Russia's Army Invades Georgia in Force: How should the US Government React??

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War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?

by Michel Chossudovsky

During the night of August 7, coinciding with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgia's president Saakashvili ordered an all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.
The aerial bombardments and ground attacks were largely directed against civilian targets including residential areas, hospitals and the university. The provincial capital Tskhinvali was destroyed. The attacks resulted in some 1500 civilian deaths, according to both Russian and Western sources. "The air and artillery bombardment left the provincial capital without water, food, electricity and gas. Horrified civilians crawled out of the basements into the streets as fighting eased, looking for supplies." (AP, August 9, 2008). According to reports, some 34,000 people from South Ossetia have fled to Russia. (Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, August 10, 2008)

The importance and timing of this military operation must be carefully analyzed. It has far-reaching implications.

Georgia is an outpost of US and NATO forces, on the immediate border of the Russian Federation and within proximity of the Middle East Central Asian war theater. South Ossetia is also at the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes.
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You can read the rest here.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9788

To say the least it is a Very interesting article. While some of it sound a bit controversial it does bring up some very good points.
 
And where is condi rice when this is going on? I mean russia is supposed to be the one area she has chops. We are supposed to be the pre eminent super power and we had no intelligence, no policy, no planning, just a front seat at the olympics? Not that we have any resources to spare anyway. Putin 1 Bush 0.
 
and we had no intelligence
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One would have thought that our spy satellites would have been watching this situation, no??

The Georgians had been unsuccessful in getting reconnaissance of what was going on across the border in Russia. This past April they put up a spy drone aircraft along their border to look into Russia, and try to see what they were up to.

However, this is the incredible footage that the Georgian spy drone instead recorded on its camera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb6hqzR7tns

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Another Bush Mission Accomplished...

Russia had Intelligence too - and trumped Georgia's aggressive move.
Georgia called Russia's bluff - and lost. Russia in the past had rattled
a sabre when Georgia made aggressive moves - but this time the sabre
came out and did some serious slashing. Georgia can cry about it - but Russia waited for the right moment ie. lame duck Bush in China, and an aggressive Georgia getting a bit too big for its britches during the Olympics. Russia simply pulled the plug on those shennanigans and zapped two birds with one stone - Georgia and Bush.<Georgia Bush? LOL>


Bush can whine and complain, but what can he do?
Really, what can Bush do? Zilch, Nada, Nichts, Nothing. Putin epitomizes someone who knows how to keep quiet and carry a big stick. Bush was caught flatfooted, and Bush had pushed Putin into a corner where Putin had very little choice but to up the ante at the right time and wisely choose his battles.


The Bush administration has alienated so many foreign powers, it can only react and try to build bridges it has already burned. If the Bush govt. had kept good relations with Putin - and had kept a dialogue instead of trying to prod Georgia into NATO and a US-Backed military power against Russia - this mess would not have happened.


Bush has accomplished something pathetic; he has managed to force the U.S. to have to back down to Russia. Russia can now flex some muscle and challenge the U.S.A.'s arrogance in claiming to be the only superpower. If the U.S. reacts militarily, Russia can pour support into Iran. If the U.S. tries to drive a wedge between Russia and Europe - Russia can turn off the flow of oil and drive up the price of oil. What can lame duck Bush do? He can complain, but Russia has veto power in the U.N. - and Russia can make a credible claim that it was preventing ethnic cleansing and did so with far more moral authority than did the U.S. in Serbia and Iraq.


If this was a game of chess - Putin has just said checkmate to Bush.
Already Obama is the one who who is being asked what will be the U.S. response. Bush and McCain might as well just wave Bye-Bye and exit the political stage. Bush Foreign Policy died in Georgia; it's over. Game Set and Match. The new game with new boundaries will be between Medvedev<sp> and the Obama administration.


Love him or Hate him - Putin has shown great skill and timing whereas Bush has yet again miserably failed.
 
russian U.S. response

The United States politicans are once again keeping us from helping our allies when there in trouble and with the shape the russian military is in , i personally think this is Putin's response to the missile shield and the best he can do is pick on the country of Georgia and what do we do when they call for help, we verbally back them and condem the russians. the russians are advancing with 9,000 troops and 350 tanks . In 1991 saddam had 3,000 tanks and we went through the same tanks the russians are using. in 100 hours just imagine what we coul do to those bastards with some abrams in 1 day . Drop the 1st marine division in there and let them kick the **** out of the russians
 
The United States politicans are once again keeping us from helping our allies............
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Just because they're our allies doesn't mean they're right and that we should commit support to them.
 
We, as Americans, tend to bitch when we can't find anyone to stand with us when we go to war.

Well, we found one country who would, Georgia. Georgia had a couple thousand troops in Iraq, and after Great Britain, had the biggest military commitment there.

Now we are abandoning them, and letting Putin and the Russians rape their country.

Next time we go looking for allies, I guess we'll know why we can't find any. We abandon our friends when the going gets tough.

Ask not what America can do for you, ask what you can do for America.
 
Russia should ONLY be allowed to secure the area they had before Georgia launched its attack against the rebels. If Russia attempts to take control of the whole country or absorb a section of it, the US needs to step in.
 
I don't see the comparisons between what Russia is doing and what we are doing (Iraq and Afghanistan). I don't believe anybody commandeered and flew several jets loaded with hundreds of innocent people into buildings containing thousands of innocent people, all non-military.
You Bush haters need to come up with more tangible excuses to hate. Maybe if we get Russia mad enough to invade us you all can wave your white flags right away at them and then throw a big party because you'll finally have the socialist government you've always wanted right here at home.
Myself and hopefully others, resisting as we should, will be looking for you first.
 
I don't see the comparisons between what Russia is doing and what we are doing (Iraq and Afghanistan). I don't believe anybody commandeered and flew several jets loaded with hundreds of innocent people into buildings containing thousands of innocent people
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I do not remember Iraq having anything to do with that either.
 
Well, we found one country who would, Georgia. Georgia had a couple thousand troops in Iraq, and after Great Britain, had the biggest military commitment there.

Now we are abandoning them, and letting Putin and the Russians rape their country.
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I don't think so. Georgia is a country that has wheeled armored vehicles with light tank guns for armor and uses Toyota pick-ups for APCs. Yet somehow, they thought it would be a good idea to attack a former superpower that still has the second biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons. Clearly Georgia knew it wasn't going to prevail against the Russians, yet they still started that fight. Wonder who they were counting on to save them from their own stupidity?

Not only did Georgia attack peacekeeping forces that were there under an international agreement that Georgia had signed, they deliberately burned civilian homes and may have killed as many as 2,000 Ossetian civilians in what is starting to look an awful lot like a deliberate campaign of genocide/terror to reclaim that province.

What kind of ally starts a fight they can't win and then runs crying to hide behind your skirt when they inevitably start getting beat?

S832 said:
Russia should ONLY be allowed to secure the area they had before Georgia launched its attack against the rebels. If Russia attempts to take control of the whole country or absorb a section of it, the US needs to step in.
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Step in and do what? Give Russia more harsh words? Stop buying caviar from them? What exactly do you propose the U.S. do? Start a face-to-face armed conflict with a nuclear superpower that was responding to an attack from one of our allies and acted entirely within bounds of international law that even the U.S. has failed to observe recently?

Look, I was a Russian linguist with the Navy and I've definitely done the Cold War and post-Cold War thing; but Georgia was so far in the wrong on this one I don't even know what to say. The best Georgia can do is point to a tiny series of events that have been happening in that place for 100 years; but Georgia is utterly responsible for taking the recent incident and making it a near-international crisis. Stupid should hurt and Georgia has shown plenty of stupid.

To use an analogy, what action would be appropriate if Iranian forces invaded a section of Afghanistan, killing U.S. and European peacekeeping forces there and burning out civilians as they advanced? Would the U.S. military be within its rights to eject Iran by bombing deep inside Iran (in order to cut off the infrastructure supporting the attack) and seizing logistical gateways behind the main Iranian attack?
 
in 100 hours just imagine what we coul do to those bastards with some abrams in 1 day . Drop the 1st marine division in there and let them kick the **** out of the russians
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Whoa, I despise Putin, but I'm not keen on morphing this into a world war to save a craphole Eurasian republic that miscalculated. Russia is the way it is now because of failures to win it over when we had our best opportunity during the Clinton years.
 
Just listened to Glen Becks Broadcast from yesterday, he stated the phrase which sends people off the deep end. "It's all about the oil"

Refering to Russia trying to shut down Georgia's natural gas pipeline, so that the Russian pipeline would reign supreme in that area.


Very interesting, bears further looking into.
 
Refering to Russia trying to shut down Georgia's natural gas pipeline, so that the Russian pipeline would reign supreme in that area.
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Except that the Russians, despite plenty of good tactical reasons to do so, did not attempt to destroy, damage or capture the BTC pipeline. Instead, Kurdish separatists in Turkey (another of our Iraq allies) blew it up on the eastern end of the pipeline.

In addition, the BTC pipeline carries only 90k bbl/oil per day through it - and while that is a lot of money, it isn't even a dent in the oil demands of Europe or the U.S. For example, France alone consumes 1,961,000 bbl/day of oil. As a whole, Europe uses 15M bbl/day of oil.

Not to mention that the owner of the BTC pipeline is British Petroleum, which is partnered with Russia on a number of pipeline and production projects that are bigger than BTC. BP just spent $1.7 billion upgrading a single facility in their Russian partnership (or about FOUR MONTHS worth of BTC oil at top market prices) - not to mention that the BP partnership produces more than 45 million tons (or tonnes if you prefer the British) of crude products per year for BP. If Russia wanted to shut down the BTC pipeline, I am sure they have enough leverage with BP to make the request sans armor.
 
B. Roberts wrote, in part:

Not only did Georgia attack peacekeeping forces that were there under an international agreement that Georgia had signed (emphasis added), they deliberately burned civilian homes and may have killed as many as 2,000 Ossetian civilians in what is starting to look an awful lot like a deliberate campaign of genocide/terror to reclaim that province.
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From what I've read and seen from various sources, that's what the Georgians did guys.

We wouldn't allow someone to do that to us and Russia won't allow someone to do that to them.

Georgia's in deep, deep trouble IMHO.
 
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From what I've read from various sources, that's what the Georgians did guys.
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That is what the Russian government has instructed their press to report. There is no independent press inside South Ossetia currently.

It is ironic how so many people will question things said by our own government, and then swallow whole things said by another government.

Remember that when Iraq invaded Kuwait, their troops ransacked the hospitals, disconnecting patients from life support equipment, in order to loot them. They even threw premature babies out of their incubators, in order to steal the incubators. A nurse from Kuwait even testified before Congress that she had witnessed these horrors.

You remember how those reports played out, correct??

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That is what the Russian government has instructed their press to report.
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Not sure what part you are pointing out; but the Georgians did sign the 1994 peacekeeping agreement that left Russia as peacekeepers. The Russian government isn't instructing people to report that. Georgia has been trying to back out of the agreement due to incidents such as this one. (Short summary: Two Georgian policeman vs. eight Russian paratroopers in a verbal smackdown/fistfight which ends up an international incident blown out of proportion by both sides)

As to the attack, CNN reported on Friday that Georgia was attacking South Ossetia and that ten Russian peacekeepers had been killed. I watched it as it developed because I had time off and an interest in the subject. The amount of armor that Georgia rolled out for some cross-border sniper fire is not the type that you just have laying around doing nothing on a Friday afternoon (though worth noting that the Russian response was also not the type of thing you scrape up on a moment's notice).


There is no independent press inside South Ossetia currently.

It is ironic how so many people will question things said by our own government, and then swallow whole things said by another government.
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Don't know about that; but AP has been interviewing refugees from South Ossetia. Check out my MSNBC link above. The South Ossetian refugees are not only reporting a large scale Georgian attack that resulted in entire towns being burned out (civilian populations offering no resistance); but before the woman could say more nasty things about the Georgians, the Russians actually came and stopped the interview and threw the reporters out:

MSNBC said:
Before the woman could give her name, police at the camp interrupted the interview. Two foreign reporters were later fined for working without special permission in a restricted border zone.
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Clearly Russia is trying to control its press coverage; but I think this is clearly one of those times when they would be better off letting the coverage run. Here you had Western reporters getting first hand accounts of war crimes and aggression by Georgian troops and who kills the story? The Russians.
 
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