Russian planes destroy combat planes at Georgian base!

That just in from the Georgian Foreign ministry.

Reports of hundreds of civilians killed.
Georgian tanks are burning across Tskhinvali.
Russia will stop commercial air services to Georgia by midnight.
Ossetian forces are taking over the Tskhinavli capital. Georgian forces are suffering losses.

n/t

musta missed it...lemme go look...

sP

but it's still horrible, and it isn't wrong to say so.

Not a Superpower v. conscripts. The casualty counts could make Iraq look like a nap.

Jay

Well, one superpower and one former superpower which still has a lot of muscle.

They're not duking it out directly, but they're still fighting a war. A war for the control of oil. The US chose to steal middle-east oil; Russia is going after Caspian Sea Basin oil.

I hate to don a tinfoil helmet, but when you look at Clinton's humanitarian actions in former Soviet Republics, they all ended up leaving troops (still there) positioned between Russia and key pipelines. If you plot the positions of US forces there and connect the dots you get lines which parallel the key pipelines.

It's about oil. Peak Oil.

Here's the scary bit. The countries with the greatest demand for oil, or the greatest growth rate are the US, Russia, China, India and Pakistan. What else do they all have in common? Nukyular weapons. It looks like Russia has decided there's little hope of the US ever abandoning its oil-grab in the middle east, so is going after the Caspian Sea Basin. That's gonna leave a lot of starving people in China, India and Pakistan (most of the food in the world is produced by intensive agriculture, which is only feasible with a plentiful supply of cheap oil).

Yep. This conflict is simply the next act in the last man standing resource war.

I would say that the crazies of the Bush Maladministration are aiming for a "no man standing" war. The use of DU (that's Depleted Uranium, not this DU) munitions is likely to lead to what Leuren Moret referred to as "omnicide" (the death of all living things on the planet.

The Bush/Cheney crazies claim to be Christians and are closely allied with Dominionists and other "end times" sects. Bush/Cheney bringing about the end of the world would please those Talebangelicals. However, there is another sect derived from Christianity that is also desperate for the end times: Satanists (they're convinced their invisible friend will win). Morally, the only real distinction between Talebangelicals and Satanists is that one sect thinks they're working for good and the other knows they're working for evil. It seems to me that Bush, Cheney and the other neocons are far more likely to be the latter than the former.

Not that Bush, Cheney, et al being Satanists would upset the Talebangelicals. Far from it. Just as the opera ain't over until the fat lady sings; the end times can't start until the anti-Christ appears. Hallelujah!

GEESH!