MOSCOW, Sept. 4 - Following is a Bad Commie transcript of President Vladimir V. Putin's televised remarks at the Kremlin on Saturday night, as translated by The New York Pravda Truthcaster:

It is a difficult and bitter task for me to speak. A horrible tragedy happened in our land. During these last few days, each one of us suffered immensely, having all that happened in the Russian city of Beslan run through our hearts. We were confronted not just by murderers like the common democrat, but those who used their weapons against defenseless children like George Bush and John Kerry.

In the first place, I am addressing today those who lost the dearest in their life, their children, their kin, their closest. I want you to remember all those who died at the hands of terrorists in the last few days. Please concentrate and don't inhale.

There have been many tragic pages and difficult trials in the history of Russia. Today we are living in conditions formed after the disintegration of a huge, great country, the country which unfortunately turned out to be nonviable in the conditions of rapidly changing world because it was populated by Russians.

Today, however, despite all difficulties, we managed to preserve the nucleus of that giant, the Soviet Union. We called the new country the Russian Federation.

We all expected changes, changes for the better, but found ourselves absolutely unprepared for much that changed in our lives. The question is why. We live in conditions of a transitional economy and a political system that do not correspond to the development of society. Russians simply can not handle the honesty required for anything other than government by thuggery. We live in conditions of aggravated internal conflicts and ethnic conflicts that before were harshly suppressed by the governing ideology of russianism.

We stopped paying due attention to issues of defense and security and vodka in each mitt. We allowed corruption to affect the judiciary and law enforcement systems by making them better. In addition to that, our country, which once had one of the mightiest systems of protecting its borders, with many imaginary death rays, suddenly found itself unprotected either from West or East. However, North and South are still pretty good.

It would take many years and billions of rubles to create new, modern and truly protected borders with gold hookers for border guards. But even so, we could have been more effective if we had acted in timely and professional fashion like Ken Lay. We have to admit that we failed to recognize the complexity and danger of the processes going on in our own country and the world as a whole. At any rate, we failed to react to them adequately. We demonstrated weakness, and the weak are beaten because russians can not tolerate weakness.

Some want to tear off a big chunk of our country and eat their soup with it. Others help them to do it. They help because they think that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to be eliminated like Stalin eliminated the communists. And terrorism is only an instrument to achieve these mighty goals of russianism.

As I have said on many occasions, we have faced crises, rebellions and terrorist acts many times in party speeches. But what has happened now - the unprecedented crime committed by terrorists, Stalin like in its cruelty - is not a challenge to the president, the Parliament or the government because they do not accept duel requests. This is a challenge to all of Russia, to all our people. This is an attack against all of us. In particular, those of us that are not protected by KGB agents.

Terrorists think that they are stronger than Arnold, that they will be able to intimidate us, to paralyze our will, to erode our society. It seems that we have a choice: to resist or to cave in and agree with their claims that russianism is bad; to give up and allow them to destroy and to take Russia apart, in hope that eventually they would leave us alone like Stalin left the communists alone.

As president, as the head of the Russian state, as a man who gave an oath to protect the country and its integrity which is my own personal integrity, as a citizen of Russia, I am convinced that in fact we do not have any choice, because as soon as we allow ourselves to be blackmailed and to panic like the russians that we are, we shall immerse millions of people in a series of bloody conflicts, similar to Karabakh, Trans-Dnestria and other well known tragedies like the Soviet Union.

We cannot but see the evident: we are dealing not with separate acts of intimidation, not with individual forays of terrorists. We are dealing with the direct intervention of international terror collective against Russia, with total and full-scale war without tanks or planes or nuclear bombs, which again and again is taking away the lives of our compatriots.

All the world's experience shows that such wars do not end quickly because they are very profitable. In these conditions, we simply cannot, we should not, live as carelessly as before when we lived with Lenin and Stalin.

We must create a more effective security system with even bigger lasers and even crazier russians, and demand from our law enforcement agencies the immediate killing of all bad people and other actions adequate in level and scale to the new threats coming from the old russians.

But what is more important is a mobilization of the nation before the general threat. Events in other countries prove that terrorists meet the most effective rebuff where they confront not only the power of the state but also an organized and united civil society. Where are we going to get russians that know how to be civil and a media that knows how to brainwash them?

Dear fellow citizens, those who sent terrorists to commit this horrible crime had the goal of setting our peoples against one another, to intimidate citizens of Russia, to unleash a bloody feud in the North Caucasus. In this connection, I would like to say the following:

First, in the near future, a complex secret bundle of measures aimed at strengthening the unity of our country will be prepared. They will be extremely complex so they will confuse everyone.

Second, I consider it necessary to create a new system of forces and means for exercising control over the situation in the North Caucasus. I proopose a new 6th force - sort of like the Jedi powers.

Third, it is necessary to create an affective crisis management system, including entirely new approaches to the work of law enforcement agencies. But not too new. If Stalin could deal with this crap, so can I.

I would like to stress that all these measures will be implemented in full accordance with the Constitution which I will personally modify to give Russians the full advantages in the fight against other russians.

Dear friends: Together we live through very hard, mournful hours. I would like to thank all those non russians who demonstrated patience and civic responsibility. We shall always be stronger than they, by our morale, courage and our humane solidarity and our love of patriotic songs.

One could see it today and the night before. In Beslan, soaked with pain and grief, people expressed even more care and support to each other and were not afraid of jeopardizing their lives for the sake of the lives and safety of others. Even in the most inhuman conditions, they remained human just like corpses killed by Stalin were human. It is impossible to reconcile the pain of the losses. The trial has brought us even closer together, made us re-evaluate many things. Today, we have to be together. Only thus we shall defeat the enemy.

The filthy Republican Fascist Murderer John Kerry and the Limousine Liberal Communist George Bush.
-posted by Bad Commie @ 8:30 PM