Well TruthTeller, who wouldn't know the truth if it kicked your teeth in, the truth is U$A would lose in a war against Russia.
Here's a couple of pieces of reality for you >

The real meaning of the South Ossetian war: Russia strikes back
[Extract] - Does anybody still remember the late eighties? How the West promised Gorbachev that if the Soviets withdrew their armed forces from Europe NATO would not expand? How the Russians were told that if they agreed to let the Republics of the Soviet Union go the West would assist Russia economically and politically? Probably not, this is old history now, something which people in the West just don't feel like reminiscing a lot about. It would be wrong to infer that, in contrast, the Russians spend their lives still fuming about these years and the lies they were told. In fact, they mostly don't. It's what followed the breakup of the Soviet Union which really bothers them.

Think about it. Not only did NATO expand to include almost all of Eastern Europe (one wonders what kind of contingencies still justify the existence of this alliance anyway?), but the West illegally attacked and dismembered the only country still friendly to Russia: Yugoslavia. US politicians love to say that they are "sending messages" and the bombing of Serbian enclaves in Croatia and Bosnia followed by the bombing of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro by NATO did "send a message" to Russia: "we hate your guts - screw you!". The message was received, loud and clear.

Then there was the war in Chechnia during which the West strongly backed what can only be called a nasty gang of bloodthirsty and crazed Wahabis. Sure, September 11th brought a rather self-serving 180 degree reversal of this policy, but that was too little, too late.

And then there is all the rest of the long litany of ugly Western imperial policies: the radars and missiles in Eastern Europe, all the nonsense about the "KGB" killing Politkovskaia and Litvinenko, the whining about the "not-so-democratic" elections in Russia (nevermind that any idiot in Russia knows that Putin and Medvedev had no need to rig the elections at all) combined with the support for the electoral farce in Georgia, the systematic refusal to negotiate *anything* with Russia (this is politely referred to as "assertiveness" or "unilateralism") and last, but not least, the obscene support for the aforementioned 'oligarchs' (who do you think paid for the Politkovskaia and Litvinenko propaganda campaigns?).

The Oligarchs can best be compared to "mercenary bloodsuckers" who, with the full support of the West, literally tried to bleed Russia dry of all its resources. And, for a while, they did a very good job. US political 'advisers' flooded Moscow and provided all the aide and expertise needed to help these 'oligarchs' (almost all of them Jewish) to plunder Russia as fast as possible. What only very few people realized at the time was that there was a force which was quite cynically letting all this happen and waiting for the best time to strike back. - [End extract]
Full text @
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/164692-The-real-meaning-of-the-South-Ossetian-war-Russia-strikes-bac...

Russia to create electromagnetic super weapon
[Extract] - Defense strategists place their stakes on high-tech weapons. Nearly all superpowers of the world conduct their works in the development of such weapons. It transpired recently that Russian scientists developed a generator, the capacity of which is comparable to that of a nuclear unit. It is a genuine scientific breakthrough, and it is already clear that the defense industry will not be the only field where the new super device is going to be used. - [End extract]
Full text @
http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/04-09-2008/106296-electromagnetic_super_weapon-0

Interesting all these cosy views about the missiles in Poland. It's not about the muissiles at all. It's about having yet another huge US base in yet another gullible country. A base which will be for ever, a base which the Poles will have NO say what so ever in running. Where they'll not even have the say on the firing of the Patriot missiles they love so much. Just look at all the other bases in the world even Castro couldn't rid Cuba of Guantanamo. These bases are a cancer and they're malignant and small wonder there are those countries who don't want em. But never fear the US will always find a way. Bribery, corruption political chicanery. Now even France which has it's CIA surrogate in charge now will soon be welcoming US bases forty years after they were kicked out. All the talk about obliterating Russia is pure rubbish. Russia like it or not yanks is still the biggest country ojn earth, chew on that!

TT -

Yes, I believe that US empire-motivated, political/economic hyper-ideologues and greed goons have provoked Russia to begin returning to its old paranoic, tyrannical, brutish mindset. There are no double standards in my analysis

By the time Putin took the new Federation's reigns from Yeltsin, Russia was no longer a threat to the US or NATO. The Soviet empire was dissolved, the Russian army was in a state of complete meltdown, and most Russians, including Putin, were glad to see all of it gone -- and publicly said so time and again In fact, during the later '90's and early 2000's, there was for the first time since the 1917 revolution, active comity and mutual cooperation developing between Russia and the west.

Putin's overtly anti-western stands and USA hostility began slowly at first, with the second round of forced implosions of Russia's transitional economy and currency, initiated in both cases by western banks and harebrained Freidmanesque economic 'advisors' who vilely caused massive suffering and humiliation for millions of Russians.

His anti-US stands deepened with Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq (though not Afghanistan, which Russia did not oppose), and with successive US machinations to sign US-mutual security pacts (independent of later-potentiated NATO alliances] with Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and recently, Poland.

If you think all of these US policy moves have been a sincere and realistic way of reassuring a paranoic, 1000yr old tyranny, during a vulnerable transition, of the west's friendly intentions, then you and I not only disagree about elementary human psychology, we also have a keenly different sense of calling a spade a spade.

RE Putin's admittedly brutal supression of Islamic Chechnyan rebels:
first of all, non-muslim Chechnyans have agreeably been part of Russia for centuries, arguably making the minority moslem rebels licitly-quashable secessionists;
secondly, remember that Putin's invasion against Chechnyan Islamic rebels was done in the wake of 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks on the US; plus the subsequent Chechnyan Islamist kidnapping and resultant murder of 300 Russian school children; plus the still-subsequent Chechnyan rebels' hostage taking and resultant deaths of scores of Moscovites at the Bolshoi Theatre.)

END NOTE TO TT: I have no truck with any thugs, or double standards for judging them -- whether Russian, Muslim, or American, etc..
You, on the other hand, seem to hold the actual double standard.
You seem unable to admit that the oligarchs who clearly misrule your own country, and systematically damage other countries, too, for ruthless personal profit, are anything less than 'businessmen.'
But they are less.
In fact, they are often worse than the thugs you so selectively decry elsewhere.

Let me see if I get this, because I am confused...

Russia iniates an unprovoked war of agression on Georgia.

Russia has spent the last decade or so committing genocide in Chechenya

Russia effectively prevents UN sanctions on criminal regimes in Zimbabwe and Sudan (Darfur).

Russia is explicitly threatening Poland and other EU members with nuclear weapons.

AND, somehow, this all proves that Bush and America are BAD?

Sure.

A new Cold War must be instituted because Capital Oligarchy's logic says: If we can't control and plunder a friendly meaty victim like Russia, then prodding it back into enemy status will at least allow enhanced plundering of the US taxpayer in the name of ever more 'threatened' US National Security.

The background in this particular case, though, is especially depressing.

When the Soviet Union fell in the late '80's, the west arguably had a rare opportunity to influence democratization in the resulting Russian Federation and in the other, former USSR states. The Russians, especially, were momentarily open to receiving and experimenting with the west's so-called free economic, political, and social systems, disgusted as they were by 70 yrs of tyrannical, intellectually bankrupt One Party Scientific Socialism.

But....

Instead, prodded by the USA's own corrupt government, Coca Cola, numerous fast food chains, crazy Christian evangelical churches, Ayn Rand economists, and rightwing think tanks of every description were induced to set up shop in Russia's major cities and in its wobbly, new institutions of power. In short, America's worst scoundrels descended like disease-laden vultures onto the giant bear's temporarily prostrated form. Not to nobly help freedom and democracy arise within a gigantic, collapsed system -- but to manipulate, steal from, and eventually control whatever system arose in its place.

By the time average Russians began to balk em masse at this invasion of American filth and greed, western bankers and corporations had already colluded with the old Soviet nomenklatura to divy-up, privately among themselves, ownership of most of the formerly state-owned assets, including most of Russia's manufacturing base and its repositories of indigenous capital (state pension funds, citizens' savings collectives, etc. etc.)

Finally, all of this Yankee-Christo-capitalist maddness, that Yeltsin had initially allowed for several crucial and disastrous years, his successor, Putin, decisively began to reign in and reverse -- with strong support from the doubly disgusted Russian people.
And as it has now become clearer to American-led plunderers that Russia's material and spiritual assets are no longer 'free pickings' for international capital and foreign states, the US government's reponse has been to try to encircle the Russian Federation with NATO military alliances, struck among the former USSR's republics wherein similar invasions of US filth and manipulative plundering have been and remain to this day, more 'successful.'

That, in quck summary, is why the old Cold War with Russia must be and will be re-initiated by the US Capital west.

And if you ask the average American of today, how he/she would feel if Russia began encircling the US by erecting military bases and missile batteries in the former provinces of a politically-collapsed Canada or Mexico, you will just be wasting your time.

Generally speaking I hate repeats and remakes.

Matthew Broderick is a fine actor and perhaps he'll agree to "War Games II" - reawaken the populace to the terror that is nuclear.

Now who is Washington trying to fool? Washington is trying to fool you, me, EVERYBODY on the planet. But Washington... YOU FOOL NO ONE.

"Washington insists the planned facilities are directed against "rogue states" such as Iran and in no way threaten Russia." Washington Lies!

one thing that this article fails to mention is that the missle defence system, even after 25 yrs of development, does not work. Everyone knows it, including the russians.

Gwyn Dyer explained it well:

quote

So why are the Russians so upset about all this? Why did General
Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, publicly
warn Poland last week that hosting the American interceptors could make it
the target for a nuclear strike? Don't the Russians know they don't work?

Of course they do, but the Russian military, like any professional
military force, need a dramatic foreign threat to justify their demands on
Russia's resources, and for that purely political purpose the American
missiles work fine. Russian strategists claim that this system is actually
intended to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, and so undermine
Russia's ability to deter an American attack by destroying its ability to
strike back.

It's nonsense, of course. Even if the American ABM missiles did
work as advertised, ten launchers on Poland's Baltic coast are not going to
make much difference given Russia's 848 long-range ballistic missiles,
including hundreds that can be launched from submarines that are much
closer to the US than the interceptors in Poland. The Russians are only
pretending to be worried about the ABM missiles in Poland, although they
are seriously annoyed by US military bases there.

unquote

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20The%20Missile%20Defence%20Scam.txt

from

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/

Gee, what a surprise. Who'd have thunk that a military system would be targeted by the people against whom that system is deployed? Pesky ruskies, don't they know they're supposed to be our loyal sidekicks - to be kicked at will - and not rock the boat of USA uber alles???

Hey - We're going back to "THE GOOD OLD DAYS!" Time to scrape that nice green lawn off the fallout shelter entrance in the back yard, and get to work on upgrading, and restocking it. It's going to be so fun to feel those familar little tingles of fear shivering through my body again when I least expect them, at those odd moments when the unbidden thoughts come that today might be the day when those nookuleer bombs start raining red death down on us. It'll be so fun having things the way they used to be. People now just don't know what they've missed if they didn't live back then. But don't worry. You'll see how it is.

One point that I haven’t heard raised and which seems to be missing is that just because the US government calls these bases “missile defense sites” doesn’t mean that they can’t serve other purposes. Indeed, can you cite an expert who, looking at a map, can tell me how missiles in Poland will defend against non-existent Iranian weapons?

Even if America does place their ineffective anti-missile missiles there it doesn’t preclude the possibility or even the likelihood that the bases will be used for clandestine drones/assassination/spying/torture etc. Russia is not the only country “troubled by a lack of transparency” when it comes to the Yanks.

Looks like Bush and Putin have agreed that it is best for business to resume the "cold war" and that is exactly what they are doing. Make no mistake about it, these psychopaths see killing and destruction as business decisions.

Uh-oh! Looks like someone wants to get back onto that "Axis of Evil" list.

Dadburn Russkies! Jes' can't trust'em!

Actually, Putin knows that Bush doesn't have the resources to respond.

Sadly, I wouldn't put Bush past relying on the nu-ka-ler option.

q