In this video, Fox News interrupts a Civilian who reports that Georgia instigated attacks against Russia.
A Russian American blogs about Georgia, saying: "America needs to wake up"
Gorbachev responds to Larry King on CNN about Russian response to Georgian attacks spinned as "aggression" by Russia:
Former Reagan official explains that Georgian attacks on Russia were approved by the Bush administration.
The United States has been pushing Russia hard since well-before 9/11, trying to weaken and encircle it. I devoted a whole chapter to that subject in Rubicon. It is clear that the Bush Administration, in its Neocon cock-suredness, mistook Russia's comparatively tepid responses thus far as a sign of weakness. This is a rope-a-dope strategy that the U.S. looks certain to lose unless it can pull a rather large and intimidating hippopotamus out of the hat. The potential humiliation for U.S. prestige is so great that I would bet that the "football" has been dusted off in Beijing while Hu Jintao wonders what happened to his Olympic games. Either the Chinese had advance warning or they did not. If they did, which I suspect, then it's perfect to have Bush in Beijing where both Russia and China can carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. If they didn't, then I'm certain that Russia had a huge carrot to put on the Chinese table as the first tanks crossed the border.What must be remarked upon is the incredible hypocrisy of U.S. officials and their acquiescing corporate media. An article by Patrick J. Buchanan asks: Is Not Western Hypocrisy Astonishing?
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Russia has just brought the energy discussion back to the only real problem there is, Peak Oil...
The BTC pipeline, so familiar to FTW and Rubicon readers, carries about a million barrels a day of Caspian oil around Russia to a Turkish port in the Mediterranean from whence it gets shipped to Europe AND the U.S. It happens to run right through Georgia. More importantly, since it started operations just a few years ago, it has represented Europe's last (belated) futile hope for energy independence from Russia. Take a million barrels a day offline, or threaten to in a global oil market with no elasticity or swing producers, and watch what oil and gold prices do. The ramifications of this are enormous as the Saudis get pushed nearer the inevitable point at which they have to admit decline as the world will inevitably run to them for another dog-and-pony show of increased production.
"Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.The spin game continues.Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight – Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.
Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?
Craig Paul Roberts:
Global Research comments:"This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed “Russian invasion” to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.
Only this time, the rest of the world didn’t buy it. The many years of lies–9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, “the United States doesn’t torture,” the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated “terrorist plots,” the determined assault on civil liberties–have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.
The rest of the world reported the facts--an assault on Russian civilians by American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian troops. The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life."
What is clear, however, is that the BBC is giving carte blanche to the Georgian point-of-view to be aired on its services while nothing whatsoever is being heard from the Ossetian side. The BBC's repetitive playing of a statement by George Bush, given several days ago, without balancing these against statements from the Russian side indicates where the BBC is coming from.If the U.S. corporate media didn't care about the outcome of the Georgia affair (i.e. that it didn't affect U..S. interests), would they be spinning Russian retaliation as "aggression"? These charges are too comical to be believed coming from a Government that invaded a country based on deliberate lies (i.e. aggression--not self defense) while using its corporate sponsored media to "sell" the war to the public. The United States has been training Georgian troops, funding them, and trying to get Georgia into NATO. The United States is an interested party in the affair. USA news reports:
"But behind the scenes, a pressing question within military and diplomatic circles is whether this week's fighting will mean an end to Georgia's hopes to joint the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, membership that President Bush has strongly backed."
