Do you think the Bush Administration --?

I think it had been in negotiations for some time, well before Russian tropps entered Georgia.

But I suspect Poland decided it might be good to have the defense missiles, after seeing what Russia did to Georgia, and the US was asking for it for a long time, Poland jumped at the timing more than the US, I suspect.

you are partly right. The other part is this administration that has an 8 year record of foreign policy disasters, an administration that destroyed the world wide support when 9-11 occured to the point now that some little treaty with a struggling country that meand nothing to US interests other than having sent some soldiers to Iraq so we could call the military action a"colilition of the willing' when it was a shame colition that Poland and a few other countries played along with for 5 years. This is a thank you to Poland. All of our hollering about Georgia is based on the same payback since they sent a few troops too. The TERRIBLE truth of this matter is that these payback actions are destabilizing to the whole eastern block and we are whacking at a hornets nest like little boys who don't know what they may loose on themselves and others.

yeah sure they could have waited for the russians to leave georgia, but that can take a while, and shouldn't we be prepared if something serious happens? like an attack?

i think that it was a great idea for Rice to sign the treaty. makes the russians be scared of something for once.

The Bush administration signed the Missile Shield Treaty with Poland to show Russia that we're not going to ignore its violations of international law. If you hadn't noticed, Russia has already shown itself unwilling to leave Georgia. Russia invaded Georgia as a show of strength, to remind the world that it's a formidable player on the global stage. And we're telling them that we're not going to let them invade sovereign countries just because they can.

Exactly,why do it now?Why not wait until the situation has resolved itself?I think this makes it clearer that this conflict has been engineered by Bush et al and they are not letting the momentum drop.With 150 odd days left they have an agenda to get through quickly as it becomes increasingly obvious McCan't isn't in the running.

They gave Georgia the nod knowing there would have to be a reaction and the perfect opportunity for the U.S. to rush through the shield and Georgia's Nato status in one fell swoop while Russia looked like the bad guy.

Absolutely not. They have been working on his for some time now and it just happened that after the Russia / Georgia issue the Poles decided to sign the treaty to give them some protection from Russia and other nations.

That is crediting the Bush administration with more acumen than it has. The encirclement of Russia is a long term policy, and it was devised by people who never bothered to read about the causes of the First World War.

If the US government does not change course, I fear there may be terrible consequences.

you bet ye, but thhey are playing with fire.

They did what they wanted to do !i

so you're advocating appeasement?