In the submarine thriller “Crimson Tide”, the gruff old Captain played by Gene Hackman says something like, “You can forget all that we’re-friends-with-the-Russians crap, because the Cold War’s back on.” (The quote is not on IMDB.)

Well, Russia sure is acting like a foe, with reports that the Russian ambassador in Baghdad had funneled intelligence on U.S. plans to the Iraqi government before during the war.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service - what we used to call, the KGB - is (surprise!) denying the allegations. Well, what did we expect, a statement of, “aw, gee whiz, you Yankee running dogs caught us”?

It’s been standard in the past few days to remember Bush’s comment about Putin, “I looked into his eyes and got a sense of his soul,” and mock the president’s judgment. Of course, that was the first meeting between Bush and Putin, when both men were relatively new on the world stage and needed a successful, positive meeting. So of course Bush had to praise his counterpart; unfortunately, we can safely conclude he laid it on a bit thick.

Of course, our policy since about 1991 has been to treat Russia as an unstable, complicated, messy but essentially non-hostile state. For the revelations of their help to Hussein, and a lot of other reasons, we cannot treat them the same way.

This, of course, also has implications for our policy regarding the Iranian nuclear program.

 Trust me, Comrade.