[BliliBoopsy]

August 10, 2008

1,500 Reported Killed in Georgia Battle


Gori, Georgia, after air attacks by Russia on Saturday.

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, ANNE BARNARD and C. J. CHIVERS

GORI, Georgia — Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia veered closer to all-out war on Saturday as Russia moved parts of its Black Sea fleet toward Georgia’s coast and intensified air attacks on Georgia, striking two apartment buildings in the city of Gori and clogging roads out of the area with fleeing refugees.

Russia acknowledged that Georgian forces had shot down two Russian warplanes, while a senior Georgian official said the Georgians had destroyed 10 Russian jets. Russian armored vehicles continued to stream into South Ossetia, the pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s.

The fighting that began when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of the South Ossetia, Tskinvali, appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the 1980s war with Afghanistan.

Russian officials said that 1,500 civilians had been killed in South Ossetia and that 12 Russian troops had died. A Georgian government spokesman said that 60 civilians had been killed in Gori in the two apartment buildings, which were located near a tank base. Each side’s figures were impossible to confirm independently.

In Beijing, where President Bush and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin were attending the Olympic Games, Mr. Bush directly called on Russia to stop bombing Georgian territory, expressing strong support for Georgia in a direct challenge to Russia’s leaders.

“Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,” Mr. Bush said in a hastily arranged appearance at his hotel. “We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand down by all troops. We call for the end of the Russian bombings.”

The Russian defense ministry said 100 planeloads of airborne troops will be brought to northern Russia and marched into the “zone of hostilities.” Georgian officials said at least 2,500 Russian troops were already in the country.

On Saturday, Russia notified Western governments that its was moving elements of its Black Sea fleet to Ochamchira, a small port in the disputed enclave, a senior Western official said.

A senior Georgian security official said that Russian ships were moving toward Georgia’s Black Sea Cost in order to land ground troops, and that 12 Russian jets were bombing the Kadori Gorge in Abhazia, another breakaway region that hugs the Black Sea.

T he de facto government of pro-Russian Abkhazia asked United Nations peacekeepers to depart from their posts in the Kodori Gorge, a small mountainous area that Georgia had reclaimed by force in 2006.

The United Nations withdrew. Aerial bombardments of the gorge began soon after, the official said.

“The record is crystal clear,” the official said. “Russia has launched a full-scale military operation, on air, land and sea. We have entered a totally new realm — politically, legally and diplomatically.”

Georgia’s President, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared that Georgia was in a state of war, ordering government offices to work round the clock.

The senior Georgian official, Alexander Lomaya, secretary of the country’s National Security Council, said that 50 Russian warplanes had flown over Georgia on Saturday, a tenfold increase over the number of sorties seen Friday.

Russian authorities said their forces had retaken the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, from Georgian control during the morning hours , while Georgian officials said they had withdrawn from the area voluntarily.

Twelve Russian troops were killed, according to Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a Colonel General in the Ministry of Defense . Mr. Nogovitsyn was asked whether Russia was in a state of war with Georgia, but he denied that. Russian officials said their forces had entered Tskhinvali to aid Russian peacekeepers based there who had come under sustained fire from Georgian troops on Thursday.

Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, called the attack on Gori a “major escalation,” and said he expected attacks to increase over the course of Saturday.

In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, wounded fighters and civilians began to arrive in hospitals, most with shrapnel or mortar wounds. Several dozen names had been posted outside the hospital.

In a news conference, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Georgian attacks on Russian citizens “amounted to ethnic cleansing.”

Mr. Lavrov said Russian airstrikes targeted military staging grounds. Asked whether Russia is prepared to fight “all-out war” in Georgia, he said: “No. Georgia, I believe, started a war in Southern Ossetia, and we are responsible to keep the peace.”

He said Moscow has been working intensely with foreign leaders, in particular the United states. “We have been appreciative of the American efforts to pacify the hawks in Tbilisi. Apparently these efforts have not succeeded. Quite a number of officials in Washignton were really shocked when all this happened.”

In Beijing, Mr. Bush said the United States was working with European allies to seek an international mediation in the simmering conflict between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. He noted that administration officials had been in contact with officials in both countries “at all levels of government,” though neither side has so far showed a willingness to compromise.

Mr. Bush referred particularly to attacks spreading beyond South Ossetia, a reference to the Russian air strikes in parts of Georgia itself. “The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia,” he said. “They mark dangerous escalation in the crisis. The violence is endangering regional peace, civilian lives are being lost, and others are in danger.”

He discussed the fighting with Mr. Putin during a social lunch at the Great Hall of the People on Friday and again at the opening ceremonies. (The White House would did not disclose the details of what they said.)

After the opening ceremonies and through the day on Saturday, Mr. Bush conferred with his senior advisors about how to respond.

A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said that Mr. Bush had spoken by telephone this evening with the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, as well as Mr. Saakashvili. He said the president “reiterated the United States position to both leaders.”

Mr. Bush’s remarks, though brief, were striking in how he put the onus on Russia to halt the violence. He has sought to maintain a cooperative relationship with Russia under Mr. Putin and now Mr. Medvedev and has never before so flatly stated what he expected them to do on any issue. Referring to international efforts to mediate the conflict, he declared, “Russia needs to support these efforts so that peace can be restored as quickly as possible.”

Pentagon officials said late Friday that the Georgian government had officially requested assistance in airlifting home the approximately 2,000 Georgian troops now in Iraq. The request was under review, and standard procedures would indicate that the United States Government would honor the request, officials said.

Russian military units including tank, artillery and reconnaissance arrived in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on Saturday to help Russian peacekeepers there, in response to overnight shelling by Georgian forces, state television in Russia reported, citing the Ministry of Defense. Ground assault aircraft were also mobilized, the Ministry said.

A senior Georgian official said by telephone on Saturday that Russian bombers were flying over Georgia and that the presidential offices and residence in Tbilisi had been evacuated. The official added that Georgian forces still had control of Tskhinvali.

Neither side showed any indication of backing down. Mr. Putin of Russia declared that “war has started,” and Mr. Saakashvili accused Russia of a “well-planned invasion” and mobilized Georgia’s military reserves. There were signs as well of a cyberwarfare campaign, as Georgian government Web sites were crashing intermittently during the day.

The escalation risked igniting a renewed and sustained conflict in the Caucasus region, an important conduit for the flow of oil from the Caspian Sea to world markets and an area where conflict has flared for years along Russia’s borders, most recently in Chechnya.

The military incursion into Georgia marked a fresh sign of Kremlin confidence and resolve, and also provided a test of the capacities of the Russian military, which Mr. Putin had tried to modernize and re-equip during his two presidential terms.

Frictions between Georgia and South Ossetia, which has declared de facto independence, have simmered for years, but intensified when Mr. Saakashvili came to power in Georgia and made national unification a centerpiece of his agenda. Mr. Saakashvili, a close American ally who has sought NATO membership for Georgia, is loathed at the Kremlin in part because he had positioned himself as a spokesman for democracy movements and alignment with the West.

Earlier this year Russia announced that it was expanding support for the separatist regions. Georgia labeled the new support an act of annexation.

The conflict in Georgia also appeared to suggest the limits of the power of President Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s hand-picked successor. During the day, it was Mr. Putin’s stern statements from China, where he was visiting the opening of the Olympic Games, that appeared to define Russia’s position.

But Mr. Medvedev made a public statement as well, making it unclear who was directing Russia’s military operations. Officially, that authority rests with Mr. Medvedev, and foreign policy is outside Mr. Putin’s portfolio.

“The war in Ossetia instantly showed the idiocy of our state management,” said a commentator on the liberal radio station, Ekho Moskvy. “Who is in charge, Putin or Medvedev?”

The war between Georgia and South Ossetia, until recently labeled a “frozen conflict,” stretches back to the early 1990s, when South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia, gained de facto independence from Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The region settled into a tenuous peace monitored by Russian peacekeepers, but frictions with Georgia increased sharply in 2004, when Mr. Saakashvili was elected.

Reports conflicted throughout Friday about whether Georgian or Russian forces had won control of Tskhinvali, the capital of the mountainous rebel province. It was unclear late on Friday whether ground combat had taken place between Russian and Georgian soldiers, or had been limited to fighting between separatists and Georgian forces.

Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in Tskhinvali, said early on Saturday that South Ossetian separatists still held most of the city and that Georgian forces were only present on its southern edge.

That report aligned with a statement by Georgia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania, who said that Georgian military units held eight villages at the capital’s edge. Georgian officials asserted that Russian warplanes had attacked Georgian forces and civilians in Tskhinvali, and that airports in four Georgian cities had been hit.

Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, said they included the Vaziany military base outside of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, a military base in Marneuli, and airports in the cities of Delisi and Kutaisi.

“We are under massive attack,” he said.

Late in the night, George Arveladze, an adviser to Mr. Saakashvili, said that Russian planes had bombed the commercial seaport of Poti, where one worker was missing and several others were wounded. Poti is an export point for oil from the Caspian Sea; Mr. Arveladze said the initial reports indicated that the oil terminal had not been struck.

Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, said in a statement on a government Web site that hundreds of civilians had been killed in fighting in the capital. Russian peacekeepers stationed in South Ossetia said that 12 peacekeeping soldiers were killed Friday and that 50 were wounded. The claims of casualties by all sides could not be independently verified.

Analysts said that either Georgia or Russia could be trying to seize an opportune moment with world leaders focused on the start of the 2008 Olympics this week to reclaim the territory, and to settle the dispute before a new American presidential administration comes to office.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, said that Russia’s aims were clear. “They have two goals,” he said. “To do a creeping annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and, secondly, to overthrow Saakashvili, who is a tremendous thorn in their side.”

A spokesman for Mr. Medvedev declined to comment.

The United States State Department issued a press release late Friday saying that John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, had summoned the Russian chargé d’affairs to press for a de-escalation of force. “We deplore today’s Russian attacks by strategic bombers and missiles, which are threatening civilian lives,” the statement said.

The United States also said Friday that it would send an envoy to the region to try to broker an end to the fighting.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany issued a statement calling on both sides “to halt the use of force immediately.” Germany has taken a leading role in trying to ease the tensions over Abkhazia.

The trigger for the fresh escalation began last weekend, when South Ossetia accused Georgia of firing mortars into the enclave after six Georgian policemen were killed in the border area by a roadside bomb. As tensions grew, South Ossetia began sending women and children out of the enclave. The refugee crisis intensified Friday as relief groups said thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, were streaming across the border into the North Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz in Russia.

At the United Nations on Friday, diplomats continued to wrangle over the text of a statement after attempts to agree to compromise language collapsed Friday afternoon, after nearly three hours of consultations.

The Russians, who had called the emergency session, proposed a short, three-paragraph statement that expressed concern about the escalating violence, and singled out Georgia and South Ossetia as needing to cease hostilities and return to the negotiating table.

But one phrase calling on all parties to “renounce the use of force” met with opposition, particularly from the United States, France and Britain. The three countries argued that the statement was unbalanced, one European diplomat said, because that language would have undermined Georgia’s ability to defend itself. Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, circulated a revised draft calling for an immediate cessation of hostility and for “all parties” to return to the negotiating table. By dropping the specific reference to Georgia and South Ossetia, the compromise statement would also encompass Russia.

The Security Council was scheduled to meet Saturday to resume deliberations. China, in its statement during the early morning debate, had asked for a traditional cease-fire out of respect for the opening of the Olympics.

There are over 2,000 American citizens in Georgia, Pentagon officials said. Among them are about 130 trainers mostly American military personnel but with about 30 Defense Department civilians assisting the Georgian military with preparations for deployments to Iraq.

Michael Schwirtz reported from Gori, and Anne Barnard from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer and Ellen Barry from Moscow, Nicholas Kulish from Berlin, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations, and Thom Shanker from Washington.


Georgian soldiers avoided a bombardment in the city of Gori, 50 miles from Tblisi.
Heavy fighting raged in the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Saturday morning, reportedly killing at least 1,500 civilians.

Photo: Gleb Garanich/Reuters


A Russian convoy outside the village of Dzhaba in South Ossetia. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared that "war has started."


Russian authorities said their forces had retaken the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, from Georgian control. Left, Russian troops outside Dzhaba.


Russian air attacks struck two apartment buildings in Gori in what an official at the Georgian Interior Ministry called a "major escalation."


An injured woman outside of her home in Gori. Roads out of the area were clogged with refugees fleeing the Russian bombardment.


Chunks of twisted metal were scattered in the street. The United States and other Western nations, joined by NATO, condemned the violence and demanded a cease-fire.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[elalmhicabalp]

See my post in the Iran Plan thread.

A good resource for South Ossetia: http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4128

[baronaaba]

This is a no win situation for Georgia, even if it's forces are highly trained they stand no chance against Russia. I think it was foolish of Saakashvili to attack South Ossetia. Putin will use this to teach Georgia a very painful lesson and the world and Georgia's darling ally US will not be able to do anything. Saakashvili as a graduate of NY's Columbia University is actually a lawyer but he has been often accused of rash decisions which is what we see now.

Georgia needs to somehow get Russia to stop this conflict now otherwise their economy and their government will be destroyed.

Russia already bombed the port of Poti haulting commerse into Georgia, now they cut all air links, soon they will destroy all of Georgia's command and control infrastracture leaving the county open for a coup by Russian backed hardliners.

Just watch, Putin will use this as the case for taking back all of ex Soviet states that have been "lost" to the west (Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan etc..)

The real cold war has just started.

[zuhraliyana]

It looks hot to me.

[nd90t3sf]

Here's my "monday quarterback" analysis..
1. Saakashvili thought that for some reason Putin wouldn't intervene on SO behalf? this points to stupidity?
2. American & Israeli trainers were urging Saakashvili not to do this yet he did which points to stupidity?
3. Roki tunnel is the only way for Russia to have brought in the overwhelming ground forces (58th army) yet it was not bombed and closed? stupidity again?
4. Saakashvili initiated a conventional ground action with a far superior opponent with no Air support (against Israeli advice), stupidity?
5. Played right into the hands of Putin who is itching to teach west a lesson on Russia's near abroad (Ukraine, Azeris, Balts etc) to payback for Kosovo.
Conclusion: Saakashvili is not of sound mind and therefor should not be supported by US despite what happens.
and another fact about the Tu22 Backfire shut down by Georgians, supposedly it was done with Ukrainian S-200 missiles..(Ukraine is in deep @$#t now) There's no way the black sea fleet is leaving Sevastopol now.

[kneexyFreedly]

...and another fact about the Tu22 Backfire shut down by Georgians, supposedly it was done with Ukrainian S-200 missiles..(Ukraine is in deep @$#t now) There's no way the black sea fleet is leaving Sevastopol now.

Where is the source for this? Nice find.

I tend to agree, the Black Sea Fleet was always a problem, this makes it a tougher one.

I think that the Ukrainians had ownership of the SA-5s, and would be allowed to lease them to neighbors lawfully and train others to use them, even sell them.

Who was operating them?

[duncanalisstmp]

What the hell is going on in your mass media? Don't believe a word they say. I couldn't even imagine that such an outrageous lie is possible. It's a total information war against Russia.

It was Georgia who has attacked South Ossetia, who killed over then 2000 innocent civilians. It's a real genocide. I can't name it otherwise than a crime.
Georgian government and they who slaughtered civilians must be judged by the highest international tribunal. As far back as in Nurnberg it was decided that you can't carry out a deliberately criminal order.

Unfortunally I must confess it was USA government who has bought georgian ruling top long ago. It was you and other your spongers who sponsored georgian forces and ensured information support. Look at your presidential aspirant's rating of McCain now. Do you realy want a new war? Why you can't just stop fighting with us throught our brother-countries? If McCain will be elected it will be the beginnig of the end for both of us.

[Wavgbtif]

Russo-Georgian conflict is not all Russia's fault


For Georgia, this war has been a disastrous miscalculation. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are now completely lost. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario under which these places – home to perhaps 200,000 people – would ever consent to coming back into a Georgian state they perceive as an aggressor.

[moopogyOvenny]

Plucky little Georgia? No, the cold war reading won't wash
It is crudely simplistic to cast Russia as the sole villain in the clashes over South Ossetia. The west would be wise to stay out

Mark Almond
The Guardian, Saturday August 9 2008

For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of Soviet history.

The clash between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, which escalated dramatically yesterday, in truth has more in common with the Falklands war of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry Kissinger anticipated Britain's widely unexpected military response with the comment: "No great power retreats for ever." Maybe today Russia has stopped the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev.

Back in the late 1980s, as the USSR waned, the red army withdrew from countries in eastern Europe which plainly resented its presence as the guarantor of unpopular communist regimes. That theme continued throughout the new republics of the deceased Soviet Union, and on into the premiership of Putin, under whom Russian forces were evacuated even from the country's bases in Georgia.

To many Russians this vast geopolitical retreat from places which were part of Russia long before the dawn of communist rule brought no bonus in relations with the west. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions.

Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin's picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president, the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians.

In 1992, the west backed Eduard Shevardnadze's attempts to reassert Georgia's control over these regions. The then Georgian president's war was a disaster for his nation. It left 300,000 or more refugees "cleansed" by the rebel regions, but for Ossetians and Abkhazians the brutal plundering of the Georgian troops is the most indelible memory.

Georgians have nursed their humiliation ever since. Although Mikheil Saakashvili has done little for the refugees since he came to power early in 2004 - apart from move them out of their hostels in central Tbilisi to make way for property development - he has spent 70% of the Georgian budget on his military. At the start of the week he decided to flex his muscles.

Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - and so clearly felt he had American backing. The streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi airport. But he has ignored Kissinger's dictum: "Great powers don't commit suicide for their allies." Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington have forgotten it, too. Let's hope not.

Like Galtieri in 1982, Saakashvili faces a domestic economic crisis and public disillusionment. In the years since the so-called Rose revolution, the cronyism and poverty that characterised the Shevardnadze era have not gone away. Allegations of corruption and favouritism towards his mother's clan, together with claims of election fraud, led to mass demonstrations against Saakashvili last November. His ruthless security forces - trained, equipped and subsidised by the west - thrashed the protesters. Lashing out at the Georgians' common enemy in South Ossetia would certainly rally them around the president, at least in the short term.

Last September, President Saakashvili suddenly turned on his closest ally in the Rose revolution, defence minister Irakli Okruashvili. Each man accused his former blood brother of mafia links and profiting from contraband. Whatever the truth, the fact that the men seen by the west as the heroes of a post-Shevardnadze clean-up accused each other of vile crimes should warn us against picking a local hero in Caucasian politics.

Western geopolitical commentators stick to cold war simplicities about Russia bullying plucky little Georgia. However, anyone familiar with the Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects. Small nationalisms are rarely sweet-natured.

Worse still, western backing for "equip and train" programmes in Russia's backyard don't contribute to peace and stability if bombastic local leaders such as Saakashvili see them as a guarantee of support even in a crisis provoked by his own actions. He seems to have thought that the valuable oil pipeline passing through his territory, together with the Nato advisers intermingled with his troops, would prevent Russia reacting militarily to an incursion into South Ossetia. That calculation has proved disastrously wrong.

The question now is whether the conflict can be contained, or whether the west will be drawn in, raising the stakes to desperate levels. To date the west has operated radically different approaches to secession in the Balkans, where pro-western microstates get embassies, and the Caucasus, where the Caucasian boundaries drawn up by Stalin, are deemed sacrosanct.

In the Balkans, the west promoted the disintegration of multiethnic Yugoslavia, climaxing with their recognition of Kosovo's independence in February. If a mafia-dominated microstate like Montenegro can get western recognition, why shouldn't flawed, pro-Russian, unrecognised states aspire to independence, too?

Given its extraordinary ethnic complexity, Georgia is a post-Soviet Union in miniature. If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics' right to secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be pro-western?

Other people's nationalisms are like other people's love affairs, or, indeed, like dog fights. These are things wise people don't get involved in. A war in the Caucasus is never a straightforward moral crusade - but then, how many wars are?

· Mark Almond is a history lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford mpalmond@aol.com

[PristisoliTer]

Sorry for my English....
But....
All inform agency show you the LIE!!!!!!!!!
It a global provocation, like a y2k problem.....
Do you wanna now a real history of this conflict???

The georgian army was savage attack the South Ossetia in night from 08.07.08 to 08.08.08 and kill 2000 civil!!!!!!!!
More, their tanks trample a women and childes....
They fling a grenades to shelters with civil....
Many of this civil was (..... ) Russian citizens.
But its not a main thing!
Civil scream!!!!! to Russians to help then!!!!
It was extirpation оf Ossetians!!!!!

They tanks fire point-blank to post of Russian piace-makers and kill them!

Russia response fo this insolent, barbarian act from Georgia!!!!

And all that YOU see is start at evening 08.08.08 and then.....
And all facts tolerably distort or brighten up.

Example:
The reactive guns that you see on CNN IS A GERGIAN!!!!!!!!
And they shot to Ossetia morning 08.08.08

[Heacechig]

[RLRWai4B]

Its a business agency news....
http://top.rbc.ru/english/index.shtm...0354_bod.shtml
without hysteria and emotion

[*Playergirl*]

All inform agency show you the LIE!!!!!!!!!

The georgian army was savage attack the South Ossetia in night from 08.07.08 to 08.08.08 and kill 2000 civil!!!!!!!!
More, their tanks trample a women and childes....
They fling a grenades to shelters with civil....
Many of this civil was (..... ) Russian citizens.
But its not a main thing!
Civil scream!!!!! to Russians to help then!!!!
It was extirpation оf Ossetians!!!!!

Please provide us with a link to where you got this information from.

[DianaDrk]

Anything non-Putin (I mean non-Russian)?

[PyncGyncliacy]

Please provide us with a link to where you got this information from.

See upper massage!

[tooratrack]

Anything non-Putin (I mean non-Russian)?

Only after non-Bush news (worldwide)

[Trikaduliana]

See my second message.

[leijggeds]

Only after non-Bush news (worldwide)

So the entire worldwide media lies, except the Russian media?

Give me a break.

[XinordiX]

Saakashivili and all the rulling top of Georgia speak English in all tv-addresses, like true office employee of Washington administration. Isn't it enough to see who his audience is? How can you explain so huge pecuniary aid of United States? How can you explain the visit of Condoleezza Rice just before Georgia's attack? How can you explain american-georgian manoeuvres just before the attack?

I know, it's hard to believe your Mass Media lies after so long period of brainwashing. It's not just a unique occurrence of lie. Your Mass Media has been preparing the ground for such an inconceivable lie beforehand. But now that's the limit!

[Avgustslim]

Only after non-Bush news (worldwide)

The joke was not stories ABOUT Putin, but stories that did not have to pass by the regulatory comittees/orginizations run by Putin associates.

IOW, uncensored.

I am confused as to where you guys think that our news is somehow saying that Russia and (SO?) are the bad guys. That Georgia is a victim. I think that this is a sticky situation where each side has its own problems and cannot easily be relegated to "right" and "wrong".

So instead of decrying the messenger, try to break it down a bit and discuss the issue rather than crying "LIES!" at anything you disagree with.