Revisionist history

George Bush is pontificating, according to the New York Times, over Russia's failure to get out of Georgia:

“We expect Russia to ensure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit,” Mr. Bush said. “We expect Russia to meet its commitment to cease all military activities in Georgia, and we expect all Russian forces that entered Georgia in recent days to withdraw from that country.”
Mr. Saakashvili interpreted the aid operation as a decision to defend Georgia’s ports and airports, though Bush administration and Pentagon officials quickly made it clear that would not be the case. A senior administration official said, “We won’t be protecting the airport or seaport, but we can protect our assets if we need to.”
Mr. Bush spoke in the Rose Garden of the White House, flanked by his secretaries of state and defense, Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates. He said that Ms. Rice would fly to France to support its mediation efforts and then to Georgia “to continue our efforts to rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia.” State Department officials said there were no plans for Ms. Rice to go to Moscow.
At a news conference at the State Department, Ms. Rice evoked some of the darkest memories of the cold war, though she stopped well short of promises of direct military support to Georgia. “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can invade its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it,” she said. “Things have changed.”
The existing cease-fire included a provision that required Russian forces to withdraw to their “normal bases of encampment” but also allowed them to “implement additional security measures.” A senior American official said the vague language “would allow the Russians to do almost anything.”
A Russian battalion commander, at a checkpoint on the highway from Gori to the capital, spoke menacingly of Mr. Saakashvili. “If he doesn’t understand the situation, we’ll have to go further,” the commander said on the condition of anonymity. “He doesn’t seem to understand that the Russian Army is much stronger than the Georgian Army. His tanks remain in their places. His air force is dead. His navy is also. His army is demoralized.”
Mr. Bush also cited reports that Russians had taken up positions in Poti, a port city on the Black Sea, and were blowing up Georgian ships. Russian officials denied that troops had occupied any cities, but some of the statements appeared to rest on technicalities of what constituted occupation.
In Russia, Mr. Lavrov, the foreign minister, warned the Bush administration that it risked a breach with Russia by throwing its support so strongly behind Georgia and its president. “We understand that this current Georgian leadership is a special project of the United States,” he said, “but one day the United States will have to choose between defending its prestige over a virtual project or real partnership” with Russia.

For a moment, let's transmogrify this whole event; let's say it's 1864 and the Czar of Russia is telling Abraham Lincoln to stay out of Georgia, and would he please have General Sherman's men halt and retreat before they get to Atlanta? Not likely, then or now.
But the Day By Day cartoon in my sidebar has the best Barack Obama fake comment on the whole thing: