Russia vs The US/Israel through proxy Georgia

[Swamp Gas]

Pay attention ­ THE RUSSIAN BEAR IS MAD...AND IT CHARGED WHEN IT WAS ATTACKED. Russia did NOT start this crap - George W Bush, Zionists and Mikheil Saakashvili did.

www.rense.com/general82/pals.htm


Bush And His Zionist Pals -Stupid Is As Stupid Does

By Karl Schwarz

8-9-8


I was wondering why Vladimir Putin was representing Russia at the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Within minutes, the news broke that Russia had moved an armored division into South Ossetia and Russian jets were pounding targets in Georgia.

Oops. There goes another Bush Pipedream up in smoke.

Of course, the Western Zionist media reported only the US/Zionist/CIA and Georgia side of what happened. Russia did NOT attack, Russia responded to an attack on Russian peacekeepers that killed 10 and injured more. Russia has also moved to protect Russian citizens who live in South Ossetia.

America, if you want to avert a major war you need to turn off the TV, get on the telephone and rock DC to its stupid evil core.

Call your Congressman, call both Senators and make it clear to them that YOU, AMERICA, WILL NOT TOLERATE AN ATTACK ON IRAN OR ANY MORE SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN. STAND DOWN...or get ready to pay the Zionist pipers, bigtime.

Zionist/BigOil/BushCo is desperate because it has accomplished NOTHING since 9-11 but pile up lies, debt, destroy and loot America, and commit mass genocide and war crimes.

By the stroke of a pen, Russia has taken over most of the entire Caspian Basin area's natural gas. Since I last reported on that - and Gazprom also cutting a major deal with Venezuela - Gazprom has now entered the Ireland market in force while BushCo is yet to acheive anything but one useless photo op after another, one lie after another, and one failure after another...militarily and diplomatically.

One of the reasons this new 'international' (oh, please) naval armada of FOUR US nuclear-powered carrier (floating coffin) strike forces is headed to the Persian Gulf area is supposedly a rotation of US carrier groups. The other reason is the BushCo/Big Oil/Zionists banksters intend to slap a naval embargo on Iran to try to knuckle them under to Zionist demands.

That is a MONUMENTALLY STUPID plan, so read on and I will explain why it is so.

Such an insane blunder will set the stage for a military confrontation between the US/UK and Russia/China.

Folks, that is Two Superpowers against One Superpower and a wannabe, has-been. The French contribution to that armada does not matter. Going to WAR without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion.

Do not email these sleazy morons in DC, they delete most on the spot. Using email to contact those whores is just another cheap trick to keep you thinking they give a rat's ass about what you and the American pubic thinks.

Intead - Call the bastards, send them faxes but do not waste precious time emailing those lying DC dirtbags.

Make your voice known LOUD AND CLEAR ­ DO NOT ATTACK IRAN! DO NOT PUT UP WITH ANY ZIONIST JEW ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN!

Read on and you will understand why.

The world is at a very, VERY dangerous stage right now and the perpetrators are the US, UK and Israel. Iran, Russia and China have demonstrated a remarkable level of restraint...but that is now past. The Bear is fully-aroused and pissed. The Chinese have had it with Junior's vile insults and the Zionist efforts to threaten their vital oil and gas deals in Iran and the Caspian.

These people are not kidding; the US liars and gangsters are not going to get their way...on anything.

If you have been keeping up with the news out of the Caspian Basin area, Georgia attacked South Ossetia and killed 10 Russian peacekeepers. South Ossetia wishes to be part of Russia again, not part of Western/CIA/Zionist influenced Georgia. Many of the people in South Ossetia are Russian citizens and Russia has moved to protect them. And Russia is 100% morally-justified in doing so.

Current news reports as of noon Central Europe Time indicate that about 1,500 are dead in South Ossetia, some of them are Russian citizens who live there, not the Russian military forces that have been moved in.

Remember well, America, that Bush's Black, Gap-Toothed Poodle, Candy Rice, was recently in Georgia while Bush was at the G8 meetings. She pledged her support for Georgia and NATO membership...for a nation that is nowhere CLOSE to Europe.

BushCo is desperate to get a pipeline through Georgia to the Black Sea. That is one of the few routes they have out of the Caspian Basin's landlocked oil and gas deals.

Georgia attacked, killed 10 Russian peacekeepers and now several thousand residents of South Ossetia have been killed and wounded. The Russian response was swift and empathetic. The Russian Bear is ANGRY and this Idiot BushCo plan is not going to be tolerated any longer.

Russia moved immediately and put an armored division in South Ossetia and Russian jet fighters pounded targets in Georgia. Military operations continued into Saturday on this side of the world with Russian jets obliterating more targets in Georgia including an entire military base at Gori, Georgia.

The Georgia oil port of Poti has apparently also been destroyed by Russian jets.

www.beurs.nl/nieuws/artikel.php?id=268268&taal=US

Moscow is also sending in even more tanks for peace enforcement. All America heard was the handpicked Zionist President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, whining that the Big Bully Russia was attacking poor little Georgia with 'aggression.' They are NOT admitting it was the US and Georgia who started things.

Pay attention ­ THE RUSSIAN BEAR IS MAD...AND IT CHARGED WHEN IT WAS ATTACKED. Russia did NOT start this crap - George W Bush, Zionists and Mikheil Saakashvili did.

As of 12:15pm Central Europe Time, the Kremlin has made an announcement that they have 'no territorial aims' regarding Georgia. They have moved to protect South Ossetia and Russian citizens who live there and Russia has made it clear that it means business.

It is MORE than blatantly obvious/odious that BushCo planned this to coincide with the Opening Ceremonies of China's 2008 Beijin Olympics. That way, Bush could be in Beijing and appear to have nothing to do with Georgia starting another 'Bush Dirty Diaper Op.' Trust me, folks, this has turned into another soiled Bush Diaper already, and Russia is not going to back up or back down. The BushCo perps are feeling for their first time what Russian military might looks like and feels like.

Putin, Medvedev and the Russian military have warned the EU and the US many, many times ­ STOP pushing EU and NATO membership to our borders. No one in the EU, NATO, London or Washington DC bothered to listen or take the Russians seriously enough.

Just this morning while America slept, Russia has moved in more armor, more airstrikes into Georgia and the EU is panicking. This time Bush went too far, and even the UN is having fits trying to draft a letter that is acceptable to all parties asking for a cease fire.

When the USSR broke up, Russia withdrew, pay attention, withdrew 80 armored divisions from Europe and former CIS states. The US does not have 80 armored divisions ANYWHERE.

The Russian response to the lunatic Bush 'Defensive' Missile Shield is they are now putting deadly Russian missiles in place to take out Junior's skyrockets.

Where this has now passed the Stuck-on-Stupid phase - even by Bush Standards of Stupidity - is that the BushCo Zionists are STILL trying to scheme and plot and lie so they can justify an attack on IRAN.

The US recently announced that it may close the Strait of Hormuz...so Iran cannot export its oil, gas and petrochemicals. A blockade of Iran.

You can be absolutely certain that CHINA is not going to tolerate that. Iran is supplying it oil and liquefied natural gas under a $400 billion contract and Iran also supplies India, Indonesia, Malaysia and most of the Pacific Rim with its oil and LNG. Much of the energy needs of the EU, in fact, comes from Iran. I know for a fact that Austria gets 25% of its energy supplies from Iran, hence, it is not backing the BushCo/Zionist plan to attack Iran.

Many in the EU are going to bolt because much of the oil and natural gas to the EU comes from Iran.

Even Angela Merkel-Schmerkel is whining about someone in her government cutting an important natural gas deal with Iran. Not hard to understand why. Germany needs the natural gas but now Schmerkel has to explain herself to her Zionist Masters...a little tricky after she went to Israel and groveled before the Israeli Knesset parliament. Yeah, I can almost hear her now: "Germany supports Zionist desires to attack Iran and save the world from Iranian nukes. And, oh, by the way, Germany is so very sorry for the (Holohoax) Holocaust.'

The German people were livid at her groveling before the Knesset in Tel Aviv. Germany has been on its knees before Zionism since it lost the War.

Listen clearly - No One is going to sit still for a US naval blockade of Iran, NO ONE. Both Russia and China will respond and it will be with force.

Russia has just made it abundantly clear to Georgia what the price is for killing Russians under Lunatic Bush/Zionist Plans.

Russia can easily crush the entire country of Georgia, and will do just that if it does not cease and desist. They are showing the scenes on BBC out of London, RTR Planeta out of Moscow, ProSeiben 7 out of Germany and other television stations. Russia is striking back in force and they are increasing their ability by the hour to put more troops, tanks and jets into position to crush Georgia if that little Bush Ally wants to play hardball with the Russian Bear.

Where this Bush 'shits and giggles' game has now reached the WARNING SIGN is that there are many Russian contractors and Russian technicians at the Iranian Nuclear sites that Bush and Israel wish to bomb.

There is no way to avoid killing or injuring RUSSIANS at those sites in Zionist obsession to take over Iran and destroy it as they have done to IRAQ.

If anyone in America thinks Russia will not, cannot, defend its interests, let the US attack Iran and see how fast Russia and China ram reality up America's butt and down its throat.

Liars, lies and more damned lies - THAT is BushCo and its Zionist criminal co-conspirators in London and Tel Aviv.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, John McCain and Barky Obama have all been in Israel within the past month speaking to the Zionist Knesset parliament, and they have EACH vowed the Official Lie regarding Iran. So did German Chancellor Schmerkel...and enraged the German citizens by her pathetic groveling.

As we have shown without a shadow of a doubt - Iran NEVER made the comment that Israel should be 'wiped off the map' with any form of force. That is a Western Zionist LIE used to start the next war. Ahmadinejad's comment was that REGIME CHANGE is needed in Tel Aviv.

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<http://www.rense.com/general82/tran.htm>http://www.rense.com/general82/tran.htm

As a closing example, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been attributed as threatening 'poor little Israel' by stating, quote: "Israel must be wiped off the map."

Well, what did he mean by that? Nothing because the statement was intentionally mistranslated from Farsi to fan Zionist war propaganda against Iran. No one in Iran made such a statement - NO ONE - it's just another Zionist Tel Aviv-UK-US lie to try to start a war.

The full, actual VERBATIM, correct Ahmadinejad quote, translated directly to English from Farsi reads:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

Now, read that again.

Do you get it now? Can you see the ENORMITY of the LIES you are being fed around the clock?

<end insert>

The Farsi word for 'map' is NOT in the statement ANYWHERE. The Farsi word for 'wiped" was NOT in the statement, either. There was no reference to 'WIPED OFF THE MAP' whatsoever in what was said. Get it?

It was not reported anywhere in sufficient detail in the Western Zionist Media what Putin said while meeting the Iranian Government in Tehran months ago. (And surviving yet another CIA/MOSSAD assassination plot).

Putin made it crystal clear that Russia will NOT tolerate ANY attack on Iran from ANY of the Caspian Basin nations, and that includes the new military bases that BushCo has put in those nations under 'no bid' contracts to its buddies.

The Caspian Basin nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan got the message loud and clear. Russia is next door, stand down and do not aid and abet the US/Zionist stupidity.

Putin also made it more than clear that 'ANY ATTACK ON IRAN WILL BE VIEWED AS AN ATTACK ON RUSSIAN INTERESTS.' Get it??

I do not care if you have to read that 10 times, get it into that idiot American Sheeple head ­ Russia considers any attack on Iran as an attack on Russia.


Right there is where Americans need to pause at the edge of the abyss and consider whether they want to see the end of America.

That is exactly what is going on in Georgia right now. We can thank the Stupid is as Stupid Does President, George W Bush, for wrapping poor Georgia into yet another Bush Dirty Diaper. People are dying right now in Georgia and Mikheil Saakashvili secured permission from the Georgian Parliament at about 11am Central Europe Time to invoke Martial Law in Georgia.

That is a clear indication of one of two possible things. First, he wants the people off the street so they can focus on survival of Georgia. Secondly, he is bracing himself because Russia is about to roll right OVER Georgia with Russian tanks and air force, and put an end to the Bush idiot plan of taking a pipeline across Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili accused Russia of 'aggression against Georgia" ('arf-arf') but has yet failed to admit it was Georgia that killed the 10 Russian peacekeepers. That lunacy had to come from George W Bush and his Zionist 'strategists.'

The Zionist Media does not want Americans to know that. The MSM does not want Americans to know that if there is an attack on Iran, Americans are going to get to see what Russian Fury looks like, up close and personal. The Zionist MSM wants American Sheeple braying and focusing on the 'Official Lies' and not that Russia has made it abundantly clear that the utterly bogus Global War on Terror fraud is OVER.

The gloves are off, the brass knuckles are on, the Russian tanks are rolling and the skies are full of Russian jet fighters.

Here is what DC and Tel Aviv are NOT telling you,America.

Russia does not want Iran to have nuclear missiles. Russia is already making sure Iran is not using its 'legal' nuclear power program for nuclear weapons. That is, in part, WHY Russia has many technicians in Iran at the very facilities that the US, UK and Israel intend to attack. Russian contractors are also building their nuclear facilities, and providing their nuclear power generating technology.

Russia already has this entire matter under control with Iran and the liars in Washington, DC, the liars in London and Tel Aviv do NOT want you to know that.

Again, US and UK and Israel are lying to the world. Nothing remarkable about that...it's just business as usual for these snakes. That is all they do...lie. Americans need to wake up and smell the coffee. Or they will be smelling a huge wars and counting hundreds of thousands...or millions...of dead.

Russia has already made it damned clear: kill a Russian and we will kick your ass up between your shoulder blades. If Bush is not careful and prudent, he is going to be wearing his balls as earrings along with Gordie Brown, little Nicky Sarkozy, and numerous others.

This is not a game, America. BushCo, London and Tel Aviv are lying their asses off yet again, and Russia has made it damned clear that no more crap will be tolerated.

If the US DARES to throw up a naval blockade of Iran and shuts down the Straits, neither Russia nor China will put up with it for a second. Get it?

Now, unless you want to see the United States confronted in WAR with both Russia and China, get off your ass and CALL the bastards in DC, NOW.

[Swamp Gas]

Looks like Putin has had enough of Israel and the US taunting Russia and China.


news.yahoo.com/s/ap/georgia_south_ossetia


Russia expands Georgia blitz, deploys ships

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 48 minutes ago

TBILISI, Georgia - Russia expanded its bombing blitz to the Georgian capital, deployed ships off the coast and, a Georgian official said, sent tanks from the separatist region of South Ossetia into Georgian territory, heading toward a border city before being turned back Sunday.

Russia also claimed its forces sank a Georgian missile boat that was trying to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea, news agencies reported.

U.S.-allied Georgia called a unilateral cease-fire — "We are not crazy," said President Mikhail Saakashvili — and claimed its troops were retreating Sunday from the disputed province of South Ossetia in the face of Russia's far superior firepower. Russia said the soldiers were "not withdrawing but regrouping" and refused to recognize a truce.

The Russian Defense Ministry refused to comment to The Associated Press on the reports of the sinking and Georgian officials could not immediately be reached. If confirmed, it could mark a serious escalation of the fighting that has raged between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia.

International envoys headed in to try to end the fighting between Russia and its small U.S.-allied neighbor that erupted last week in the Russian-backed separatist region.

Saakashvili said one of the Russian raids on the airport came a half hour before the arrival of the foreign ministers of France and Finland — in the country to try to mediate. He insisted his troops had withdrawn.

"But we are not crazy," he told CNN's "Late Edition." He said Russia had entered his country with a force bigger than "the tank force that went into Afghanistan in 1979 or Czechoslovakia in 1968."

"We have no interest whatsoever in pursuing hostilities," he said.

Russia also insisted it was pursuing peace.

Russia will only act in "self-defense," Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said at a U.N. Security Council meeting.

"Let's state clearly that we are ready to put an end to the war, that we will withdraw from South Ossetia, that we will sign an agreement on non-use of force," Churkin proposed.

But Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Temur Yakobashvili said Russian tanks tried to cross from South Ossetia into the territory of Georgia proper, but were turned back by Georgian forces. He said the tanks apparently were trying to approach Gori, but did not fire on the city of about 50,000.

Russia also sent naval vessels to patrol off Georgia's Black Sea coast, but denied Sunday that the move was aimed at establishing a blockade.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman as saying that Georgian missile boats twice tried to attack Russian ships, which fired back and sank one of the Georgian vessels.

Saakashvili ordered a unilateral cease-fire, the Foreign Ministry said, and the country's security council head said troops had left South Ossetia. Russia, however, insisted Georgian soldiers remained around the regional capital, Tskhinvali, where the fighting has been the most brutal. Tskhinvali is located close to the border between the breakaway region and the rest of Georgia.

The scope of Russia's military response has the Bush administration deeply worried.

"We have made it clear to the Russians that if the disproportionate and dangerous escalation on the Russian side continues, that this will have a significant long-term impact on U.S.-Russian relations," U.S. deputy national security adviser Jim Jeffrey told reporters.

Georgia, whose troops have been trained by American soldiers, began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia overnight Friday, launching heavy rocket and artillery fire and air strikes that pounded Tskhinvali.

In response, Russia launched overwhelming artillery shelling and air attacks on Georgian troops. On Sunday, Russian jets targeted an aircraft-making plant near the airport on the outskirts of Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic.

Thousands of civilians have fled South Ossetia — many seeking shelter in the Russian province of North Ossetia.

"The Georgians burned all of our homes," said one elderly woman, as she sat on a bench under a tree with three other white-haired survivors of the fighting.

She seemed confused by the conflict. "The Georgians say it is their land," she said. "Where is our land, then? We don't know."

The U.S. military began flying 2,000 Georgian troops home from Iraq after Georgia recalled them, even while calling for a truce.

"Georgia expresses its readiness to immediately start negotiations with the Russian Federation on a cease-fire and termination of hostilities," the Georgian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that it had notified Russia's envoy to Tbilisi.

But Russia insisted Georgian troops were continuing their attacks.

Alexander Darchiev, Russia's charge d'affairs in Washington, said Georgian soldiers were "not withdrawing but regrouping, including heavy armor and increased attacks on Tskhinvali."

"Mass mobilization is still under way," he told CNN's "Late Edition."

The U.N. Security Council — where Russia has a veto — broke off a three-hour meeting Sunday with plans to return either later in the day or Monday.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said more than 2,000 people had been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

The respected Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy reported that two journalists were killed by South Ossetian separatists, citing a correspondent of Russian Newsweek magazine.

Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Both separatist provinces have close ties with Moscow, while Georgia has deeply angered Russia by wanting to join NATO.

Georgia's Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said the Georgian troops had to move out of South Ossetia because of heavy Russian shelling. "Russia further escalated its aggression overnight, using weapons on unprecedented scale," Lomaia said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called the hostilities in South Ossetia "massacres," hours before he and Finnish counterpart Alexander Stubb were scheduled to travel to Tbilisi for a meeting with Saakashvili.

Kouchner said he would deliver a "message of peace" to Georgia and Russia, and call on both countries "to stop the fighting immediately."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meeting Saturday with South Ossetia refugees who had fled across the border to the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, described Georgia's actions as "complete genocide." Putin also said Georgia had lost the right to rule the breakaway province — an indication Moscow could be ready to absorb the province.

President Bush has called for an end to the Russian bombings and an immediate halt to the fighting, accusing Russia of using the issue to bomb other regions in Georgia.

Tskhinvali residents who survived the Georgian bombardment overnight Friday by hiding in basements and later fled the city estimated that hundreds of civilians had died.

The Georgian government said Sunday that 6,000 Russian troops have rolled into South Ossetia from the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia and 4,000 more landed in Abkhazia. The Russian military wouldn't comment on troop movements.

Russia also sent a naval squadron to blockade Georgia's Black Sea coast. Ukraine, where the ships were based, warned Russia in response that it has the right to bar the ships from coming back to port because of their mission.

Both Ukraine and Georgia have sought to free themselves of Russia's influence, and to integrate into the West and join NATO.

Georgia said it has shot down 10 Russian planes, but Russia acknowledged only two.

Adding to Georgia's woes, Russian-supported separatists in Abkhazia launched air and artillery strikes on Georgian troops to drive them out of a small part of the province they control.

Abkhazia's separatist government called out the army and reservists on Sunday and declared it would push Georgian forces out of the northern part of the Kodori Gorge, the only area of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.

Separatist Abkhazia forces also were concentrating on the border near Georgia's Zugdidi region

[Swamp Gas]

No wonder Obama, Bush, and McCain are all saying Russia started this. Their master, Israel is behind it.

www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=27365


Israel won't stop arms sales to Georgia


Israeli public radio reports defence ministry decides to continue issuing licenses to export arms to Georgia.



JERUSALEM - Israel has decided not to halt arms sales to Georgia, public radio reported on Monday, citing defence ministry sources.

The foreign ministry had recommended a complete halt to the sale of weapons to Georgia for fear of spurring Russia to increase its support of Syria and Iran, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Sunday.

Israel, the region's sole power with nuclear weapons, is concerned about the transfer of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, which could be used to protect Tehran’s nuclear installations.

Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Public radio said the defence ministry decided on Sunday it would continue issuing licenses to export arms to Georgia, but on a limited scale and under close supervision.

Around a year ago, Israel decided to limit its weapons supplies to Georgia to weaponry and military advisors.

A defence ministry official said that decision had been taken as tension rose between Georgia and Russia.

"We didn't want to become the main supplier of weapons to Georgia and our exports were limited to 200 million dollars (120 million euros) over two years," he said.

Israel has in the past sold aerial drones, night-vision equipment, and rockets to Georgia, and many retired officers from the Israel's military and internal security services work as military advisors there.

[Swamp Gas]

While the US population is watching the Olympics and John Edwards zipper, WW3 is beginning. Russia is responding to the US and Israel attempting to use Georgia as a missile launch pad, and invading South Ossetia. The media is blanketing the "Russia started this" mantra.


www.russiatoday.com/news/news/28832


US sends more arms to Georgia – Israeli media

The United States is sending fresh supplies of weapons to Georgia from its base in the Jordanian port of Aqabah. That’s according to the Israeli newspaper – Maariv.

The paper says the US began flying weapons from the transport hub on Saturday.

According to Maariv, the US is hiring Russian-made freight planes belonging to UTI Worldwide Inc. to transport arms and ammunition to Georgia. The paper says the Pentagon is redirecting supplies to Tbilisi that were earmarked for Iraq.

The Aqabah terminal is used by the US to supply troops in Iraq. The American military relies on the hub mainly because it’s safer to use Aqabah than Iraq’s own ports in the Persian Gulf.

Georgia stocks a wide range of weapons from many sources. This is a strategic move in case Russia were to block off the channels through which it gets its military supplies.

[Swamp Gas]

www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13285


The Real Aggressor

Georgian invasion of South Ossetia sets the stage for a wider war

by Justin Raimondo

The anti-Russian bias of the Western media is really something to behold: "Russia Invades Georgia," "Russia Attacks Georgia," and variations thereof have been some of the choice headlines reporting events in the Caucasus, but the reality is not only quite different, but the exact opposite. Sometimes this comes out in the third or fourth paragraph of the reportage, in which it is admitted that the Georgians tried to "retake" the "breakaway province" of South Ossetia. The Georgian bombing campaign and the civilian casualties – if they are mentioned at all – are downplayed and presented as subject to dispute.

The Georgians have been openly engaging in a military buildup since last year, and President Mikhail Saakashvili and his party have been proclaiming from the rooftops their aim of re-conquering South Ossetia (and rebellious Abkhazia, while they're at it). Avid readers of Antiwar.com saw this coming. In a column entitled "Wars to Watch Out For," I wrote:

"As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias."

That's what Western reporters aren't telling their readers: the South Ossetians (and the Abkhazians) have had de facto independence since 1991, when they rose up against their "democratic" central government, which had banned regional parties from participating in elections. They beat back the Georgian army, which, nonetheless, inflicted a lot of casualties and damage. A low-level war has been in progress ever since, with Saakashvili and his ultra-nationalist party using the rebels as a foil to divert attention from their repressive domestic policies and Georgia's sad status as an economic basket case. As I wrote way back at the beginning of this year:

"Saakashvili, the great 'democrat,' is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party's point of view."

What's particularly disgusting is the spectacle of the fraudulent Saakashvili's smug mug all over Western television – the BBC and Bloomberg, for starters – invoking his great love of "democracy" and "freedom" and calling on the U.S. to intervene in the name of supposedly shared "values." What drivel! Up until very recently, Saakashvili has been busy rounding up his political opponents and charging them with espionage, as his police beat demonstrators in the streets. When this happened, even our somnolent media sat up and took notice, but they seem to have forgotten.

Saakashvili uses the Western media as a platform to broadcast his great love for "freedom" and make the case against the Russian "aggressors," comparing the present conflict with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s – and even the bloody 1956 repression of the Hungarians! This is nonsense. Russia is not the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain has long since been melted down for scrap metal, and, if anything, Saakashvili resembles the Hungarian satraps of the Kremlin rather than the heroic freedom-fighters, given his absolute fealty to his foreign masters in Washington, to whom he appeals for help in putting down an internal rebellion.

In any case, it wasn't too hard to have seen this coming a mile away, or to predict the American government's response. As I wrote in "Wars To Watch Out For":

"In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia's political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war."

Which is precisely what has occurred. The United States is denouncing the Russians as aggressors in the UN Security Council and accusing the Kremlin of engaging in a policy of "regime change," in Ambassador Khalilzad's phrase. The Russian response: "regime change" is "an American invention," but, hey, in Saakashvili's case, it might not be such a bad idea.

They have a point. The Georgian strongman is a thug and an opportunist who does an excellent imitation of George W. Bush-times-10: whereas GWB merely implies his political opponents are traitors to the nation, Saakashvili comes right out and says it – then drags them into court on trumped up charges of high treason. GWB has presided over a regime that has legalized torture, but only for foreign "terrorists" (José Padilla excepted). Saakashvili, on the other hand, throws his domestic political opponents – whom he labels "terrorists" – in jail and tortures his own countrymen. Georgia's notorious prisons are chock full of political dissidents. GWB justifies his aggression by invoking "democracy" and the doctrine of "preemption," while Saakashvili doesn't bother with such theoretical niceties, denying his aggression against South Ossetia in defiance of the plain facts.

In short: if you love GWB, you'll love President Saakashvili. Therefore it's no surprise John McCain is portraying the Georgians as the good guys and demanding that Russian troops leave "sovereign Georgian territory" without preconditions or delay. After all, when your chief foreign policy adviser has up until very recently been a paid shill for the Georgian government, what else could we expect? As I've pointed out on a few occasions in this space, Mad John has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians – in the Caucasus and elsewhere – for years, going so far as to travel to Georgia to proclaim his sympathy for Saakashvili's cause.

What's really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As Politico.com reported:

"When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved closer to McCain's initial position."

While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went with the War Party's line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor, as the Times of London reports: "Obama accused Russia of escalating the crisis 'through it's clear and continued violation of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.'" While his first statement on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of "Can't we all get along?", the New York Times notes:

"Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement, an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said, 'What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia's sovereign – has encroached on Georgia's sovereignty, and it is very important for us to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.'"

This nonsense about Georgia's alleged "sovereignty" rides roughshod over the reality of the Ossetians' apparent determination to free themselves from Saakashvili's grip, and it's the buzzword that identifies a shill for the Georgians.

"I condemn Russia's aggressive actions," said Obama, "and reiterate my call for an immediate cease-fire." This cease-fire business is meant to feed directly into the Georgians' contention that they have offered to stop the conflict, even as they continue military operations in South Ossetia, which have already cost the lives of over a thousand of that country's inhabitants.

That didn't stop the McCainiacs from attacking Obama as a tool of the Kremlin. Sunday the news talk shows were abuzz with rumors of Democratic discontent over Obama's seeming inability to hit back at McCain's viciously negative campaign, yet it's much worse than that – it's not an unwillingness, but an inherent inability to do so. I hate to cite Andrew Sullivan favorably, but he was one of the first to note the convergence of the Obama camp and the McCain campaign on such central issues as Iran, and the process continues with this confluence of opinion on the Russian question. While the Obama people have dutifully pointed out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy guru, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his public relations firm as a paid lobbyist for the Georgians, their own candidate's position on the matter differs little from McCain's, except, as the New York Times notes, in terms of "style."

GWB recently assured Saakashvili that he would do his best to get the Georgians into NATO, but the Europeans – particularly the Germans – are balking, and this foray by the Georgian Napoleon into a direct conflict with the Russians seems to confirm their initial reluctance. The Euros are no dummies: they know Saakashvili's recklessness could plunge the entire region into an armed conflict that would resemble World War I in its utter stupidity.

I've written at length about the economic and political interests that stand to profit from a war in the Caucasus, and I won't repeat myself here except to note that the timing of this – with attacking Iran on the War Party's agenda – should alert us to the importance of what is happening. Russia has not only been opposed to Iran's victimization at the hands of the West, but Putin and his successor have taken up Tehran's cause, selling arms and technology to the Iranians and running diplomatic interference on their behalf. This is Washington's counterattack by proxy.

Please don't tell me Saakashvili just woke up one day and decided to attack Ossetia, and that the Americans weren't notified well in advance. Georgia depends on U.S. military and economic aid, and Saakashvili is a savvy operator: he is pulling a Lebanon, having learned from the Israeli example, and the Bush administration is more than glad to oblige him. Georgian tanks would never have rolled into South Ossetia without being given a green light by Washington.

Georgia has embarked on a very dangerous course, and it's important to realize it hasn't done so alone. Saakashvili has the implicit backing of Washington in his quest to re-conquer the "lost" provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia (and don't forget Adjaria!) – or else what are 1,000 U.S. troops doing engaged in "joint military exercises" with the Georgian military, just as the crisis reaches a crescendo of violence? (The Brits, to their credit, have thought better of getting dragged into this one…)

It's too bad Obama is going along with the game plan, but then again, he was never good on the Russian question to begin with, so I can't say I'm disappointed. South Ossetia is not now a part of "sovereign Georgian territory," and it hasn't been for nearly two decades, no matter what McCain and Obama would have us believe. If they, along with GWB, are going to stand by Saakashvili's side as he mows down civilians and imposes martial law on a war-torn, dirt-poor, and much-abused people, then may they all be damned to hell – that is, if we can find a rung low enough for them.

It's funny – if you like your humor black – but when Slobodan Milosevic was supposedly doing to Kosovo what Saakashvili is now doing to South Ossetia, the U.S. launched bombing raids and "liberated" the Kosovars from what we were told was to be a gruesome fate. There are many reasons to doubt that this attempted "genocide" ever took place, but given that something very bad was going on in the former Yugoslavia, one has to ask: why don't the same standards apply to South Ossetia?

I'll tell you why: because the victims, this time, are Russians, Slavs who haven't achieved official victim status in the lexicon of Western "humanitarians."

Imagine if, say, Colombia invaded Panama, and rained bombs down on the many U.S. citizens currently living there. Would the U.S. act to ensure their safety? You betcha! So somebody please tell me why Russia hasn't the right to defend its own citizens, and even to deter and punish Georgian aggression.

The War Party has been running on some pretty low energy lately, and this revival of the Cold War will no doubt recharge its batteries. The warmongers need a new enemy, a fresh face in their rogues' gallery, to get the masses excited again, and Putin's Russia fits the bill. I've been warning of this possibility for what seems like years, and now the moment is upon us. What's interesting is how many left-liberal "peaceniks" are falling for the War Party's guff and lining up behind McCain, their hero Obama, and the neocons in the march to confrontation with the Kremlin.
~ Justin Raimondo

[Swamp Gas]

McCain, Obama, and Bush are all lying to the American Public, and reading blogs, a lot of people are not falling for it.

Israel and The US have been supplying Georgia with weapons and military training for years. Natural Gas and Caspian Sea pipelines are in this region. Neocons want a new Cold War to increase military-industrial profits and destroy the USA economically. Bush said Russia can be nuked by the US in 2002. Two candidates need presidential ratings boost. Georgia actually started this, and their history is one of oppression, contrary to Obama, McCain, and Bush…Moe, Larry, and Curly of The New War/Surveillance Party. It is a shame that even the so-called Progressives are reading off of Faux/MSM/White House prompters. Are these what are called “Left-Gatekeepers?”


www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/08/13/mccain_supports_georgia/


McCain supports Georgia

Obama urges Russian action on cease-fire

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman met Manheim Central High's football team in Manheim, Pa., yesterday. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman met Manheim Central High's football team in Manheim, Pa., yesterday. (Mary Altaffer/ASSOCIATED PRESS)


Associated Press And Globe Staff / August 13, 2008

YORK, Pa. - Republican John McCain yesterday phoned Georgia's president to tell him that Americans are supporting his "brave little nation" against Russia's military attacks - and blasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whom he accused of wanting to restore the czarist empire.

McCain told more than 2,000 voters that he spoke with President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia, who offered his "heartfelt thanks" for US support.

"And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today, we are all Georgians,' " McCain declared to loud applause.

At a huge outdoor rally hours later in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Saakashvili mentioned what McCain had said, and the crowd applauded.

Even as Russia said it was halting its offensive, McCain told voters in York that Moscow is using "violence against Georgia to send a signal" to "any country that chooses to associate with the West." Russian leaders, he said, must realize they risk "the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world."

In a radio interview earlier yesterday, McCain was even more scathing about Putin, the former Russian president who is now prime minister and who the Arizona senator said is "still by far the most powerful and influential person in Russia."

"Of course we have to deal with Russia and we deal with Putin," McCain told WITF radio in Harrisburg, Pa. "But it has to be on a very realistic basis. And not one that there's any illusions about his ambitions. I think it's very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old Russian Empire. Not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire."

Both McCain and his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, have called for a multi-pronged diplomatic approach to pressure Russia to withdraw from Georgia, a former republic of the Soviet Union.

Obama said in a statement yesterday: "Now is the time for action, not just words. It is past time for the Russian government to immediately sign and implement a cease-fire. Russia must halt its violation of Georgian airspace and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia, with international monitors to verify that these obligations are met."

[Swamp Gas]

www.axcesslittlerock.com/show.php?id=16592&category_id=41


Gorbachev defends Russia over Georgia invasion


By Bob Turner

AXcessWashington Correspondent

(AXcess News) Washington - "What happened is beyond comprehension," Gorbachev said when describing Russia's military move into the South Ossetia region of Georgia, calling Russia's action a counterattack to Georgia's offensive.

Gobachev's comments were made during an interview with British newspaper, the Guardian. But early this afternoon in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had some comments of her own at a live televised press conference at the State Department.

"The Russians need to stop their military operations, as they have apparently said that they will," Rice stated. Calling on history, Sect. Rice also said that Russia needed to realize "it's not 1968", in referring to the former Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, saying, "there will be consequences over Russia's actions".

Gorbachev defended Russia saying "The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers. Russia had to respond."

Gorbachev also said the United States was behind Georgia's move. Georgian authorities could only undertake the offensive "with the perceived support" of a much more powerful force - an apparent reference to the United States, which has trained Georgian troops and backed the country's bid to join NATO, Gorbachev outlined in the Guardian story.

Now that the military assault has been routed, Gorbachev said, "the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position."

Rice confirmed that she would be flying to France where she will meet with President Sarkozy before flying on to the Georgian Capitol of Tbilisi to meet with Georgian President Saakashvili. When asked by reporters why Rice wasn't going to Moscow, she said that Sarkozy was president of the European Union and that the EU was handling the negotiations so that the United States "didn't want to interfere."

Rice also said that President Bush had ordered U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to use the military to transport humanitarian aid to Georgia and that it was not a military, but peace action.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov criticized Bush's earlier warnings saying it was the United States who supplied Georgia with arms and military training.

"We understand that the U.S. is concerned about the fate of this project, but the United States will have to choose between defending its prestige over a virtual project or real partnership which requires joint action," the Russian Foreign Minister said.

Sect. Rice had words of her own for Lavrov saying, "I want to make very clear that the United States stands for the territorial integrity of Georgia, for the sovereignty of Georgia, that we support its democratically elected government and its people. We are reviewing our options for humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to Georgia. But the most important thing right now is that these military operations need to stop.

"We will continue to work diplomatically on this matter and will continue our discussions with all the parties involved."

[Swamp Gas]

Here is the ultimate in Bizarro World logic:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_ZbW2REcI

[Swamp Gas]

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20535.htm


Putin's Winning Hand:

Once the Atlantic Alliance is shattered, America's lifeline to the world is kaput

By Mike Whitney

16/08/08 "ICH" -- - There are no military installations in the city of Tskhinvali. In fact, there are no military targets at all. It is an industrial center consisting of lumber mills, manufacturing plants and residential areas. It is also the home to 30,000 South Ossetians. When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered the city to be bombed by warplanes and shelled by heavy artillery last Thursday, he knew that he would be killing hundreds of civilians in their homes and neighborhoods. But he ordered the bombing anyway.

There was no "Battle of Tskhinvali"; that's another fiction. A battle implies that there is an opposing force that is resisting or fighting back. That's not the case here. The Georgian army entered the city unopposed; after all, how can unarmed civilians stop armed units. Most of the townspeople had already fled across the border into Russia or hid in their basements while the tanks and armored vehicles rumbled bye firing at anything that moved.

What took place in South Ossetia last Thursday, was not an invasion or a siege; it was a massacre. The people had no way to defend themselves against a fully-equiped modern army. It was a war crime.

In less than 24 hours, the Russian army was deployed to the war zone where it chased the Georgian army away without a fight. Journalist Michael Binyon put it like this, "The attack was short, sharp and deadly---enough to send the Georgians fleeing in humiliating panic." Indeed, the Georgians left in such haste that many of their weapons were left behind. It was a complete rout; another black-eye for the US and Israeli advisers who trained the clatter of thugs they call the Georgian army. Soon vendors on the streets of Tskhinvali will be hawking weapons that were left behind with a mocking sign: "Georgia Army M-16; Never used, dropped once."

By the time the army was driven out, the downtown area was in engulfed in flames and the bodies of those who had been killed by sniper-fire were strewn along the streets and sidewalks. Many of people who stayed behind were simply too old or infirm to leave. Instead, they huddled in their basements waiting for the shelling to stop. It was a bloodbath. The city's only hospital was deliberately targeted and destroyed; another war crime. By day's end, over 2,000 people were killed in an operation that was clearly engineered with the assistance of the Bush White House. Bush regards Saakashvilli as his main client in the region; they are friends. He is America's cat's paw in the Caucasus. Saakashvilli's assignment is to try to get Putin to overreact militarily and demonstrate to European allies that Russia still poses a threat to their national security. Fortunately, many Europeans see through the ruse and know that the trouble originates in Washington.

For the most part, Americans are still in the dark about what really happened last weekend. There's a great video circulating on the Internet by a Russian citizen that has been living in USA for the last 10 years. He sums up the role of the US media with great precision. He says, "The western media--especially CNN--is feeding you complete horseshit. Russia did not invade Georgia first." The youtube can be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c26Q-qxDEA

The coverage of the western media has been abysmal. Nearly every article and TV news segment begins with accusations of Russian aggression concealing the fact that the Georgian Army bombarded and invaded the capital of South Ossetia one full day before the first Russian even tank crossed the border. By the time the Russians arrived, the city was already in a shambles and thousands were dead.

These facts are not in dispute by those who followed the developments as they took place. Now the media is revising the facts to manage public perceptions, just as they did with the fictional WMD in Iraq. Many people think that the media learned its lesson after they were exposed for using bogus information in the lead up to the war in Iraq. But that is not true. The corporate media--especially FOX News, CNN and PBS (the smug, liberal-sounding channel)---continue to operate like the propaganda arm of the Pentagon. Its disgraceful.

In a 2006 referendum, 99% of South Ossetians said they supported independence from Georgia. The voter turnout was 95% and the balloting was monitored by 34 international observers from the west. No one has challenged the results. The province has been under the protection of Russian and Georgian peacekeepers since 1992 and has been a de facto independent state ever since. If Putin applied the same standard as Bush did in Kosovo, he would unilaterally declare South Ossetia independent from Georgia and then thumb his nose at the UN. (Sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander) But Putin and newly-elected Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have taken a conciliatory attitude towards the international community and tried to resolve the issue through diplomatic channels. So far, they have conducted themselves with restraint and avoided any confrontation.

Still, Russia's operation in South Ossetia has ignited a firestorm in the US political establishment and Democrats and Republicans alike are demanding that Russia be "taught a lesson". Condoleeza Rice flew to Tbilisi on Friday and ordered Russian combat troops to withdraw from Georgia immediately. Saakashvili topped off Rice's comments by saying that the Russian troops were "cold-blooded killers" and "barbarians". So much for reconciliation.

Saakashvili's hyperbolic rhetoric was followed by a surprise announcement from Poland that they had approved Bush's plans for deploying the Missile Defense Shield in Eastern Europe. The system is supposed to defend Europe from the possibility of attacks from so-called "rogue states" like Iran, but the Kremlin knows that it is intended to neutralize their nuclear arsenal. Political analyst William Engdahl explains the importance of the proposed system in his recent article, "Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War":


"The signing now insures an escalation of tensions between Russia and NATO and a new Cold War arms race in full force. It is important for readers to understand...the ability of one of two opposing sides to put anti-missile missiles to within 90 miles of the territory of the other in even a primitive first-generation anti-missile missile array gives that side virtual victory in a nuclear balance of power and forces the other to consider unconditional surrender or to pre-emptively react by launching its nuclear strike before 2012."

The new "shield" will be integrated into the larger US nuclear weapons system placing the world's most lethal weapons just a few hundred miles from Russia's capital. It is a clear threat to Russia's national security and it must be opposed at all cost. It is no different than nuclear weapons in Cuba. The timing of the announcement is particularly troubling as it only adds to the tensions between the two superpowers.


President Medvedev made this statement after hearing of Poland's decision: "This decision clearly demonstrates everything we have said recently. The deployment of new anti-missile forces in Europe is aimed at the Russian Federation."

It was President Ronald Reagan, the darling of the neoconservatives, who decided to remove short-range nuclear weapons from the European theater. Now, ironically, it is his ideological heir, George W. Bush, who is on track to restart the Cold War by putting a high-tech nuclear system on Russia's perimeter. The younger Bush has already broken his father's commitment to Mikail Gorbachev to never expand NATO beyond Germany. Presently, Bush is pushing to gain NATO membership for two former-Soviet states; Ukraine and Georgia. If they are approved, then any future dispute with Russia will pit the United States and Europe against Moscow. It's no wonder Putin is trying to derail the process.

The Bush administration has been planning for a confrontation with Russia for more than a year. In fact, Raw Story reported on operations that were conducted by the military on July 14, 2008 which were probably a dress rehearsal for the current conflict. According to Raw Story:


"US troops on Monday (July 14) began military exercises near the Russian border in ex-Soviet Ukraine and were poised to launch them in Georgia, amid tense relations between Moscow and Washington. A ceremony inaugurating the Sea Breeze-2008 NATO exercise was held off Ukraine's Black Sea coast against anti-NATO protests and a hostile reaction from officials in Russia. Sea Breeze-2008...includes forces from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Macedonia and Turkey...'The US-Georgia joint exercises will be held at the Vaziani military base' less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Russian border with a total of 1,650 servicemen taking part."

So, it appears the Bush administration, working in conjunction with the Pentagon, did have contingency plans for dealing with a flare-up with Georgia. The real question is whether or not they planned to initiate those hostilities to advance their own regional agenda? No one knows for sure.

Now that Georgia's American-trained army has been humiliated in front of the world, Bush is trying desperately to save face by demanding that Russia allow the US Air force to deliver humanitarian aid via C-17 military aircraft to the tens of thousands of Georgians who were displaced in the fighting. It is worth noting that, as yet, Bush has never delivered as much as a bag of rice to the 2 million Iraqi refugees living in Jordan and Syria due to his war in Iraq. Bush's magnanimity is not only suspect, it also creates real problems for Putin who will have to decide whether the offer is sincere or just a ploy to open up the ports and airfields so that more weaponry and ordnance can be delivered. As Barry Grey suggests in his article "Bush Dispatches US Military forces to Georgia" the humanitarian operation could be a scam:

"This is a formula for an injection of US military and naval forces into Georgia of indeterminate scope and duration. It will certainly involve the presence of hundreds if not thousands of uniformed US military personnel on the ground, and a substantial number of warships in the region. The US is introducing this military force into a situation that remains highly unstable and combustible, raising the possibility of a direct military clash between the United States and Russia."

Grey is right, but what choice does Putin have? His task is to avoid a military confrontation with the United States while demonstrating to his Europeon partners that their future lies with Russia not America. That's the real goal. To achieve that, he needs to expose Bush as reckless, petulant, and incapable of being a responsible steward of the global system. Maybe Putin will have to back-down at some point and swallow his pride; it makes no difference. What matters, is the endgame; showing that Russia is strong and dependable and will provide its European allies with oil and natural gas in a businesslike manner. That's the winning hand. Meanwhile, the United States will be forced to take a long-overdue look in the mirror and revisit its strategy for perennial war. Unfortunately, once the Atlantic Alliance is shattered; America's lifeline to the world is kaput.

[Swamp Gas]

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080815/ap_on_re_eu/russia_us_missile_defense

Russia: Poland risks attack because of US missiles

By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 15, 7:16 PM ET

MOSCOW - A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a U.S. missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.

The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn is the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations.

Poland and the United States on Thursday signed a deal for Poland to accept a missile interceptor base as part of a system the United States says is aimed at blocking attacks by rogue nations. Moscow, however, feels it is aimed at Russia's missile force.

"Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent," Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying.

He added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." Nogovitsyn that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, he said, according to Interfax.

At a news conference earlier Friday, Nogovitsyn had reiterated Russia's frequently stated warning that placing missile-defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic would bring an unspecified military response. But his subsequent reported statement substantially stepped up a war of words.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was quoted Friday by the Polish news agency PAP as saying that Poland is open to Russian inspections because it wants to give Moscow "tangible proof" that the planned base is not directed against Russia.

U.S. officials have said the timing of the deal was not meant to antagonize Russian leaders at a time when relations already are strained over the recent fighting between Russia and Georgia over the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia.

Russian forces went deep into Georgia in the fighting, raising wide concerns that Russia could be seeking to occupy parts of its small, pro-U.S. neighbor, which has vigorously lobbied to join NATO, or even to force its government to collapse.

"I think the Russian behavior over the last several days is generally concerning not only to the United States but to all of our European allies," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, when asked about Russian threats against Poland as a result of the missile defense agreement.

He also suggested that earlier U.S. offers for broad cooperation with Moscow on the missile defense program may be reevaluated considering the latest developments.

Under the agreement that Warsaw and Washington reached Thursday, Poland will accept an American missile interceptor base.

Washington says the planned system, which is not yet operational, is needed to protect the U.S. and Europe from possible attacks by missile-armed "rogue states" like Iran. The Kremlin, however, feels it is aimed at Russia's missile force and warns it will worsen tensions.

In an interview on Poland's news channel TVN24, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the United States agreed to help augment Poland's defenses with Patriot missiles in exchange for placing 10 missile defense interceptors in the Eastern European country.

He said the deal also includes a "mutual commitment" between the two nations to come to each other's assistance "in case of trouble."

That clause appeared to be a direct reference to Russia.

Poland has all along been guided by fears of a newly resurgent Russia, an anxiety that has intensified with Russia's offensive in Georgia. In past days, Polish leaders said that fighting justified Poland's demands that it get additional security guarantees from Washington in exchange for allowing the anti-missile base on its soil.

"Simply the existence of this installation increases Poland's security," Polish President Lech Kaczynski said Friday.

[Swamp Gas]

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/17/georgia.russia4

Sarkozy threatens 'consequences' as Russia stalls on Georgia pullout

French president demands Moscow honour ceasefire as Medvedev pledges troops will begin withdrawal tomorrow

European leaders warned Russia today to withdraw forces rapidly from Georgia or face unspecified "consequences", as Moscow stalled on its pledges to honour a ceasefire and pull back thousands of troops from the Caucasus republic.

With the US and European governments due to meet on Tuesday to consider their options for the first time since the crisis erupted, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened the Kremlin with an ultimatum for the first time, warning that more delays to a pullout "would have serious consequences on relations between Russia and the European Union".

The French warning echoed similar statements from the Americans in recent days, none of which appear to have rattled the Russians, whose forces remain in firm control of large tracts of Georgia well beyond the two separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"People are going to begin to wonder if Russia can be trusted," Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said today of the Russian failure to keep its promises.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, added her voice to the pressure on Moscow after holding talks with the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, in the capital, Tbilisi. She described a Russian retreat as "urgent" and said it should be "very fast, very prompt".

In Moscow, President Dmitri Medvedev told Sarkozy the Russians would start pulling out tomorrow. But there is a yawning gap between what the Russians and the west understand by withdrawal. Today, Russian forces appeared to be entrenching their positions on the ground barely 20 miles from Tbilisi.

Nato foreign ministers are to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday. The Americans could call for a suspension of the Nato-Russia council, a talking shop that dates back more than a decade and symbolises the post-cold war rapprochement that has been shaken by the invasion of Georgia.

The conflict has reopened old rifts among the western allies that recall the old Europe-new Europe divisions over the Iraq war in 2003. France and Germany are keen to maintain smooth relations with Moscow and fear the EU's mediation role will be jeopardised if they take sides.

The eastern Europeans in Nato and the EU are strongly on the side of Georgia, looking not to Brussels, Paris or Berlin but to Washington for leadership. The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, slammed France and Germany for being too soft on Moscow and complained they were trying to monopolise the EU position.

France was unapologetic. "We have to invent a new language with regard to Russia. That is what the European Union is trying to do," said Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister.

Sarkozy, the current EU president who negotiated a six-point ceasefire agreement with the Russians and Georgians last week, called for the "withdrawal, without delay, of all the Russian military forces that entered Georgia since August 7" when the fighting started.

The Russians, with an estimated 10,000 troops and 150 tanks in Georgia, show no intention of withdrawing the entire invasion force and are planning to leave troops in Georgia proper, beyond the two pro-Russian breakaway provinces.

The Kremlin announced that from tomorrow "Russia will begin the withdrawal of the military contingent which was moved to reinforce Russian peacekeepers after the Georgian aggression against South Ossetia." But it stressed that the invasion force would not retreat to Russia but only to South Ossetia, and that Moscow would keep forces in the "security zone".

The Russians intend to establish buffer zones in previously Georgian-controlled territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia. One of the most contentious points of Sarkozy's ceasefire plan allows Moscow "to take additional security measures" beyond the two enclaves until "an international mechanism" is established.

Sarkozy said this weekend that meant there could be no Russian presence in Georgian urban centres. But the Russians take the point as carte blanche to mount security patrols outside South Ossetia and to keep forces deployed in Georgia.

Saakashvili insisted today that he would not be happy until the last Russian soldier had left. "Georgia will never give up a square kilometer of its territory," he said.

The "international mechanism", entailing perhaps UN-mandated international peacekeepers, will take weeks to establish at a minimum. The EU is endeavouring to be the main middleman. But apart from perhaps sending a few dozen unarmed ceasefire monitors in the days ahead, it is unlikely to grapple with the bigger issues of peacekeepers until EU foreign ministers meet in Avignon in France next month.

[Swamp Gas]

english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/17-08-2008/106117-condoleexarice-0

Condoleeza Rice, what is wrong with you?

17.08.2008


Are you hysterical or what? Having a difficult menopause? How many times do we have to tell you, Russia calls the shots these days. So keep your hysterical whining to yourself and stop reiterating the same thing time and time again. Russia will withdraw from Georgia when it sees fit.


And if it doesn’t see fit, it won’t. Russian troops will move around Georgia for as long as they like. As and when they like. As and when they choose. They will drive to the south if they please. They will push to the east and west if they choose to. And if they decide to go north, and then drive back south, so they will. And you will not be able to do a thing about it, will you? Except scream like a hysterical schoolgirl, the screams of someone who lost. And you are afraid of what? That Russia will discover how much your troops were involved in the act of butchery of 2.000 civilians in one night?

You see, your status as Secretary of State of the USA is fast becoming as pathetic as your status as National Security Advisor was back in the days of 9/11 when you failed to provide any security whatsoever for your people. Like, for a week now you have been saying the same thing, “Russia must withdraw, Russia must withdraw, Russia must withdraw”.

Have you any idea how hysterical the laughter in my office has been this last week? Russia has not withdrawn, see? Russia will withdraw when it decides the time is right.

As for your insolent insinuations as to the integrity of Russia’s President, you insolent, failed, arrogant, unpleasant, lying, incompetent, abrasive, man-hating female of the worst order, how about you take your insinuations and stick them where they hurt?

Russia responded to the massacre of 2.000 civilians by Georgian forces, backed by your advisors. Why have you not had the decency to mention that massacre even once?

And after Iraq, how do you expect to be taken seriously?

Do you honestly believe in yourself? You are a joke, an insult to the intelligence of humanity, an insult to the diplomatic community, and the worst sort of joker playing on the world stage at present. Perhaps you are the most hated US Secretary of State, the most ludicrous and ridiculous figure to have insulted international diplomacy and the most incompetent, insolent, useless waste of space ever to have occupied your office.

So once again, Russia calls the shots, you do not. Go commit more acts of terrorism in Afghanistan, go lie again about NATO expansion, go support your murderous acts of butchery, your Saakashvilis and Yuskchenkos, but please, do not expect us to take you seriously. Go give a medal to the great American heroine Lynndie England. Sterling job, what?

The author of this piece caught you out lying before you entered office some 8 years back. You haven’t changed, you never will.

[Swamp Gas]

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3583460,00.html

Report: Russia may arm Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads

New Russian threat comes in response to war in Caucasus, US-Poland deal for missile defense shield in Europe. According to Sunday Times, nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of Russia's Baltic fleet based between Poland and Lithuania

08.17.08, 08:07 / Israel News

Cold War warming up? Russia is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the cold war, the London-based Sunday Times has reported, quoting senior military sources.

The new Russian threat comes in response to the violent conflict in the Caucasus and a deal signed between the United States and Poland for a missile defense shield in Europe. Poland agreed on Thursday to host elements of a US global anti-missile system after Washington agreed to boost Warsaw's own air defenses.

Accusations
US-Poland missile shield deal seen aimed at Russia / Reuters
Moscow's envoy to NATO says missile defense system will not be deployed against Iran but rather against his country

According to the report, under the Russian plans nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

A senior military source in Moscow admitted that the fleet had suffered from underfunding since the collapse of communism, but told The Sunday Times that “that will change now."

"In view of America’s determination to set up a missile defense shield in Europe, the military is reviewing all its plans to give Washington an adequate response,” said the source

'Russia's reaction is unfortunate'

According to the report, the proposal to bring back nuclear warheads was condemned by Kurt Volker, the US ambassador to Nato, who said he knew of the threat.

“It is really unfortunate that Russia chooses to react by putting nuclear warheads in different places – if indeed it does that – when the rest of the world is not looking at some kind of old-fashioned superpower conflict,” he said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that Washington's deal with Poland to shows the rocket shield is really directed against his country.

"This decision clearly demonstrates everything we have said recently," Medvedev said when asked about the agreement at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a US missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.

The statement by General Anatoly Nogovitsyn was the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations.

"Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100%," Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying.

He added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." That would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, he said, according to Interfax.

[Swamp Gas]

www.rense.com/general83/khaz2.htm

Post Game Show -Russia Vs Georgia

By Karl Schwarz

8-19-8


Have you ever heard this one?

"I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out."

If this Georgia fiasco were an Olympic hockey game, Russia went through Georgia like crap through a goose. The Russians are putting their tanks and armored vehicles anywhere the Bear wants to drive or park them. Scenes in Georgia from BBC are showing the Georgian police establishing roadblocks only to see Russian armor rolling right through them and going where they want to. Whoever covers the insurance for the Georgian police force vehicles has a major insurance claim forthcoming. Cause of claim: collision with Russian tank. 'The Mick' Saakashvili was so nervous watching the game he was actually chewing on his tie.

Unfortunately for the City Of London Bankers NWO, the US and Zionist Israel both just got their clocks cleaned, 50-0.

That Gold looks great on the Bear's brown chest.

Team Russia is now just gliding around on the ice waiting to see if anyone else wants to get slammed to death into the rink wall. As I predicted, the Bear has its paw squarely on the chest of Georgia and will only move on when he is damned well ready to. Which may be a long, long time.

Seems the Russians also just found a US arms cache in Georgia - or intercepted an attempt by the US to smuggle arms into Georgia wrapped up as 'humanitarian aid.'

The Post Game Show and analysis of the game is getting uglier by the day.

I never cared much for Lyndon Johnson as a president, but he did come up with many colorful quotes that described our nation and its leaders well. His comment about Jerry Ford can well be applied to Bush and his entire team of nitwits:

"Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time."

Here is a Democratic president commenting on someone who turned out to be a Republican president - and was exactly what Lyndon said he was. The Bush Administration has that same problem.

They devised a scheme in Georgia and DC to 'resolve the territorial disputes' so NATO could say 'YES' to membership for Georgia. What happened? Well, Georgia took the opening puck but a bone-crushing body block delivered by the Russian defense shook the LED scoreboard into a blur.

The hockey game was so one-sided, Saakashvili was reduced to babbling and literally chewing on his tie while the BushCo Poodle's 2 cell brain got stuck and kept arfing the same recorded message over and over again. Maybe the little yapper was stunned almost speechless watching Russian Shock & Awe for the first time in her Affirmative Action life.

The UN Security Council, NATO and EU leaders are groping and trying to find a way to call a 'personal foul' on Russia but the evidence grows by the hour that the guilty players were from Georgia, Ukraine, Israel and the US.

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) voted yesterday in Vienna. The answer was NO to providing security forces or monitors to resolve this dispute. Said another way, the OSCE does not view Georgia as an EU member or NATO member, and it is on its own for inflicting war crimes on Russian Orthodox Christians in South Ossetia.

That vote definitely did not go as Bush, Rice and the Zionist New World Order wanted it to go.


You can depend that yesterday's OSCE vote was a major blow to EU and NATO membership for poor little Muslim and Zionist-controlled Georgia.

Arf-Arf says: "We will rebuild Georgia!" Great, the US Treasury will borrow tens or hundreds of billions more non-existent money from the Fed, and Bush Buddies will get all sorts of no-bid contracts and billions more will disappear just like Iraq. You can bet that neither Russia nor China will be buying any of that US debt to 'rebuild' Georgia.

Have you noticed Arf-Arf has not said a word since last Friday about "Russia must remove its troops from Georgia now!" Well, Arf-Arf is sort of distracted right now because Russia has responded to the bogus Bush Missile Shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, and she is having to dart and dash to hand-wringing conferences so fast her little Black Poodle heels are smoking.

Russia: "Poland is now a target for nuclear strike."


Of course, that will include the Czech Republic if anyone wishes to test Russian resolve. Over in Germany Angela Merkel-Ferkel is jumping up and down screaming and her hair is on fire. Meanwhile, Little Nicky Sarko, like Arf-Arf, also became very quiet after he 'brokered the cease-fire.' It's become more than apparent to all of these clowns that the Bear is aiming to knock the Zionist New World Order flat on its ass.

Have you noticed that there has not been a single word from Gordon Brown? Most likely, this is because the UK and US economies are both going into the trash can, thanks to BushCo, and the Brits decided they didn't want to go wreck Georgia with Junior...and then get to foot the bill for 'nation building.'

Russia: "Russia has the same right to pre-emptive strikes as the US claims for itself."


I bet BushCo didn't see that one coming...since they actually think they are the world's only Superpower. Oops! You can bet Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth are having a tête-à-tête on that recent revelation. Bush just crapped another diaper and if there is to be any 'pre-emptive strike' it will include Buckingham Palace and the Zionist Banksters in the City of London.

Russia: "Long-range strategic nuclear bombers will now be refueling in Cuba." Hmm, Poland is the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. And just like in 1962, the US started it. Do your research and you'll find that the US put nuclear-tipped Jupiter C missiles in Turkey and the Russians responded by shipping missiles to Cuba.
Action...reaction.


Venezuela: "Russian navy is welcome in our country."

Pakistan: "Musharraf resigns to avoid impeachment."

Afghanistan: "Taliban now control most of Afghanistan."

Russia: "Russia will put nuclear missiles in the Mediterranean and Syria."


Oops, the Little Black Poodle has to scramble faster still because the bogus Bush Missile Shield is not in position to do anything about Russian nukes in the Mediterranean. Trust me; Italy and Spain are livid at BushCo for this stupidity. Zionist Israel is about to shit Kosher bricks because any Russian nuclear missiles in Syria will mean for the first time that Israel will not be able to exert nuclear terrorism on its neighbors - or on the US - to get its way in the Middle East.

THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU, RUSSIA!

I knew it, Zionist Israel does not have to worry at all about Iranian nukes. Now they will have to worry about Russian nukes in Syria. Seems the US has been playing on the wrong Grand Chessboard. That move by Russia is called CHECKMATE on Zionist Israel.

Russia: "Russian passports for Ukrainians in the Crimea are now available."

Most Ukrainians want out of Ukraine. They are not enamored with their Zionist-controlled government, crappy economy and living under incredible financial stresses. They have noticed that things are much better in Russia now and I hear passports are going fast, long lines. The Ukrainians have had it with the George Soros-George Bush Zionist Show in Ukraine. It did not take the Ukrainians long to figure out that their Orange Revolution was really more like A Clockwork Orange.

Of course, Yuchenko did not help matters when he told Russia where it could and could not park its Black Sea fleet, or that Ukraine Zionists participated in the Georgia fiasco and have been stirring up trouble along the Ukraine-Russia border as well. Since Russia has been paying the Ukraine pensions ever since the USSR disbanded in 1991, many Ukrainians are now wondering if their pensions would be safer holding a Russian passport rather than Ukraine passport. The correct answer is, definitely, yes.

I bet the US and EU did not see that one coming either. Maybe this loss for George Soros will prompt him to 'kick off' and we won't have to worry about his sleaze any more. Russia has had enough of Russia-hating Soros, and so have I.

Has Russia pulled back in Georgia? Well, sort of. The Russians know they can't trust the Georgian Muslim­Zionist Jew puppet government in Tbilisi. That's a given. Russia also knows it cannot trust the US or the Zionist zhids. What the Bear is doing is creating a DMZ a right and proper buffer zone on all three sides of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to better insulate and protect the borders of those two breakaway regions. And to be sure, the zhids get the picture clearly...


Medvedev: "Cross us and we will crush you."

Translation to Georgia: NEVER AGAIN!

Folks, the blowback to BushCo stupidity is obvious to anyone still above room temperature. Russia has made it clear that the bullshit stops or things will get hotter than Americans can imagine...

[Swamp Gas]

02varvara.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/many-countries-side-with-russia-on-the-issue-of-south-ossetia/


Many Countries Side with Russia on the Issue of South Ossetia

Published August 14, 2008


Many countries voiced their solidarity with Russia in connection with the situation in South Ossetia. China expressed serious concern about the situation in South Ossetia. Jiang Gan, an official spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a briefing in Beijing on Wednesday that China’s stance was clear, peace and stability in the region should be reached through talks. Japan also gave support to using negotiations to find a peace settlement in South Ossetia, according to a statement of Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura circulated on Thursday. During his meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan said that he came to Moscow to show Turkey’s solidarity with Russia on the issue of South Ossetia. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico believes that the war in the Caucasus was provoked by Georgia. Anna Belousova, Vice-speaker of the Slovak Parliament, said that Georgia attempted to launch a policy of genocide. She said that Georgian military units launched aggression against the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, and the republic as a whole; she emphasised that it was an attempt at genocide on Georgia’s part and an international tribunal should investigate the case.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (1952- ) (left) with Chinese President Hu Jintao (1942- )

According to observers in many countries, Tbilisi’s claims at restoring its sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia are pointless. President Saakashvili’s military adventure deprived Georgia of any prospects for the restoration of its territorial integrity. Mansur Akgun, a writer in the major Turkish newspaper Reference, said that the reckless action of President Saakashvili entailed thousands of deaths, and it shall lead to Georgia’s split and economic collapse. He believes that Mr Saakashvili has no political future no matter what Russia may do. As for the United States, it was checked yet another time in the eight years of George Bush’s presidency, according to Sandro Viola, an Italian journalist, in an article published in the influential newspaper La Repubblica of Rome. Ain his view, in the past eight years the United States survived one disaster after another and came through a chain of political, military, financial, and economic crises. The major Japanese newspaper Mainiti says that Russia ntervened in the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict under an existing UN mandate with the aim of protecting Russian nationals and peacekeepers in the region.

The list of similar statements and pronouncements could be extended. Yet the statements cited above appear quite sufficient to prove that the world sides with Russia in the issue of South Ossetia, it condemns president Saakashvili and his US sponsors for aggression against small South Ossetian nation.

14 August 2008

[KNOWTHIS]

The one-sided media coverage is very similar to that of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Seeing Fox News suddenly break in to a commercial break to silence that 12 year old girl was particularly disturbing.

[Swamp Gas]

This was exactly what happened in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They had everyone in the country believing that Russia put the missiles there first, when in fact it was the USA putting missiles in Turkey first. Obama The Savior is going right along with this crap.

[Swamp Gas]

The entire world, except for Americans, knows that the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia was entirely due to the US and its Georgia puppet, Saakashvili. Americans, alone in the world, are unaware that the hostilities were initiated by Saakashvili, because Bush, Cheney and the Israeli-occupied American media have again lied to them.

www.counterpunch.org/roberts08132008.html

Two Morons: Bush and Saakashvili
"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?"

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war.

Back in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states.

The neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union.

The NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro.

Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does “today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

The Bush Regime, having established a puppet, Mikhail Saakashvili, as president of Georgia, tried to bring Georgia into NATO.

For readers too young to know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a military alliance between the US and Western European countries to resist any Soviet move into Western Europe [and to ensure European countries lined up behind the US, and bought its weapons systems. Editors] . There has been no reason for NATO since the Soviet Union’s internal political collapse almost two decades ago. The neocons turned NATO into another tool, like the NED, for US world hegemony. Subsequent US administrations violated the understandings that President Reagan had reached with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and have incorporated former parts of the Soviet empire into NATO. The neocon goal of ringing Russia with a hostile military alliance has been proclaimed many times.

Western European members of NATO balked at the admission of Georgia, as they understood it as a provocative affront to Russia, on whom Western Europe is dependent for natural gas. Western Europeans are also disturbed at the Bush Regime’s intentions to install ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic as the consequence will be Russian nuclear cruise missiles targeted on European capitals. Europeans don’t see the advantage of helping the US block Russian nuclear retaliation against the US at the expense of their own existence. Ballistic missile defenses are not useful against cruise missiles.

Every country is tired of war except for the US. War, including nuclear war, is the neoconservative strategy for world hegemony.

The entire world, except for Americans, knows that the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia was entirely due to the US and its Georgia puppet, Saakashvili. Americans, alone in the world, are unaware that the hostilities were initiated by Saakashvili, because Bush, Cheney and the Israeli-occupied American media have again lied to them.

Everyone else in the world knows that the unstable and corrupt Saakashvili, who proclaims democracy and runs a police state, would not have taken on Russia by attacking South Ossetia unless given the go-ahead by Washington.

The purpose of the Georgian attack on the Russian population of South Ossetia is twofold:

To convince Europeans that their action in delaying Georgia’s NATO membership is the cause of “the Russian aggression” and that to save Georgia from conquest Georgia must be given NATO membership.

To ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of its Russian population. Two thousand Russian civilians were targeted and killed by the US-equipped and trained Georgian Army, and tens of thousands fled into Russia. Having achieved this goal, Saakashvili and his puppet-masters in Washington quickly called for a cease fire and a halt to “the Russian invasion.” The hope is that the Russian population will be afraid to return or can be prevented from returning, thus removing the secessionist threat.

No doubt the Bush Regime can con the American population, just as it did with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and 9/11 itself, but the rest of the world is not buying it, not even America’s bought-and-paid-for European allies.

Writing in the Asia Times, Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, a former career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, notes the disinformation that is being peddled by the Bush Regime and the US media and reports that “at the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested.”

Amb. Bhadrakumar notes that the American and Georgian resort to violence and propaganda has brought an end to the Russian government’s belief that diplomacy and good will can bring about a settlement of the South Ossetia issue. If Russia wished, Russia could terminate Georgia’s existence as a separate country at will, and there is nothing the US could do about it.

It is certain that the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was a Bush Regime orchestrated event. The American media and the neocon think tanks were ready with their propaganda blitzes. Neocons had ready a Wall Street Journal editorial page article for Saakashvili that declares “the war in Georgia is a war for the West.”

Faced with the collapse of his army when Russia sent in troops to protect South Ossetians from the Georgian troops, Saakashvili declared: “This is not about Georgia any more. It is about America, its values.”

The neocon Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., quickly called a conference hosted by warmonger Ariel Cohen, “Urgent! Event: Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World.”

The Washington Post hosted neocon Robert Kagen’s war drums, “Putin Makes His Move.”

Only a fool like Kagen could think that if Putin intended to invade Georgia he would do so from Beijing, or that after sending the American-trained Georgian army in flight, he would not continue and conquer all of Georgia in order to put an end to American machinations on Russia’s most sensitive border, machinations that are likely to eventually end in nuclear war.

The New York Tiimes hosted Billy Kristol’s rant, “Will Russia Get Away With It?” Kristol thunders against “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” that “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.” Kristol presents a new axis of evil--Russia, China, North Korea and Iran--and warns against “delay and irresolution” that “simply invite future threats and graver dangers.”

In other words, “attack Russia now.”

Dick Cheney, the insane American Vice President telephoned Saakashvili to express US solidarity with Georgia in the conflict with Russia and declared: “Russian aggression must not go unanswered. Only an idiot would tell Saakashvili anything other than “to cease immediately.”

What must be the effect on US Intelligence services and the US military of Cheney’s propagandistic and irresponsible statement of US support for Georgia’s war crimes? Does anyone really believe that the CIA or any US intelligence service told the vice president that Russia opened the conflict with an invasion? Russian troops arrived in South Ossetia after thousands of Ossetians had been killed by the Georgian attack and after tens of thousands of Ossetians had fled into Russia to escape the Georgian attack. According to news reports, Russian forces have captured Americans who were with the Georgian troops directing their attack on civilians.

The US military certainly has no resources for a war against Russia on top of lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a planned war with Iran.

With its Georgian venture, the Bush Regime is guilty of a new round of war crimes. What will be the consequence?

Many will reply that having got away with 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and with its preparations for attacking Iran, the Bush Regime will get away with its Georgian venture as well.

Possibly, however, this time the Bush Regime has overreached.

Certainly Russia now recognizes that the US is determined to exert hegemony over Russia and is Russia’s worst enemy.

China realizes the US threat to its own energy supply and, thereby, economy.

Even America’s European allies, chafing under their role of supplying troops for America’s Empire, must now realize that being an American ally is dangerous and has no benefits. If Georgia becomes a NATO member and renews its attack on South Ossetia, it must drag Europe into a war with Russia, a main supplier of energy to Europe.

Moreover, if Russian troops are sent across European frontiers, there is nothing to stop them.

What does America offer Europe, aside from the millions of dollars it pays to buy off Europe’s political leaders to insure that they betray their own peoples? Nothing whatsoever.

The only military threat that Europe faces comes from being dragged into America’s wars for American hegemony.

The US is financially bankrupt, with budget and trade deficits that exceed the combined deficits of the rest of the world together. The dollar has wilted. The American consumer market is dying from the offshoring of American jobs and, thereby, incomes, and from the wealth effect of the real estate and derivatives collapses. The US has nothing to offer Europe. Indeed, American economic decline is killing European exports by driving up the value of the euro.

America long ago lost the moral high ground. Hypocrisy has become America’s best known hallmark. Bush, the invader of Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies and deception, thunders at Russia for coming to the defense of its peacekeepers and Russian citizens in South Ossetia. Bush who ripped Kosovo out of Serbia’s heart and handed it to the Muslims, has taken an adamant stand against other separatist movements, especially the South Ossetians who wish to be part of the Russian Federation.

The neoconned Bush Regime is furious that the Russian bear was not intimidated by the US supported aggression of the American puppet state, Georgia. Instead of accepting the act of American hegemony that the neocon script called for, Russia sent the Americanized Georgian army fleeing in fear.

Having failed with weapons, the Bush Regime now unleashes the rhetoric. The White House is warning Russia that failure to acquiesce to US hegemony could have a “significant, long-term impact on relations between Washington and Moscow.”

Do the morons who comprise the Bush Regime really not understand that short of a surprise nuclear attack on Russia there is nothing whatsoever the US can do to Moscow?

The Bush Regime owns no Russian currency that it can dump. The Russians own US dollars.

The Bush Regime owns no Russian bonds that it can dump. The Russians own US bonds.

The US can cut Russia off from no energy supplies. Russia can cut America’s European allies off from energy.

President Reagan negotiated the end of the cold war with Soviet President Gorbachev.,The neoconservatives, whom Reagan fired and drove from his administration, were furious. The neocons had hoped to win the cold war, thereby establishing American hegemony.

The Republican Establishment reestablished its hegemony under Bush 1st that it had lost to Ronald Reagan. With this feat, intelligence was driven from the Republican Party.

The neocons engineered their comeback with the First Gulf War and their propaganda, pure lies, that Iraqi troops bayoneted Kuwait babies in hospitals.

The neocons made a further comeback with President Clinton, whom they convinced to bomb Serbia in order to permit separatist movements to become independent states dependent on America.

With Bush 2nd, the neocons took over. Their agenda, American world hegemony, includes Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

So far the schemes of these ignorant and dangerous ideologues have come a cropper. Iraq, formerly in the hands of secular Sunnis who were a check on Iran, is, after the American invasion and occupation, in the hands of religious Shi’ites allied with Iran.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent, and a large NATO/US army there is unable to control the situation.

One consequence of the neocons’ Afghan war has been the loss of power of the American puppet president of Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons. The puppet president now faces impeachment, and the Pakistani military has informed the Americans to stop conducting military operations in Pakistani territory.

The American puppets in Egypt and Jordan might be next to fall.

In Iraq, the Shi’ites, having completed their ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from neighborhoods, have declared a cease fire in order to contradict the US propaganda that American withdrawal would lead to a blood bath. Negotiations on withdrawal dates are now underway between the Americans and the Iraqi government, which is no longer behaving like a puppet.

Last year Hugo Chavez ridiculed Bush before the UN. Russia’s Putin ridiculed Bush as Comrade Wolf.

On August 12, 2008, Pravda ridiculed Bush, “Bush: Why don’t you shut up.”

Americans may think they are a superpower before whose presence the world trembles. But not the Russians.

Those Americans stupid enough to think that America’s “superpower” insures its citizens from danger need to read the total contempt shown for President Bush in Pravda:

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia’s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq.

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone.

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to “Get back inside” and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties?

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen?

Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives?

Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion?

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is ‘magnificent foreign intelligenc’ such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being ‘driven around the country in vehicles’? Suppose Russia declares for instance that ‘Saakashvili stiffed the world’ and it is ‘time for regime change’?

Nice and simple, isn’t it, President Bush?

“So, why don’t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green.”

The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

[Swamp Gas]

This article leaves out the infiltration of Nazis into the US government in the 1940s through Operation Paperclip, but is nonetheless excellent to get a historical perspective.


www.politicalodyssey.com/id12.html


The Phony Cold War


[After World War II] America emerged the richest nation known to man. The war industry ended the Depression and created nearly full employment (1.2% 1944 unemployment) in an unscathed economy. What kind of threat could a devastated Russia be?

In fact, Russia felt threatened by the West. It had just been invaded for the fourth time in 130 years, three times within the past 26 years. Germany had invaded twice since 1914. The United States, Britain and France invaded the Soviet Union in 1918. It was a failed attempt to help the White Army put down the revolution. Now the U.S. had decided to rebuild Germany, the enemy Russia had done most to defeat. Not surprisingly, Moscow sought a buffer against further invasions—a cordon sanitaire of satellite states. Murderous dictator that he was, Stalin’s aim in Eastern Europe wasn’t to add territory to the Soviet empire. It had to do with Russian history, not communism. Truman ignored moderates in his administration who understood Russian history, just as the Bush administration has marginalized Arabists. Truman acted as if war with Russia and social revolution in America and Europe were imminent.

The Truman administration then did two things to avoid a resumed economic crisis: it trumped up fear of the Soviets to get Congress to fund ever-bigger arms contracts, and it instituted the Marshall Plan. ...

In June 1946, Truman lifted wartime price controls, which sparked inflation to 28%. On March 12, 1947, he formally declared the Cold War (a term coined by Walter Lippman in his 1947 book of that name), with his “Truman Doctrine” speech to Congress asking for massive aid to defeat Soviet aims in Greece and Turkey. The problem was the Soviets were not backing the Greek communists in their civil war. Yugoslav and Albanian communists, both independent of Moscow, were.

Critics of the Truman Doctrine emerged immediately, including moderates within the administration. Lippman wrote in The Cold War: “My objection… to the policy of containment is not that it seeks to confront the Soviet power with American power, but that the policy is misconceived, and must result in a misuse of American power.”

Henry Wallace, who would have been president if Roosevelt hadn’t replaced him as vice president with Truman for the 1944 election, wrote in The New Republic in May 1947:

Americans are asked to support this doctrine in the name of freedom. But inevitably, once the struggle for the world is accepted as the supreme issue, power itself becomes more important than the ends for which power is sought. In the name of freedom, we come to terms with dictators such as Peron, we tolerate fascists such as Franco, we support corrupt governments such as the undemocratic one that rules Turkey, we seek to drive France and other progressive countries away from dynamic democracy and toward reaction. So long as we think only in terms of extending our power, freedom will be weakened, not served, by the pressure we exert abroad.

In the June 1947 edition of Foreign Affairs, Kennan, now director of policy planning at the State Department, wrote his anonymous X article, in which he tried to lower the temperature, explaining that Soviet expansion was motivated by security interests, not world revolution and that containment should be exercised by economic and political means in Europe and Japan only, not by a military buildup.Clearly the idea that the Soviets were on the verge of overthrowing the U.S. government from within was an absurd fantasy. But two weeks after Truman gave his Doctrine speech to Congress, he instituted loyalty oaths to federal employees.

It was absurd because Communist Party membership declined dramatically after the war. They were kicked out of the unions after the 1940 Smith Act made it a crime to advocate overthrowing the government. ... If a socialist revolution had not occurred after American capitalism collapsed in the Depression, it would likely never happen. But that did not fit into the scare tactics.

The Iron Curtain hardened with Moscow’s rejection of Marshall’s plan, giving the hardliners ammunition in Washington. Later that month, on July 26, 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the CIA. The national security state was born and has turned 60. The relationship of the Executive to the other branches of government was changed forever. America’s relationship with the rest of the world was permanently altered too.

Nineteen days later, on August 14, Pakistan and India achieved independence from Britain. The movement for decolonization was underway. Did ignorance of Soviet capabilities lead American policymakers to confuse Soviet propaganda about worldwide revolution with an actual attempt at a worldwide territorial empire? American policymakers seemed to confuse post-war nationalist uprisings in British and French colonies—and against American dominance in Latin America—as part of this supposed worldwide Soviet empire.

Truman, like McKinley and George W. Bush, expressed himself in simple terms of good and evil, perilously mixing religion with politics. “The earth is deeply divided between free and captive people,” Truman said right after the war. “And much as we trust in God, while He is rejected by so many in the world, we must trust in ourselves.” From McKinley to Bush, this millennial messianism in American political thought, with its New England Puritan roots, has blurred idealism and economics as the driving force of American overseas intervention. The cynical view is that religious language about Christianizing or democratizing the natives is merely to disguise what would otherwise be seen as a naked grab for excess wealth and power. A more naïve view is that some American political and business leaders have genuinely believed that the transfer of U.S. economic and political freedoms to other countries is a righteous cause guided more by altruism than greed. Where idealism ends and practical interests begin is sometimes difficult to say.

In the spring of 1948 a “war scare” appears to have been engineered by the Truman administration to get Congress to approve the Marshall Plan, to sharply increase defense spending and to re-institute a peacetime draft. The scare was sparked by several factors. The drama of the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia on March 10, 1948 was played to the max by the administration. Again we see a threat being exaggerated out of proportion. The takeover had been preceded five days earlier, on March 5, by a classified cable the CIA later deemed worthless sent by General Lucius Clay, U.S. military governor of Germany, to General Stephen Chamberlain, head of army intelligence in Washington. In the cable Clay said he had a “feeling” the Soviets were planning war in Europe. Clay later told his biographer:

General Chamberlain came to see me in Berlin in late February [1948] … He told me that the Army was having trouble getting the draft reinstituted, and they needed a strong message from me that they could use in congressional testimony. So I wrote out this cable. … I assumed they would use it in close session [of various congressional committees.] I had no idea they would make it public. If I had, I would not have sent it.

Marshall gave speeches comparing Hitler to Stalin; Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington falsely claimed the Soviet Air Force was superior, the Navy said Soviet subs were “sighted off our coasts,” though there was no hard evidence and the Army put out the line that the Soviets could mobilize 320 divisions in a month.

There were also false war scares in Turkey and Scandinavia, dismissed by the CIA. But on March 16 Secretary of Defense James Forrestal noted in his diary: “Papers this morning full of rumors and portents of war.” (Kofsky, 131) The next day Truman gave an alarmist address to a joint session of Congress calling for Congressional approval of the Marshal Plan and the draft to counter the Soviet “threat.” He said, “ Rapid changes are taking place in Europe that affect our security,” he said. “We must be prepared to pay the price of peace, or assuredly we will pay the price of war.”

Truman’s speech, which punctuated the brief war scare, was a success on three counts: Congress quickly approved the Marshall Plan, which was signed by Truman on April 3, 1948; Congress re-instituted a “temporary” war time draft in July 1948, which lasted until I ended it in 1971 and defense spending jumped 30% in the two months after the speech. The increase for military aircraft contracts was 57%. Since the end of the war the aircraft industry had been on the verge of collapse. In January 1948 Business Week reported that “the aircraft builders … are near disaster … Right now the government is their only possible savior—with orders, subsidies or loans.” Aircraft manufacturers had started lobbying James Forrestal, the defense secretary, and Stuart Symington, air force secretary in the summer of 1947. In the spring of 1948 Donald Douglas, head of Douglas Aircraft Company, went to the White House to appeal to Truman directly just before his speech.

The 1948 war scare died down once Truman got his immediate goals met. But the fear it generated set the pattern for the rest of the Cold War. Secretly, administration hawks were planning for the long haul against this exaggerated Soviet threat with the creation on June 18, 1948 of the Office of Policy Coordination. This innocuous-sounding department, completely independent from the CIA, was the first formal American organization devoted to covert action, including sabotage, psychological warfare and assassination. Its aim was to pursue U.S. foreign policy goals—empire—in secret.

Meanwhile, the first three National Intelligence Estimates of the new CIA, from 1947 to 1949, reported no evidence of a Soviet threat, no infrastructure to support a sustained threat, no evidence of efforts to spread communism outside its borders and no evidence of a desire for confrontation with the Unites States. The intelligence was ignored. It wouldn’t be the last time that happened. ...

Leading a cabal of State Department officials, close to military industrialists, Acheson turned the Marshall Plan into the Acheson Plan, meaning that military aid in hardware and money took on an ever-greater share of help to Europe. The decision was made: Europe would become an armed camp against an exaggerated Soviet threat. American military industries would reap the profits. The American taxpayer picked up the tab. ...

Though the US held a 500 to 3 advantage in the number of atomic bombs, Nitze headed up the hydrogen bomb project in January 1950. Three years later the Soviets had the H-bomb too. On February 1, 1950 Nitze began writing the top secret National Security Council report NSC-68, which he presented to Truman on April 14, 1950

It was full of fear mongering like this:

The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war. … The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself. They are issues which will not await our deliberations. With conscience and resolution this Government and the people it represents must now take new and fateful decisions. … The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.

The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.

Truman signed NSC-68 in September and Congress approved the sharp increase in military spending. The 1951 defense budget went from $13 billion to $60 billion in 1951—about 67% of the entire federal budget.

In 1951, the Committee on the Present Danger continued spreading fear about the Soviets with a weekly television show on NBC and on Sunday night radio on Mutual Broadcasting System. SPONSORS? Today we have the cable news networks, principally FOX, disseminating fear of Islamism and Iran 24 hours a day and right wing hate radio doing the same all day long. The CPD eventually dissolved in 1953 because its leaders landed jobs in the Eisenhower administration. It was revived in March 1976 to lobby against détente and the SALT II agreement. The second CPD ended when 33 members were given jobs in the Reagan administration. The present incarnation of the CPD was begun in 2004, predictably to spread fear about Islamic terror and Iran—a direct link between the tactics of the early Cold War and today.

Two members are Senators Joe Lieberman and John Kyl, who co-authored the April 2007 Senate resolution naming the Iranian Revolutionary guards a terrorist organization. Announcing the reincarnation of the CDP in the Washington Post, the fear-mongering senators wrote the same Cold War exaggerated nonsense:

“Too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy’s evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and reestablishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East. The past struggle against communism was, in some ways, different from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But...the national and international solidarity needed to prevail over both enemies is...the same. In fact, the world war against Islamic terrorism is the test of our time.”

There is a direct line between leading Cold Warriors and the neo-cons. Another connection with the early Cold War came in 1969 when Nitze, as deputy secretary of defense under Nixon, taught Paul Wolfowitz about conflict architecture, which Wolfowitz later tried out with smashing success in Iraq. Wolfowitz also learned from Acheson and Albert Wholsetter, a Nitze friend who wrote a 1958 RAND report calling for a perpetual buildup of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Army Air Forces set up RAND in 1946, under contract to Douglas Aircraft. In May 1948, RAND became a non-profit independent think tank with close ties to the Pentagon and the defense industry, with many military industrialists on its board. Don Rumsfeld, the brilliant Defense Secretary who led our troops into Iraq, is himself a link between threat exaggeration in the Cold War and the Terror War. As Ford’s secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977, while I was in the Senate fighting the Pentagon, Rumsfeld was part of Team B, a secret group created by George H.W. Bush that disagreed with the CIA and falsely claimed a huge Soviet military advantage. Wolfowitz was a Team B member as was Nitze. Rumsfeld 27 years later assured the press that there were WMD in Iraq and he knew exactly where they were. Before becoming president and launching his War on Terror, George W. Bush, during his 2000 campaign, said he was gaining foreign policy wisdom from a book: a new biography of Dean Acheson by James Chace. Neo-con propagandist William Kristol had used the cover of his Weekly Standard magazine on September 14, 1998 to trumpet “How Dean Acheson Won the Cold War.”

The most striking parallel between the early Cold War years and the early days of the Terror War is the amazingly poor threat assessment and response made by the wrong policymakers. The most informed and moderate officials in both instances were ignored. Instead of assessing the terrorist threat as a criminal matter deserving an international police response, we have gotten the vast overreaction of war and occupation. In both eras there was vastly increased power and profits for government and the military-industrial nexus.

It was around this time in 1956 and 1957 that three major Cold Warriors made astounding confessions. General Douglas MacArthur, whom Truman had to relieve of his command in 1951 because he wanted to invade China during the Korean conflict, told Sperry Rand shareholders:

Our government has kept us in a permanent state of fear—kept us in a continual stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of a grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

Kennan wrote:

The image of a Stalinist Russia poised and yearning to attack the West, and deterred only by our possession of atomic weapons, was largely a creation of the Western imagination, against which some of us who were familiar with Russian matters tried in vain, over the course of the years, to make our voices heard.

Not to be outdone in the confessional, Truman himself lent his voice to the contrite choir in his Memoirs:

The demagogues, crackpots and professional patriots had a field day pumping fear into the American people. … Many good people actually believed that we were in imminent danger of being taken over by the Communists and that our government in Washington was Communist riddled. So widespread was this campaign that it seemed no one would be safe from attack. This was the tragedy and shame of our time.

[Swamp Gas]

www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/russ-a13.shtml

Russia develops military forces, strategic alliances to counter US

By Niall Green

13 August 2008

The current conflict between Georgia and Russia provides a stark expression of the enormous tensions between the major powers. Behind the eruption of fighting over the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia lies growing economic and strategic rivalry between the United States and Russia, in particular for control of the vast oil and gas resources and energy pipelines of Central Asia.

Since the liquidation of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US has persistently worked to exert its influence across the region once dominated by Moscow. Russia has reacted by seeking to establish its own alliances, particularly with China, to strengthen its position in Central Asia. Russia and China through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) formed in 2001, have formed close ties with the Central Asia republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in part, to counter US moves in the region.

Russia is also taking steps to boost the country’s military capabilities. While military spending in Russia is still a tiny fraction of the gargantuan US defence budget, Moscow has made efforts in recent years to arrest the decline of its armed forces, including replacing much of its Soviet-era military equipment.

The Russian government confirmed on July 27 that it planned to build up to six aircraft carrier battle groups and upgrade its nuclear submarine fleet. Navy spokesman Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky announced during Navy Day festivities in St Petersburg that construction would begin after 2012. “We call this a sea-borne aircraft carrier system which will be based on the Northern and Pacific fleets,” he said.

The aircraft carriers will form the basis for joint task groups that will include submarines, surface combat units, aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as commando forces. Kremlin military planners estimate that the overhaul of the navy will be complete by 2050. New training facilities for navy pilots are also to be built, coming into use by 2010.

The development of new fleets in the Arctic and the Pacific mirrors Russian energy policy, which has plans for oil and gas pipelines and shipping lanes in these areas to transport the vast energy reserves of Siberia onto the world markets.

Russia is bitterly opposed to US steps to establish an anti-ballistic missile system close to its borders in Czech Republic and Poland. While Washington claims the proposed bases would target missile threats from “rogue states” such as Iran, Moscow has vociferously denounced the US scheme as intended to neutralise Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

In response, Moscow has re-established frequent flights of nuclear-armed long-range bombers over the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, which had been halted after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Russia has also hinted that it would target US anti-missile sites in Europe and possibly re-establish a refuelling base for its bombers in Cuba.

Russia has also increased oil and gas prices to Poland and the Czech Republic in order to pressure their governments to reject the US plans. In late July, the Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft cut supplies to the Czech Republic by 50 percent.

Russia and China

The Kremlin’s concern over encirclement by American military bases and pro-US allies is shared by the Chinese elite. Russia and China have also voiced hostility to Japanese involvement in the US missile shield programme.

Since the mid-1990s, Moscow and Beijing put aside many of their previous disputes in an effort to develop mechanisms to defend and advance their shared interests vis-à-vis the US. The two governments finalised a protocol on July 21 that formally demarcates their 4,300km international border—a major step to settle the longstanding tensions between the powers. The former USSR and China were involved in a series of military clashes in 1969 over a border dispute along the Amur River between the Russian Far East and northeastern China.

Russia has also recently strengthened its role as a supplier to China’s rapidly expanding nuclear power industry, with the two countries signing a $1.5 billion deal to build a fuel enrichment facility and supply uranium. This includes the construction of two Vodo-Vodyanoi Energetichesky reactors and a gas centrifuge plant in China and the provision of uranium-enrichment services.

Dmitry Medvedev’s first foreign trip after taking over as Russia’s president on May 7, was to Kazakhstan and then China. The new Russian president met his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing. (In 2003, the Chinese president’s first foreign visit took him to Moscow.)

In the official joint statement, the two leaders made a thinly veiled condemnation of Washington’s planned missile shield. “Both sides believe that creating a global missile defence system, including deploying such systems in certain regions of the world, or plans for such co-operation, do not help support strategic balance and stability, and harm international efforts to control arms and the non-proliferation process,” it read.

“Some don’t like such strategic cooperation between our countries, but we understand that this cooperation serves the interests of our people, and we will strengthen it, regardless of whether others like it or not,” Medvedev said. “Russian-Chinese relations are one of the most important factors of maintaining stability in modern conditions.”

Speaking at Tsinghua University the day after meeting Hu Jintao, Medvedev claimed that the alliance with China was not directed against any other nation. “It is aimed at maintaining a global balance,” he said. In a further barb aimed at Washington, Medvedev added that Russia and China support international law and a “decisive role” for the United Nations.

As well as discussing strategic defence plans, the trip was aimed at promoting the already booming levels of trade between Russia and China. Officials and businessmen from the two countries signed a package of agreements ranging from energy and aerospace to tourism and forestry. Bilateral trade volumes have surged from $10.7 billion in 2000 to $48.2 billion last year.

Following his attendance at the opening of the Olympic Games, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with President Hu Jintao on August 9 to discuss proposals for further bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Hu said China and Russia would enhance their strategic cooperation to promote “global multi-polarization”, boost political cooperation and seek mutual benefits in economic development. Putin reaffirmed Russia’s policy of growing cooperation with China.

Despite closer relations, tensions remain. China is concerned about the rising price of Russian oil and gas exports, with disputes over costs stalling the construction of pipelines from Siberia to China. A multi-billion dollar contract signed in 2006 for Russian energy supplies has unravelled, with Russia’s state-owned oil company, Rosneft, threatening to end the deal unless China agrees on a price increase.

In a move that has angered Beijing, Moscow has announced alternative plans for a pipeline to Russia’s Pacific coast that will force China to compete with Japan and South Korea for Siberian energy. Currently, the Chinese plan to import 50 billion tons of Russian oil and gas between 2010 and 2015.

There is also mounting unease in Moscow over China’s growing influence in Central Asia. Medvedev’s visit to Kazakhstan in May was widely viewed as a message to both Beijing and Washington that Moscow sees the region, and its energy resources and pipelines, as firmly within its sphere of influence.

At this stage, however, any rivalry between Russia and China is being set to one side as both countries view the US push into Central Asia as a far greater threat to their economic and strategic interests. Russia will undoubtedly use the next heads of state meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on August 28 as a platform to marshal support from other member states to support its actions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia against Georgian forces.

[Swamp Gas]

www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/28/russia.georgia.cold.war/index.html


Putin accuses U.S. of orchestrating Georgian war

SOCHI, Russia (CNN) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush -- although he presented no evidence to back it up.

"U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader." Video Watch Putin accuse the United States »

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino blasted Putin's statements, saying they were "patently false."

"To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational," she said.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood concurred, and labeled Putin's statements as "ludicrous."

"Russia is responsible for the crisis," Wood said in an off-camera meeting with reporters in Washington on Thursday. "For the Russians to say they are not responsible for what happened in Georgia is ludicrous. ... Russia is to blame for this crisis and the world is responding to what Russia has done."

When told that many diplomats in the United States and Europe blame Russia for provoking the conflict and for invading Georgia, Putin said Russia had no choice but to invade Georgia after dozens of its peacekeepers in South Ossetia were killed. He told Chance it was to avert a human calamity. iReport.com: First-person accounts from the center of the conflict

The former Russian president, still considered the most powerful man in the country, said he was disappointed the U.S. had not done more to stop Georgia's attack.

Putin recalled he was watching the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia unfold when he was at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games on August 8.

He said he spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush, also attending, who told the Russian prime minister he didn't want war -- but Putin spoke to CNN of his disappointment that the U.S. administration didn't do more to stop Georgia early in the conflict.

Also Thursday Putin announced economic measures which he said were unrelated to the fighting with Georgia. Nineteen U.S. poultry meat companies would be banned from exporting their products to Russia because they had failed health and safety tests, and 29 other companies had been warned to improve their standards or face the same ban, Putin said.

Putin said Russia's health and agricultural ministries had randomly tested the poultry products and found them to be full of antibiotics and arsenic.

While Putin repeated that the bans were not related to the Georgian conflict, they indicate the measures some Western countries -- particularly in Europe -- fear if Russia goes on a diplomatic offensive.

Russia is trying to counterbalance mounting pressure from the West over its military action in Georgia and its recognition of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But Russia's hopes of winning international support for its actions in Georgia were dashed Thursday, when China and other Asian nations expressed concern about tension in the region.

The joint declaration from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, said the countries hoped any further conflict could be resolved peacefully. Video Watch more on rising tensions between Russia and the West. »

"The presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of respect for historic and cultural traditions of every country and efforts aimed at preserving the unity of a state and its territorial integrity," the declaration said, The Associated Press reported.

"Placing the emphasis exclusively on the use of force has no prospects and hinders a comprehensive settlement of local conflicts," AP reported the group as saying.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had appealed to the SCO at a summit in Tajikistan Thursday to support its actions, saying it would serve as a "serious signal for those who are trying to justify the aggression."
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On Wednesday a U.S. ship carrying aid docked in Georgia, while Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband traveled to the Ukraine, which is worried about Russia's intentions in the region, to offer the UK's support.

Miliband equated Moscow's offensive in Georgia with the Soviet tanks that invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring democratic reforms in 1968, and demanded Russia "change course," AP reported.

[Swamp Gas]

Check it out:

www.youtube.com/v/1a6pUT-Xpo8&hl=en&fs=1

[Swamp Gas]

www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29900


September 4, 2008, 10:10

Allegations of war crimes begin to surface

As the last of the refugees returned to the war-scarred city of Tskhinval, the horrors they’d experienced while waiting for evacuation are gradually coming to light. A video filmed on a mobile phone, which appears to show Georgian troops firing on civilian buildings, has surfaced on the Internet.

The video was apparently recorded by a Georgian soldier as he manned a machine gun. His cry of 'Yoo hoo!' as he fired on the building reminded viewers of 'a child playing a video game' - but they were real bullets and real human targets.

An investigation into crimes allegedly committed by Georgian troops is currently underway and the exact number of casualties has yet to be established.

Accurate estimates of the death toll have been hampered by the chaos that took over the city during the fighting. Many rushed to bury their friends and relatives in their own gardens, school playgrounds and on hospital grounds. They felt it was too dangerous to venture onto the city streets.

Svetlana Nanieva and others like her didn't get the closure of a proper burial for her son.

"My house was burnt down and my son died in the fire. Nothing was left of him. I have nothing left," she cried.

Her neighbour, also named Svetlana, says she was lucky to lose only her house and not her family. She managed to run to a bomb shelter just minutes before a Georgian artillery bombardment levelled her street.

"Two pregnant women were killed on our street. One was killed by a bomb and the other was beheaded and left on the street," said Svetlana Gogloeva.

The city's Jewish quarter took the brunt of the bombing. No wonder then that Russia's General Military Prosecutor chose this emotionally charged site to share the results of his investigation thus far with the media.

"There was no suggestion that they wanted to destroy military equipment. They shot at houses and civilians basically," said prosecutor Sergey Fridinsky.

He said more than a thousand homes have been completely destroyed and many more damaged.