Yesterday Vladimir Putin announced that terrorist attacks in Iraq are being waged to influence the election in favor of John Kerry.

It's understandable that Putin supports a Bush presidency, considering the varying treatment he got in the first debate. Both candidates were careful to say that they viewed Putin's moves to consolidate power in Russia as detrimental to democracy. But Bush's response was far lighter and gave Putin the benefit of the doubt:

BUSH: I found that, in this world, that it's important to establish good personal relationships with people so that when you have disagreements, you're able to disagree in a way that is effective.

And so I've told him my opinion.

I look forward to discussing it more with him, as time goes on. Russia is a country in transition. Vladimir is going to have to make some hard choices.

'Transition', you'll note, is code for "We'd like to pretend there's a democracy here, but there isn't, so we'll just say it's in 'transition'."

On the other hand Kerry opened as follows:

KERRY: I regret what's happened in these past months. And I think it goes beyond just the response to terror. Mr. Putin now controls all the television stations. His political opposition is being put in jail.

Needless to say this is not pulling many punches.

Putin rode to power on this War on Terrorism stuff. He invented it. Long before Bush was milking 9/11 for political ends, Putin was stirring up Russians over Chechen terrorism. In fact, there's rumors that the 1999 series of apartment bombings that sparked the whole Russian invasion of Chechnya (and which Putin made his main plank when running for office) were arranged by none other than Volya himself. And he's been constantly pushing for the West to recognize the Chechen conflict as part of the global "War on Terror", and thus give him free reign to commit all the atrocities he wants. After Beslan, more than a few right-wingers jumped on his bandwagon. Bush has several times used Beslan as an example of the evil of the Terrorists. He's clearly coming on board.

At this point a second Bush presidency is starting to look pretty bad. War in Iraq, war in Iran, the destruction of Palestine, dictatorship in Russia. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?