What Really Happened in Georgia/Ossetia

The continued Russian occupation of Georgia is totally unacceptable, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that it was Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili who began the war by ordering an attack on Ossetia.

The plan was to capture the Ossetian capital and to block the strategically important Roki tunnel, according to Stratfor:



Today Georgian national security adviser Alexander Lomaia admitted that this was indeed the plan:



In the morning of August 7, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza was informed that the Georgians had made the decision to attack Ossetia:



2 a.m. in Washington is 10 a.m. local time in Tbilisi.

At the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, U.S. military trainers in Georgia learned that the unit they were training was preparing for battle:



This is important because the Georgian Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili now claims that the decision to move the troops to the front was only made at 6 p.m.:



And the Georgian president claims that the decision to lift the ceasefire was made at 11:50 p.m.:



Georgia initially justified the attack by claiming that it was in response to heavy shelling from the Ossetian side.

However, the OSCE monitors on the ground were unable to confirm this:



After the defeat, Saakashvili began to claim that he had ordered the attack because "Russian units" were already "passing through the tunnel" on the night of August 7.

However, this seems to clash with Alexander Lomaia's remarks today that the Russian response "was an enormous surprise".

Interestingly, the official "Letter dated 8 August 2008 from the Permanent Representative of Georgia to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council" also makes no mention of any Russian troop movement prior to the Georgian attack:



According to the Georgian defense minister, the shelling of South Ossetia’s capital city Tskhinvali had begun "at 12 at night".


Key Battle at Gufta/Kurta Bridge

One commentator, analyzing the Georgian defeat ("Could the Georgians Have Done Better?"), unknowingly discovers the daring plan on which the Georgian attack was based:



What the analyst apparently doesn't know is that this is precisely what the Georgian special forces tried to do (but failed to achieve):



With the bridge still intact, a column of one hundred fifty tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles of Russia's 58th army was able cross the border into South Ossetia at 3:47 p.m. on August 8 and when they reached Tskhinvali a few hours later the battle was effectively over.

Russian troops are in Georgia TO keep the peace from this getting out of control after the same Georgian troops that were trained by the US three weeks before Georgia shot and bombed Russians.

for the time being. The problem is that they seem to keep occupying other areas of Georgia (like Gori) as well, and that is unacceptable.

of this. I hope some investigative reporters like our own lala raw raw gets to the bottom of this onion that needs to be peeled to the core.

I have no proof, but I have personally no doubt that they knew in advance of Georgia's plans to attack Ossetia and perhaps even encouraged them (with the usual split between Cheney hawks fanning the flames and Rice/Hadley doves trying to contain them).

A new Cold War with Russia is great for McCain. It's also great news for the military-industrial complex.

expected that American soldiers would be flown in. But then, flown in from where? Iraq? Bush has been trying to restart the cold war since he stole office. It was obvious when his first action was to ignore anything and everything to do with bin Laden.

Now instead of troops, Georgia is getting......Lieberman!! :rofl:

just as they hoped that they could trigger a war with Iran by lobbying for an Israeli attack on Syria during the last Lebanon war.

Before the war, Cheney was pushing to sell Georgia more arms (just as Lieberman did today). Now it seems likely that Georgia will get Stinger antiaircraft missiles and perhaps even NATO membership. As I said, it's a win-win situation...

earlier?

___

Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 2 Aug.'08 / 09:54
...

Mamuka Kurashvili, a Georgian Defense Ministry official in charge of overseeing peacekeeping operations, said that the Georgian side had opened fire in response to shelling of Georgian villages.

Six civilians and one Georgian policeman were injured as a result of shelling of the Georgian villages of Zemo Nikozi, Kvemo Nikozi, Nuli and Ergneti, the Georgian Interior Ministry said.

Kurashvili said that it was one of the most “outrageous” attacks carried out by the South Ossetian side.

He also said that the Georgian side suspected the Russian peacekeepers were also engaged in the shelling of the Georgian villages.

___

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=18871

We can't pretend like this all started on Aug. 7th with the attack on the rebel stronghold of Tskhinvali. Things are not as black and white as some may want you to believe.

was apparently determined to solve the problems with the breakaway provinces Ossetia and Abkhazia by force and not by negotiations, as ex-minister Georgy Khaindrava has pointed out.

Attacking Russian peacekeepers (even if they are not good at keeping the peace) is never a good idea.

As always it's civilians who are paying for it with their livelihoods and lives.

The real enemy is unnecessary war perpetuated by a very large circle of players who all think they're in the right.

Justice is what matters. BushCo has escaped that despite all the evidence, McSame will be no different.

The most powerful/influential side will win, the losers will take their ambitions to a new fight, and worst of all it will happen again and again and again.

Pretty good deal oil companies have going here. Get tax payers to pay trillions of dollars so they can sell us more oil.

And I find it outright scary when our MSM sinks to a level of propaganda comparable to Pravda or Russia Today. Like telling us that Eurasia attacked Oceania when in reality it was Oceania that attacked Eurasia...

I'm just being a realist. The truth has been turned into a hot commodity of subjective interpretation by world leaders through propaganda. Opinion, not fact.

That's why I say it doesn't matter who started it. Pick your side, it doesn't matter, they're ALL bad and there'll be no justice. The human race is far from possessing the collective maturity required to see that wars are seldom fought for the sake of people. They're fought in spite of people for some thing. The people and the truth almost always lose.

The people of small nations or national liberation movements are being cynically used by great powers who care only about oil. The West has found a way to bypass Russia and the Russians want to do something about it.

Perhaps South Ossetia should be liberated from Georgia. Perhaps it should be reunited with a liberated North Ossetia as an independent republic. How would the Russians feel about that? Hey, we'll throw in independence for neighboring Chechnya for good measure.

It seems that Communists and post-Communists were only for the free determination of all peoples as long as the people weren't subjects of the Tsar -- or the emperor of China, as the case may be.

really, i almost can't read about this, because i know that most of what we are being told is bullshit. i think this is just the beginnings of the october surprise, that it will get more and more violent as the election gets closer, and that the whole thing is as phony as a $3 bill.
i keep thinking about the cypress revolution in syria, and the orange revolution in ukraine. nothing but a bunch of spook stagecraft to cover the overthrow of a leader they didn't like.
i think if they could start a skirmish on our border with mexico, they would.
it's all about the fear. fear. fear. fear.