The Russians lied.

U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

“We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this,” the State Department official said. “We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not.”

Richard Perle, our favorite neocon, wrote to Countdown to Crawford in response to the Bush position on the Russo-Georgian war:

Now President Bush will understand the Hapless Jimmy Carter when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan at Christmas, 1979 and the scales (remember the “inordinate fear of communism?’” fell from his eyes. Bush and his expert Condi Rice have misunderstood Putin from the beginning and built an American policy towards Russia on a ludicrous look into Putin’s soul.

It is no accident that the worse US post-war presidents are true-believers who wore their religion on their sleeves and, more importantly, created public policy based upon their own self-righteousness.