCain's initial position.

It has been a rough few weeks for McCain on the foreign policy front — paging Dr. Maliki — but he appears to have been ahead of the curve in his assessment that Moscow was the bad actor here.

McCain aides feel encouraged that their candidate appeared to get it right first, and they are now working to remind reporters that he's long been wary of Putin's Russia.

Pushing the prescience line, aides are circulating a pair of YouTube clips from 1999 and 2000 that feature some tough talk from McCain about the new Kremlin regime.

Speaking about Chechnya in an appearance at Arizona State University in 1999, McCain said: "The mindless slaughter is being conducted by a Russian military that seeks to reassert itself not only in the former Soviet Union but also to extend its reach throughout what used to be the former Soviet Union in an attempt to fold back into the Russian empire those countries that have broken away from it, most notably Georgia."

And, in the memorable South Carolina primary debate in 2000, McCain offered grave skepticism about the new Russian leader, referring to Putin as an "apparatchik."

A bad weekend for Georgians and Obamans, but McCain certainly polished his foreign policy credentials. I think it's very likely that he has a better read on Putin than Bush ever did.

The Next Right thinks the Russians did McCain a favor by attacking his statement:

The Russian government’s incompetent attack against John McCain has handed him a great weapon against Obama. The attack makes clear that the Kremlin wants Obama to win the election but the open support of a nation busy doing this is hardly going help a candidate who’s already fighting a reputation for dictator-coddling.

It's time for McCain to hit back hard while Obama is still sitting on the beach in Hawaii.