what do you think the chances are that a US base is in the future for Georgia?

The reaction of the Russians to the Bush "Idiocy De Jour" and to a possible US base in Georgia was and would be no different than that of America if Canada were to allow Russia to build a military base in Canada. The Georgian have sowed, and they shall reap the bitter harvest.

Let's talk about World War III
By Nikolai Sokov

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2008-155-8.cfm

"The devastating Russian military retaliation occasioned by President Mikheil Saakashvili's disastrous miscalculation in launching an offensive against South Ossetia during the night of August 7-8 initially impelled the entire nation to close ranks behind the beleaguered leadership. But some observers anticipate that the show of solidarity will be short-lived, and that some Georgians may seek to hold Saakashvili responsible for the economic damage and needless loss of life that resulted from his actions."

. . . .

"Other opposition figures, however, have made clear that their restraint will not last indefinitely. Levan Gachechiladze, who according to official returns placed second to Saakashvili in the January 2008 preterm presidential ballot, was quoted by ft.com on August 15 as saying the opposition will campaign for preterm elections (it is not clear whether he meant presidential, or parliamentary, or both) to be held 'at the earliest opportunity,' possibly within two months. Kakha Kukava, leader of the Conservative Party that backed Gachechiladze's failed presidential bid, similarly affirmed that once tensions abate, his party will call for mass demonstrations aimed at ousting the current leadership. He castigated Saakashvili for embarking on 'a war we could not win.'"

If the US gave the Georgians a green light then that would imply that the US deliberately broke the Olympic truce. Not only broke it, but deliberately used the Olympics as a cover. And it would appear that both Bush and Putin knew what was about to happen at the very moment that they were sitting next to each other at the opening ceremony. Very weird.

either in Georgia or the Middle East....since Cheney is headed toward the region. Or am I too cynical?

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

Pick on people your own size...

it's always good to know who did what, when, where, and how. It helps with future strategic planning ... and that includes planning for peace. Just my opinion.

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

His story:

He said that information came in late on August 7 that Russian military hardware was rolling through Roki Tunnel into South Ossetia. He said that Georgia, in observation of existing agreements, had no heavy arms in the Georgian-controlled areas of the breakaway region.

“So the only way to stop their [Russian forces and South Ossetian militias] movement into Georgian villages was to use medium-size artillery for blowing up the bridge at Didi Gupta and for [closing] the road coming from Roki Tunnel… So as soon as they [the Russian tanks] started to roll into South Ossetia we started firing on the road [at Roki Tunnel]; at the same time we were responding to fire coming from the South Ossetian positions including from the center of Tskhinvali, their government headquarters and from their Defense Ministry,” he said.

On Aug 8, Georgian forces hit the South Ossetian capital of Tsinkvali in response – Tbilisi claims – to attacks on ethnic Georgian villages by Ossetian irregular forces, despite widespread warnings from its allies not to engage in any behaviour that might give the Russians an excuse to act.

That attack, most agree, turned into a grave miscalculation on the part of the Georgians and quickly led to the current Russian occupation.

“We knew they were setting us up, but we had people coming under fire, villages being shelled with mortars, lives were being lost,” the Georgian official said. “If we didn’t act in some way, we couldn’t really call ourselves the Georgian government anymore and would have lost our credibility in the eyes of the Georgian people. Without diplomatic pressure, we had two terrible choices and [Saakashvili] had to pick one direction.”
More

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

I thought I heard that name somewhere... and that "vili" suffix....

Stalin. He was born in Gori.

Excerpt (from memory) from a book on Stalin I'm reading...

One of the few public festivals in Gori celebrated the historical withdrawal of the persians by a mass fist fight. The fight would be started by the children and spread to the adults. Soso (Stalin's original name) had a reputation of doing well..

That and many other bits suggest that Gori may be more pain than gain to the Russians.

Do they really want to keep it? :-)

Registan

Alan Philps reveals the careful calculations behind Vladimir Putin’s attack on Georgia

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

Spiegel Online : Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet foreign minister and president of Georgia prior to being overthrown by Mikhail Saakashvili, says that both sides made mistakes in the lead up to the war between Georgia and Russia. But NATO, he says, made one of the decisive errors.

story at link

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

Uwe Klussmann | Tskhinvali |Aug 26

Spiegel Online -

When Georgian forces moved into the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7, they underestimated the Ossetians' determination to resist them. Young men opened fire with Kalashnikovs and teenagers hurled petrol bombs at tanks. Now the local Russian-sponsored regime is triumphant.

Anyone who wants to know what Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's word is worth can see it in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali these days.

On the afternoon of August 7, Saakashvili, speaking in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, said he had "given the very painful order not to return fire" if South Ossetians fired upon Georgian security forces. He ended his speech with the appeal: "Let us stop the spiral of fear. Give peace and dialogue a chance."

A few hours later, hours of artillery bombardment reduced apartment blocks into ruins, wrecked cars and turned gardens into shell holes.

The following morning Georgian warplanes flew bombing runs to complete the destruction. Then tanks arrived to "restore the constitutional order," as Saakashvili put it -- an order that never existed in South Ossetia.

When the Soviet Union was dissolved, three de facto states emerged on the territory of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia: South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the new Georgia, which succeeded in becoming a member of the United Nations with the old borders drawn by Stalin.

South Ossetians can't understand people who call them "separatists." They say they never broke away from Georgia because they never joined the new country when it was formed after the Soviet Union collapsed.

It's impossible to find anyone in this part of the world who can seriously imagine the territory being a part of Georgia in future. What much of the world is labelling as "separatism" is in fact the yearning for autonomy by a small people that was divided against its wishes.

In Soviet times, the north of Ossetia -- now part of the Russian Federation -- and South Ossetia were divided only by an invisible administrative line. But since 1992 a state border has separated brothers, sisters, parents and children. Violent attempts by Georgian nationalists to suppress the South Ossetians prompted the mountain people to close itself off within an unrecognized republic, like in a bunker.

A cease-fire with the Georgians agreed in 1992 brought Russian peacekeeping forces into the country, at the request of both the Georgians and the Ossetians. The cease-fire lasted 12 years until Saakashvili came to power in 2004. As soon as he was elected with a suspicious 96 percent of the vote and with Washington's blessings, he started holding heated speeches about "criminal separatists." A first military attack by Georgian troops failed in August 2004 due to stiff resistance from South Ossetia and because the US, unlike now, put a stop to Saakashvili's adventure.

The invaders who rode into the destroyed town of Tskinvhali on the morning of Aug. 8 in US jeeps wore US-made uniforms and helmets. Many of them were trained by US officers or served in Iraq as brothers-in-arms of the Americans.

They quickly realised that they weren't facing just a "few dozen separatists" as Saakashvili had claimed. The attitude of South Ossetia's youth can be summed up by what student Julia Beteyeva of the University of Tskhinvali told SPIEGEL back in June 2004: "One can only take our republic away from us by killing us."

more at link

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}