War in Georgia?

[summit]

Why would Georgia embark on a campaign of militarily kicking Russia in the shins when Russia is being run by a nutter looking for a bar fight. Especially in Georgia's neighborhood? And why would the U.S. have ever let Georgia march down that road?

These are outstanding questions that you are looking at from the wrong angle... You are assuming that is exactly what happened and therefor it must have been GWB. You should listen less to ITAR-TASS. I mean do you really believe the Russian claims that Georgia just decided one night to (according to Russian Media) kill 10% of the SO civilian population with a rocket barrage targeting the Russian military "peacekeepers" at a time when the Russians had moved additional armored divisions to the border on "maneuvers" (and had been very public about it)??? Seriously? You believe that is the way it went down?

I'll tell you this, GWB is an idiot but even he is not that fucking stupid and neither is Saakashvili. But Putin IS that smart. He's been waiting to engineer a larger offensive not only to send a message to the West, but also to send messages to other former Soviet satellitte states in the region to not get cozy with the West. Look at how he has been playing with Ukraine!!! He knows how tied up the US and it's allies are right now and they waited for the world to be distracted by the Olympics before getting this conflict going. This was Russian engineered and a while coming. I think he is impressed with how little resistance he is seeing from the West and will continue to push until he is stopped. This is EXACTLY what Putin wanted.

PS. Saying that South Ossettia is virtually Russian is very misleading. The Ossetians don't want to be Russian so much as they simply don't want to be Georgian. Why are they "virtually Russian"? Because after the OSSETIANS beat the GEORGIANS miltarily in the mid 90s (a conflict backed by Russia), the Russians drove in with heavy armor, declared themselves peace keepers, declared the local populace were Russian citizens, and made them start using Rubles.

PPS Saakashvili being US educated seems to make him a pawn in your eyes. Why is simply seeking a sponsored education automatically a shill make for you? Are you only happy if Georgia has a leader educated in Tblisi? It won't matter because the next one WILL be a shill for Moscow at this rate.

[counterfeitfake]

I don't know much about Russia. What's the deal with Putin? He is elected? I think I have heard mixed opinions about him. It sounds like he's unpopular but he has been in office a long time, hasn't he?

[timvwcom]

At least Bush has been hard at work on this international crisis.

[counterfeitfake]

probably the smartest behavior i have seen from bush in the last 7 years

[13]

spindrift & kayaktheworld:

saakashvili was democratically elected... TWICE. hardly a "CIA prop."

[Tye 1on]

A little maneuvering while shrub is an impotent lame duck, the elections are upcoming, and the US is over committed in Iraq. Don't be surprised if more of this pops up in the next few months, putting my money on India...

[summit]

The Russians have cut Georgia in half and are now attacking heavily in the western half of the country since they invaded through Abkhazia while Georgian forces were withdrawing from the east. Georgia's primary airbase and army base have both fallen. The Russian Navy is blockading Georgian ports.

Luckily Turkey has agreed to provide electrical power to Georgia (Georgia usually exports electricity to Turkey).

Well, this will fulfill Putin's wish to stop the pipeline that Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan were building to compete with Russia. It would have threatened Russia's energy hegemony power over Europe. With Russian tanks in Georgia, Azerbaijan's oil and gas fields are very exposed to Russia. Additionally, Russia is accusing Ukraine (a Georgian ally) of being complicit in the supposed crimes of Georgia. Ukraine is on Russia's shit list... how long until they get invaded? Is Ukraine the next target or is it Azerbaijan? Soviet Union 2.0 here we come!

[Rontele]

[Lizhnik]

These are outstanding questions that you are looking at from the wrong angle... You are assuming that is exactly what happened and therefor it must have been GWB. You should listen less to ITAR-TASS. I mean do you really believe the Russian claims that Georgia just decided one night to (according to Russian Media) kill 10% of the SO civilian population with a rocket barrage targeting the Russian military "peacekeepers" at a time when the Russians had moved additional armored divisions to the border on "maneuvers" (and had been very public about it)??? Seriously? You believe that is the way it went down?

"The way it went down" is not a matter of debate. South Ossetia was invaded by Georgia, and then Russia attacked. It is reported this way not only in Russian media, but in international and western media as well. If you've seen a report to the contrary, I'd be interested to see it. I'm also curious about that "10% of SO civilian population" number.

Georgia seems to have made a terrible miscalculation that the west would ride to their aid in the face of Russian military aggression. Indeed, Russia was spoiling for a fight. But it begs the question as to wether the US State Dept. gave the Georgians certain signals that they interpreted as tacit support for an invasion of South Ossetia. It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened.

[summit]

"The way it went down" is not a matter of debate. South Ossetia was invaded by Georgia, and then Russia attacked. It is reported this way not only in Russian media, but in international and western media as well. If you've seen a report to the contrary, I'd be interested to see it. I'm also curious about that "10% of SO civilian population" number.

Georgia seems to have made a terrible miscalculation that the west would ride to their aid in the face of Russian military aggression. Indeed, Russia was spoiling for a fight. But it begs the question as to wether the US State Dept. gave the Georgians certain signals that they interpreted as tacit support for an invasion of South Ossetia. It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened.

South Ossetia IS part of Georgia as far as the international community, including the UN, is concerned. There's a difference between an attempt to restablish some control and what the Russians are claiming as their casus belli: ethnic cleansing, civilian massacres, intentionally attacking Russian "peacekeepers." The Russians are claiming 10,000 dead SO civilians... there are only about 70,000 South Ossetians (and another 30,000 Georgians) in South Ossetia.

Here is the latest claim of the Russian propoganda machine:

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service


MOSCOW, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Russia accused Ukraine on Saturday of encouraging Georgia to carry out "ethnic cleansing" in the separatist region of South Ossetia by providing arms, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"The Ukrainian government, which has been enthusiastically arming Georgian troops from top to bottom, was in fact encouraging Georgia to attack and carry out ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia," the ministry said in a statement on its website www.mid.ru.

It added that ex-Soviet Ukraine had "no moral right to teach others how to do things." (Reporting by Tanya Ustinova, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)

Here is a good editorial someone sent me a link to:

Georgia on our Conscience
By the Editors

Though the order “Lights, camera, action!” was given by Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, the wartime drama now unfolding in the Caucasus was devised, scripted, directed, and produced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin and his fellow siloviki (or former KGB kleptocrats.) For almost two decades Russia has sought to divide and destabilize the new independent states in its former backyard by helping to establish, finance, and protect “breakaway” ethnic statelets such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia within the sovereign territory of Georgia.

These statelets fulfill two important functions.

First, they provide the siloviki with country estates. Almost none of the officials in the South Ossetian government are locals. Most are high-ranking former KGB officials from other parts of Russia. But South Ossetia provides them with a safe haven in which they can launder money, run smuggling operations, traffic in women, divert official funds into their pockets, and wage small but useful wars. Those wars are the second function: They help to destabilize independent states, especially pro-Western states such as Georgia, already weakened by division. South Ossetian “forces” have been bombing Georgian villages at irregular intervals for years, but recently more intensively.

That gave Saakashvili a choice of evils. Either he did nothing — and lost a large chunk of his country to Putin’s salami tactics. (He recently gave Russian passports to South Ossetians otherwise unable to travel.) Or he sought to regain at least some of South Ossetia by a lightning raid. Saakashvili chose what is manifestly the worse of the those two evils. It proved to be a disaster for him and for Georgia.

A massive Russian response, quite manifestly ready to go, was launched. Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia. Another pro-Russian force attacked Georgia in that part of the second breakaway province of Abkhazia that Tblisi still controls. Georgia’s well-trained but modest army was forced to withdraw. Russian planes continued to bomb central Georgia, seeking to degrade both military and economic targets. When Saakashvili proposed a cease-fire, the Russians at first refused to talk to him, then started multiplying conditions for their acceptance; those conditions now include Saakashvili’s resignation.

Throughout this calculated aggression, the Russian media has played an inglorious but technically brilliant role. They have used the most modern techniques of journalism and marketing to broadcast the worst lies of the Kremlin. Those lies themselves have been cleverly designed to imitate the West’s own justifications for the Kosovo intervention: “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” Doubtless the Georgian forces committed crimes in their incursion into South Ossetia. There are plausible reports that they shelled villages. But they were overwhelmed so quickly that they simply could not have committed crimes of the scale alleged by the Kremlin. Besides, Russia’s long patronage of South Ossetian attacks, its invasion across internationally recognized borders, and its relentless bombing of a country that has retreated and offered a cease-fire deprives it of any right to make such accusations. Russian policy is a war crime in itself.

the rest here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...BlYTlkZTI0MzY=

[13]

Georgia seems to have made a terrible miscalculation that Russia would unleash the full fury of its' military in response to an attack into South Ossetia (not recognized as part of Russia by anyone but Russia).

fixed it for ya.

are you ethnically russian by any chance?

[Cosmic Suncloud]

woose saviing whoio?


S. Ossetia

.................1989 census..............1979....................1939
Ossetians 65,200 (66.2%).......65,077 (66.4%).....72,266 (68.1%)
Georgians 28,700 (29.0%)......28,187 (28.8%)......27,525 (25.9%)
Russians ............................2,046 (2.1%) .........2,111 (2.0%)
Armenians ............................ 953 (1.0%)..........1,537 (1.4%)
Jews ............................654 (0.7%) ..........1,979 (1.9%)
Other 5,100 (4.8%) .......1,071 (1.1%)..........700 (0.7%)

[kayaktheworld]

spindrift & kayaktheworld:

saakashvili was democratically elected... TWICE. hardly a "CIA prop."

Yep, with 96% of the vote after a coup that got rid of the last guy who hated America.

[kayaktheworld]

Summit, the National Review does not qualify as a news source but is a biased, conservative, anti-communist think-tank. You can't pretend to be getting facts from that piece.

Someone asked earlier what PNAC had to do with anything, they are the same crowd as those at the National Review. Please use an actual new source (one not produced by the people who perpetrate these things).

[Lizhnik]

Here is the latest claim of the Russian propoganda machine:

Here is a good editorial someone sent me a link to:

So, you answer Russian propaganda with an editorial in the National Review? I suggest you try some fair, balanced, fact-based reports. Incidentally, I think the NY Times coverage has been excellent.

As often happens, there are two sides to the story, and neither side is smelling like a rose. Something to keep in mind is that Russia will act in what it considers to be its own self-interest, wether the West likes it or not. Theoretically, so should Georgia, but I don't see what they expect to gain from all this.

[summit]

Well, I'd never heard of the National Review before... I just happened to like the editorial (that's an opinion piece boys and girls, not a fact filled news article). However, how does being anticommunist make them bad?

While talking to Russian MPs on Monday, President Dmitry Medevev drew a clear parallel between the current Georgian regime and Nazi Germany.

The President said Russia is not going to “pacify the aggressor” as Europe did in 1938, by signing the Munich treaty with Hitler. “We all know to what tragic consequences this led,” he said.

Now that is funny... not only because the Russians signed a nonagression pact with the Nazis and then they both invaded Poland, but moreso because the Russian actions more directly reflect Germany's seizure of the Sudatenland from Czechoslovakia to "liberate" those Ossetian/Germans from Georgian/Czeck "oppression".

Yep, with 96% of the vote after a bloodless coup that got rid of the last guy who WAS AMAZINGLY CORRUPT.

Fixed. Did you have a point somewhere?

[kayaktheworld]

Yeah, that he is just as corrupt as the last guy. It has been noticed that human rights violations have not decreased significantly since the CIA's golden boy came to power.

Pro-us, pro-Russia, what does it matter? We are almost as corrupt as our enemies.

[summit]

Yeah, that he is just as corrupt as the last guy. It has been noticed that human rights violations have not decreased significantly since the CIA's golden boy came to power.

Pro-us, pro-Russia, what does it matter? We are almost as corrupt as our enemies.

You keep claiming he is a CIA shill and are totally cool with the Russian invasion to repalce him with a FSB (KGB) shill. You have provided not one shred of proof that he is a CIA shill. You're only claim is that he came to power in democratic elections after a bloodless coup... and was then reelected... so because he was American educated he is evil?

Seriously, are you a Russian here on a green card or what?

(Since I'm asking, ethnically I am 1/2 Ruskie)

So you guys are still watching the Olympics, right? Right? PAY ATTENTION TO US! WE ARE ROCKING IT!

[Dexter Rutecki]

Well, I'd never heard of the National Review before...

!!!?????!?!?!??
For reals? The things they don't know about in Summit County...

However, how does being anticommunist make them bad?

I, for one, struggle to think of one bad thing that has ever resulted from a virulently anti-communist ideology.
Just can't think of anything.

[summit]

I'm so glad you are here, Dex. I'm so sorry I don't read some publication you think I would... perhaps I don't paint so easily with your political brush... So what do YOU think about this whole mess? I mean... surely you are in this thread for something more than dancing with me? (and please don't grab me that way)

[qwert]

Summit, the National Review does not qualify as a news source but is a biased, conservative, anti-communist think-tank. You can't pretend to be getting facts from that piece.

Someone asked earlier what PNAC had to do with anything, they are the same crowd as those at the National Review. Please use an actual new source (one not produced by the people who perpetrate these things).

If you're gonna bother having an opinion about something you might as well know what the fuck it is you're talking about. Fucking ass napkin.

These forums fucking slay me; a bunch of mental defects talking about things they clearly don't understand. There is so much wrong with everything you've posted on this thread that I could spend a lifetime refuting it while all the while having great fun at your expense. They could fill a library with what you DON'T know about this topic. STFU.

[Dexter Rutecki]

I didn't assume you were a reader of it (although it wouldn't have surprised me, and doesn't surprise me that you find their 'editorials' enlightening), but I would've thought you'd have heard of it. Bad assumption--you know, assuming the neo-cons are well informed (even about their own publications).

And I was only in this thread out of idle curiosity, not to post my own thoughts about it--and then I was struck by your National Review statement.

Personally I find the Russian line to be a bunch of bullshit, and watching their talking heads reminds of Soviet 80's era talking heads. As for what the Georgians were doing to Soviet nationals in those provinces, I don't really know. But this certainly was a long time (1992, most directly) in the making, and once again shows that the Bushies are generally asleep at the switch until the shit really hits the fan.

[kayaktheworld]

Summit, I'm not saying the Russian invasion is chill and good. I'm just saying that this is what should have been expected from all of this. Who is surprised that all this came about?

And yeah, nothing I have said points to a CIA prop....

1) US educated on a state department grant
2) Young man that won with 96% of the vote after a coup shortly after returning to his country from America
3) Has received tons of aid from the US and Sarkozy
4) Hailed by anti-communist politicians as the savior of Georgia because he wanted to fuck with Russia
5) Sends 2000 troops to Iraq as a tit for tat with Bush

This guy is run by America just like the last guy was run by Russia. Now it's going to flip around again.

EDIT: Summit, I want to be clear, I am not supporting Russia, I think everything they are doing/saying at this point is bullshit. I simply believe that the US is on the same line. BOTH sides are shaking the old cold war chest.

Apart from any of this, you still haven't answered the question, whether or not Russia is in the right (which is isn't), what did this guy think was going to happen?

How would you feel as Russia? A place that has seceded from Georgia and wants to be a part of your country is attacked by a nation full of American made weapons and you are looking for an excuse to make a statement...

[13]

... attacked by a nation full of Russian-built, Ukrainian supplied weapons ...

fixed it for you.

as for your "facts" () on saakashvili:
- where did you get that 96% from? the highest percentages i saw were in the mid-60%'s.
- where is your CIA connection? state department =/= CIA. columbia =/= CIA.
- he was educated in both ukraine and the united states.

hey! maybe he's really a ukrainian "prop."

[Hutch]

qwert comes out swinging!