War in Georgia - War in Iraq

Salon has an excellent article by Juan Cole emphasizing how George W. Bush and the American invasion and occupation of Iraq set the stage for Putin to have a free hand intervening in Georgia. Indeed, the precedent of the United Nations sanctioning the American occupation as an established fact indicated to the world that those with power could use it, even in ways that violated international law, and if successful, the institutions of international relations would cloak this violations in a veil of legitimacy. The article is definitely worth a read.