It wasn't about appeasing russia, as the UK's Malcolm Rifkin, a conservative former Defence Secretary, explained:

Nato was devised as, and still is, more than anything else, a defence pact, with its member states committed to collective security. These are more than words. Under Article 5 of the Nato Treaty, every member state is committed to come to the aid of any other member state, including by the use of armed force, if such a state is subject to armed attack.

If Ukraine or Georgia become full members, Britain and other members could find themselves required to contemplate war or other forms of military intervention if either of these countries faced armed attack.

This cannot be considered a hypothetical concern. For some years, Georgia has been unable to enjoy full territorial integrity because of the de facto secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both secessionist regions enjoy strong Russian support and there have already been clashes between Georgian troops and those of the two breakaway regions.

...Relations between Ukraine and Russia remain tense, and the question of Ukraine's orientation towards the West is the seminal issue of Ukrainian politics, with the population almost equally divided.

Against that background, one has to ask again whether it would be wise for America, Britain and other Nato members to enter into a treaty obligation to protect Ukraine when that commitment might involve the use of our armed forces. Nato membership does not just give us the option to become involved: it obliges us to become involved, a quite different matter.

Regards, C

It has become clear at the NATO’s summit in Bucharest that NATO is not willing to stand for the freedom, the right of self determination and territorial integrity of Macedonia and the Macedonian people. So what’s the point of Macedonia joining NATO anyway? Instead of standing up for justice and human right, NATO has taken the side of the Greek’s nationalist and irredentist and their fight for exclusive right to Alexander the Great, Ancient Macedonia and all the history of the Macedonian region. Which is of course just a cover up for the Greek’s real agenda: to kill the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation. This agenda is centuries old. The torture, the killing and the ethnic cleansing of the Macedonians in the Macedonian region is well documented and available to whoever wants to research this matter for his/her own, instead of listening to Greeks lies. This agenda will continue until there is no more Macedonians and Republic of Macedonia. And despite all the claims of friendship and support, NATO has betrayed Macedonia and the Macedonian people in the most cynical and humiliating way. It has led the Macedonians all the way to Bucharest just to get the slap in their face. Their cynicism continues with claims that despite the slap in the face of the Macedonian people, NATO is still supportive of Macedonia’s membership, if and when Macedonia ceases to be Macedonia. How absurd and how insulting can NATO get? And how and what can justify NATO’s behavior? Are Macedonia and the Macedonian people disposable and can be treated with no dignity and respect? Why is it okay to address the Macedonians with racial and nationalistic slurs and respect from them that they give up everything that they identify with? What happened with ‘all people should be treated equal?’ We, the Macedonians are deeply insulted and hurt by this treatment, but we have no other option but to endure just like other peoples have endured torture, humiliation, segregation, slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
After the NATO’s summit in Bucharest, the Macedonians’ aspiration to join NATO has become an absurd. The only thing that the NATO member countries can do to separate themselves from this shameful injustice and discrimination of a sovereign and independent country and its people is to recognize Macedonia by its own constitutional name, if they haven’t already done so.

It's interesting that to some degree membership seems to depend on how Western a country is. Is that a good thing?

I can understand the line that it's not a good thing to actively appease Russia at the expense of plucky, formerly-oppressed Eastern European democracies. But I don't really see much point in provoking even worse relations when the only people who seem to want the move to go ahead are the Bush administration and a rickety Ukrainian government that is acting in opposition to public opinion on this issue. The game just doesn't seem worth the candle to me.