My Dearest Vladimir,

Just a little note to say . . . THANKS!!!!

Things were not going so good for ol' Dubya there for a while. You know, there was all that stuff in Iraq, and then my party lost control of both houses of Congress in the last election, and people were even starting to talk about impeachment. Them Europeans was all over my ass, too, about every little thing you can imagine. It was a real bummer.

Then came YOU!!! :))) Boy, what a pal.

I don't know if it was that lobster I fed you up at my dad's place, but first you took it into your head to invade the Arctic, and then Georgia just for good measure. Suddenly, all my enemies realized: Oh yeah, America is the only thing standing between us and all those barbaric Russian hoards. USA isn't really so bad, not when you gape in horror at those Russians.

So now everybody's mad at you instead. Why, seems like you've got hardly a friend in the whole wide world. Everybody from Denmark to Canada is steaming mad at you, and making common cause with us yanks at every opportunity. You must be the most brilliant foreignpolicymakerthingamabob in the whole history of the universe. Dude, you rock!

In fact, heckfire! It seems like you are willing to let your whole country be destroyed just to get my job approval numbers out of the basement. And when you do take your country down, I'll probably get the credit for that too. Why, I'll be thought of as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, I bet. Good deal!

So don't worry, Vlad. You'll always have a friend in this here White House. Well, for another few months you will, anyway. Then I'm off to the ranch and you're on your own, and probably the Democrats will take over, and they'll start bending your ear about human rights and such. Or maybe a new Ronald Reagan will even appear. But I'm sure Russia will do just as well as it always has, at least as well as the glorious USSR.