War has started - Putin says - Russia invades Georgia

[tkdgirl]

Originally Posted by Grimmlok

well the US invaded iraq, whynot let the russians have georgia

aint nobody on this side of the pond with the right to point fingers

Oh whatever, Grimm. If that's going to be your excuse for everything that happens in the world now, record it and play it over and over again. Because that's what you sound like- a broken record.

Your lack of world knowledge, let alone common sense when it comes to Russia, the independent states, and the actions of Putin in the past four years astounds me.

But keep on blaming Dubya for everything. That very attitude is going to assure a McCain victory in November.

But hey, Dubya and those evil republicans probably orchestrated this with Russia in order to fix the election in November.

[Grimmlok]

No, I just like pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation.

Putin and his hand puppet medvedev have been angling to get at Georgia, while Bush and his tards had been angling to get at Iraq.

1 for strategic/political gain, the other for ideology and natural resources.

Same shit, different pile.

Sorry if reality hurts.



and please, MY lack of world knowledge? This from someone who thought people could be an ideology?

Large stones being thrown in your very small, single paned glass house.

p.s blaming dubya for everything should work pretty well, considering all he's fucked up in 8 years.

[tkdgirl]

^^ Grimm, keep trying to twist the truth. I never said people could be an ideology. I said those who don't deviate an inch from the party line are ideologues. If you can't tell the difference, I feel sorry for you.

And as far as who fucked up, one could argue that things were fucked up BEFORE Bush, before Clinton, before GHWB, etc. Again, whatever side of the aisle you follow determines where you place your blame.

[Grimmlok]

No, that's not what you said. Don't make me dig up the quote. Feel sorry for yourself.

[witchcurlgirl]

Originally Posted by tkdgirl

God help those poor Georgians.

They have one chance, if NATO makes a stand.

The UN will wring their hands and do nothing as usual.

Putin wants the Soviet satellites back, and this is a warning to all of them not to get to close to the west or try to get into NATO. Ukraine and Lithuania should be shitting in their pants right now, the Ukraine is having it's own issues with Russia. Putin knows the mistakes they made last time were economic, so he's opened up the economy, while recreating the old Soviet style government.

This will have strong repercussions regarding the Iran nuke talks going on. Israel will note what the west response is to Russia, and if the west leaves Georgia on it's own, Israel will know that it can't expect western support in regard to Iran.

Bush had nothing to do with this latest word disaster, except maybe in the fact that he didn't really know what type of man Putin is, and even if he had Putin was going to do this anyway. Saakashvili overplayed his hand a little, but Putin was helping to create a reason to call for invasion.

Putin took the measure of Bush back when Bush and he met, and he knew Bush was not paying attention to Putin and what's been going on in Russia for the past 8 years. Bush is also a lame duck and Putin is totally playing on that in regard to timing this. Russia has lost it's world standing as as Superpower, and Putin is going to remind the world that it still exits.

Others tried to bring attention to the fact that Putin is pure evil ex-KGB and were shouted down as not having gotten over the cold war. This has been coming for a long time, there have been assisinations, arrests, etc just like the old days of the Soviet Union

[sputnik]

Originally Posted by tkdgirl

Oh whatever, Grimm. If that's going to be your excuse for everything that happens in the world now, record it and play it over and over again. Because that's what you sound like- a broken record.

Your lack of world knowledge, let alone common sense when it comes to Russia, the independent states, and the actions of Putin in the past four years astounds me.

But keep on blaming Dubya for everything. That very attitude is going to assure a McCain victory in November.

But hey, Dubya and those evil republicans probably orchestrated this with Russia in order to fix the election in November.

for once, i'd like to see you address the argument rather than attack the poster that makes it, whether it's grimm or anyone else.
the US invaded iraq illegally, and now is accusing russia of doing the same thing. however you interpret it, that's hypocrisy pure and simple. you can't just dismiss an argument because you don't like the politics of the person making it. of course shooting the messenger is always easier...

[AliceInWonderland]

I just read on msnbc that the Georgian president accepted a peace deal brokered by France

[tkdgirl]

Originally Posted by sputnik

for once, i'd like to see you address the argument rather than attack the poster that makes it, whether it's grimm or anyone else.
the US invaded iraq illegally, and now is accusing russia of doing the same thing. however you interpret it, that's hypocrisy pure and simple. you can't just dismiss an argument because you don't like the politics of the person making it. of course shooting the messenger is always easier...

Did Russia go to the UN to make their case? No.
Did Georgia violate any UN sanctions? No.

They are entirely TWO different scenarios. But if you want to use the 'illegal invasion' excuse to justify Russia's actions, please, be my guest.

In fact, let's just let 'illegal invasion' be carte blanche for all the coming conflicts, k? It's just easier that way.

[witchcurlgirl]

Ex-Soviet States, Poland Rally for Georgia

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states, all once held within the Soviet Union's embrace, are rallying behind Georgia against Russia's military incursion and any threat to their own independence.

``They're all seriously worried that it's Georgia today and one of them tomorrow,'' said Krzysztof Bobinski, director of the Warsaw-based Unia & Polska Foundation, a political institute. ``That Russia wants to re-establish the position it held in the region for literally hundreds of years.''

In a televised show of support for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, the leaders of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia joined a nighttime rally in his capital, Tbilisi, that lasted into yesterday morning.

``Russia's aggression against sovereign neighboring country Georgia shows to the whole world that the peaceful period after the end of the Cold War has ended,'' Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said in an e-mailed response to questions. ``Russia's actions increase security risks not only for Russia's neighbors, but for the whole world.''

At the rally, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said Russia ``has shown its true face'' by undertaking a hostile incursion into Georgia, first to oust the national government's military from the breakaway region of South Ossetia and then to attack targets elsewhere. Kaczynski promised to help rebuild Georgia's economy.

`Democratic Choices'

By traveling to Tbilisi, the five leaders want ``to demonstrate our firm support for the democratic choices of the Georgian people and express our approval for Georgia's decision not to submit to the aggressor,'' Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves told the Tbilisi crowd.

``I don't think what Kaczynski and the others have said is just rhetoric,'' Bobinski said.

Their presence in Georgia sent an important message to the West, said Nathaniel Copsey of the European Research Institute at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.

``There are a lot of EU member countries that listen to Poland and the Baltic states carefully and with sympathy,'' Copsey said. ``So their solidarity with Georgia did have an impact.''

American officials considered Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko's presence in the delegation notable because it shows his country's determination to be a European ally, according to a U.S. official who briefed reporters on Aug. 12.

Joining NATO

Like Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic states were Soviet republics, gaining their independence around the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Poland spent more than 40 years as a Soviet satellite after World War II, overthrowing the communist regime in 1989 and joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 10 years later.

All the countries involved have sought NATO membership as a bulwark against Russia, with which they have a common border. According to Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich, the current conflict is ample proof that the alliance must admit Georgia and Ukraine quickly.

``No country neighboring Georgia would have taken such a confrontational stance had it been threatened with a joint operation from the entire Atlantic alliance,'' Klich told daily Rzeczpospolita in an interview published today. ``The moral is simple: NATO should offer Georgia and Ukraine plans to gain membership as soon as possible.''

Tougher Stance

The first signs of a newly hardening attitude toward Russia emerged in Ukraine yesterday, when Yushchenko restricted movement of the Russian Navy, part of which is based at a Ukrainian Black Sea port.
In a decree published on his Web site, Yushchenko said Russia's navy, which leased the port near the Crimean city of Sevastopol after the Soviet Union collapsed, must coordinate all future movement of ships with Ukrainian officials, including the Defense Ministry.

The country used to allow Russian vessels to cross Ukrainian waters ``without any control,'' Yushchenko said. ``Such a situation threatens Ukrainian national security, especially when the Russian fleet is used against third countries.''

Yushchenko offered to send peacekeepers to the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both now controlled by Russia. ``We have come to confirm your independence and territory integrity: Those are our values,'' he said in Tbilisi.

Anti-Missiles

In Poland, a European Union member, talks on locating part of a planned U.S. missile-defense shield on Polish territory made headway yesterday amid renewed demands from Poland for increased security guarantees in the wake of the Georgian conflict.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Rood is meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski over two days of talks aimed at allowing the U.S. to site 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. The U.S. has said the shield is part of a forward line of defense against possible attacks from countries such as Iran.
Russia has called the proposed system a threat to its security.

``I don't want to forejudge the outcome of the negotiations, but I can tell you that Prime Minister Tusk's requests are nearer to being met than they were a month ago,'' Sikorski told reporters in Warsaw yesterday.

While the U.S. signed an agreement last month with the Czech Republic on locating a radar base there, the Poles are holding out for more financial and logistical help to develop its armed forces -- demands the government says are newly justified by the fighting in Georgia.

``If the Georgian conflict shows us anything, it's that Poland really does need security guarantees above and beyond what the U.S. wants to give,'' Roman Kuzniar, a professor at Warsaw University's Institute of International Relations, said by telephone.

Poland is wary of opposition from Russia, which has warned it will build up military defenses along its frontiers if the project goes ahead.

Bloomberg.com: Germany

[witchcurlgirl]

French-brokered deal gives Russia grounds to advance



TBILISI, Georgia — It was early Wednesday when President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced he had accomplished what seemed impossible: persuading Georgia and Russia to agree to a set of principles to stop the war.

But by the time the sun was up, Russian tanks were advancing, around strategic Gori, in central Georgia.

It soon became clear that the six-point deal not only failed to slow the Russian advance, it also allowed Russia to claim it could push deeper into Georgia as part of so-called additional security measures granted in the accord.

Sarkozy, said a senior Georgian official, also failed to persuade Russia to agree to any time limit on military action.

By midmorning, European officials warned of the risks of appeasing Russian aggression, while Georgian officials lamented the West's weak leverage.

"I'm talking about the impotence and inability of both Europe and the United States to be unified and to exert leverage, and to comprehend the level of the threat," said the Georgian official, who had sat in on the talks between Sarkozy and Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili.

The official later made a copy of the deal available to The New York Times with what he said were notes marking changes the Georgians had asked for but failed to attain.

Of gripping importance to Georgia is whether the agreement gave the Russians room to interpret the occupation of Gori and a zone around the city as agreed upon in the cease-fire, thus allowing them to control the main east-west road through the country, isolating the capital, Tbilisi, from the Black Sea coast and cutting off key supply routes.

France brokered the deal as the country holding the rotating presidency of the European Union. Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France, visited Tbilisi and left with a four-point cease-fire plan: no use of force; cease hostilities; open humanitarian corridors; and Georgian and Russian troops withdraw to their prewar positions.

In Moscow, the Russians, negotiating from a position of strength, insisted on two more points, the Georgian official said.

The Russians demanded that their troops be allowed to act in what was termed a peacekeeping role even outside the boundaries of the separatist enclaves where the war began. The vague language of the fifth point allows Russian peacekeepers to "implement additional security measures" while awaiting an international monitoring mechanism.

The Georgians asked that a timeline be included, but Russia rejected the proposal.

In the sixth point, both sides agreed to leave the future status of the contested separatist regions aside.

A senior U.S. official familiar with the talks also said the Russians insisted on the fifth point about the so-called additional security measures.

"I think it was presented as, 'You need to sign on to this,' " the official said of Sarkozy's appeal to the Georgians. "My guess is it was presented as, 'This is the best I can get.' "

French and Russian officials were unavailable to comment on the Georgian official's account of how the negotiations unfolded.

Both Sarkozy and Saakashvili announced the agreement around 2 a.m. Wednesday, and Russian tanks and troops moved toward Gori soon afterward.

The Russians cited the fifth provision, saying they had identified a threat to the local population that justified their troops assuming a peacekeeping role.

One senior U.S. official said the fifth point in the cease-fire deal could lead to further Russian advances, including on Tbilisi, to create panic and undermine support for Saakashvili.

This official said international acceptance of Russians as peacekeepers in Georgia "is absurd at this point."
Nation & World | French-brokered deal gives Russia grounds to advance | Seattle Times Newspaper

[Grimmlok]

Originally Posted by tkdgirl

Did Russia go to the UN to make their case? No.

Did Russia bother LYING to the UN to make any kind of case? No.

Did Georgia violate any UN sanctions? No.

Was Iraq the only country on the planet to violate UN sanctions? Israel has violated about 40, the US about 20, and every other country on the planet has violated SOME.. why was this such a huge deal with Iraq?

Iraq wasn't even a threat to their nearest neighbors, let alone a nation on the other side of the planet.

They are entirely TWO different scenarios. But if you want to use the 'illegal invasion' excuse to justify Russia's actions, please, be my guest.

No, it's just pointing out the absolute hypocrisy of your position. Neither is more "moral" than the other.

In fact, let's just let 'illegal invasion' be carte blanche for all the coming conflicts, k? It's just easier that way.

Whynot, worked for Bush.

[Grimmlok]

Oh check it out. it IS bush's fault after all

Putin's war enablers: Bush and Cheney
Russia's escalating war on Georgia reveals the consequences of the Bush administration's long assault on the international rule of law.

Aug. 14, 2008 | The run-up to the current chaos in the Caucasus should look quite familiar: Russia acted unilaterally rather than going through the U.N. Security Council. It used massive force against a small, weak adversary. It called for regime change in a country that had defied Moscow. It championed a separatist movement as a way of asserting dominance in a region it coveted.

Indeed, despite George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's howls of outrage at Russian aggression in Georgia and the disputed province of South Ossetia, the Bush administration set a deep precedent for Moscow's actions -- with its own systematic assault on international law over the past seven years. Now, the administration's condemnations of Russia ring hollow.

Bush said on Monday, responding to reports that Russia might attack the Georgian capital, "It now appears that an effort may be under way to depose [Georgia's] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century." By Wednesday, with more Russian troops on the move and a negotiated cease-fire quickly unraveling, Bush stepped up the rhetoric, announcing a sizable humanitarian-aid mission to Georgia and dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.

While U.S. leaders have tended to back Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, there are two sides to every dispute, and in the ethnically diverse Caucasus it may be more like a hundred sides. Abkhazia and Ossetia are claimed by Georgia, but they have their own distinctive languages, cultures and national aspirations. Both fought for independence in the early 1990s, without success, though neither was Georgia able to assert its full sovereignty over them, accepting Russian mediation and peacekeeping troops.

The separatist leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia now speak of Saakashvili in terms reminiscent of the way separatists in Darfur speak of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Sergei Bagapsh of Abkhazia and Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia have come out against conducting any further talks with Georgia, calling instead for Saakashvili to be tried for war crimes. Kokoity told Interfax, "There can be no talks with the organizers of genocide." The Russian press is full of talk of putting Saakashvili on trial for ordering attacks on Ossetian civilians.

All sides have committed massacres and behaved abominably. There are no clean hands involved, notwithstanding the strong support for Georgia visible in the press of most NATO member countries. (Georgia has been jockeying to join NATO, something Moscow stridently opposes.) Still, not everyone in NATO agrees that Saakashvili is a hero. While traveling with the negotiating team of President Nicolas Sarkozy, one French official observed that "Saakashvili was crazy enough to go in the middle of the night and bomb a city" in South Ossetia. The consequence of Russia's riposte, he said, is "a Georgia attacked, pulverized, through its own fault."

An emboldened Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sarcastically likened Russia's actions to Bush's foreign policy. Pointing to the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Putin said, "Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages ... And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at once, who ran over elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilians alive in their sheds -- these leaders must be taken under protection."

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush officials repeated ad nauseam the mantra that Saddam Hussein had killed his own people. Thus, they helped create a case for unilateral "humanitarian intervention" of the sort Putin says Russia is now pursuing. Washington had failed to get a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a war on Iraq, and Iraq had not attacked the United States, so no principle of self-defense was at stake. But since all governments (even the United States under Abraham Lincoln) repress separatist movements, often ruthlessly, Bush was turning actions such as Saakashvili's attack on South Ossetia into a more legitimate cause for an outside power (especially one bordering it) to wage war against Georgia.

Indeed, Putin's invoking Bush's Iraq adventure points directly to the way in which Bush has enabled other world powers to act impulsively. With his doctrine of preemptive warfare, Bush single-handedly tore down the architecture of post-World War II international law erected by the founders of the United Nations to ensure that rogue states did not go about launching wars of aggression the way Hitler had. While safeguarding minorities at risk is a praiseworthy goal, the U.N. Charter states that the Security Council must approve a war launched for this purpose or any other, excepting self-defense. No individual nation is authorized to wage aggressive war on a vigilante basis, as Bush did in Iraq or Russia is now doing in the Caucasus.

Eight years ago, the United States would have been in a position to condemn Russia for its unilateral war without necessarily seeming hypocritical. After all, even the Korean War had been sanctioned by the United Nations, and President Dwight Eisenhower had condemned the 1956 tripartite attack on Egypt by Britain, France and Israel for violating the U.N. Charter.

Bush's recent argument, that a democratically elected government should not be overthrown (no matter what its behavior, apparently), was intended to sidestep comparisons between his own unilateral wars of aggression and ones such as the current Russian intervention. He was implying that his invasion of Iraq toppled a government that lacked the legitimacy enjoyed by Saakashvili's.

In fact, Bush's foreign policy includes a long list of actions intended to undermine elected governments.

Whether the United States was actively involved in the attempted coup in 2002 against Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela, or merely cheered it on, it is clear that Venezuelan popular sovereignty meant nothing to Bush if it resulted in a government unfriendly to and critical of Washington.

An even more egregious example came with the destabilization and overthrow of the Hamas government, which won control of the Palestine Authority in January 2006. Bush insisted on allowing the participation in elections of Hamas, a fundamentalist party with a covert paramilitary that has struck at Israeli targets, including civilians. When the party unexpectedly won, however, Bush refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new government, denying it funds and sympathizing with the Israeli attempt to overthrow it. Israeli security forces kidnapped elected Hamas representatives and cabinet ministers, and harmed civilians by blocking medical aid and food that might go to people via the Hamas government.

In 2007, Bush and the Israelis supported a takeover in the West Bank by forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization, lead by Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Similar attempts were made in Gaza, but they failed, leaving the elected Hamas government in charge of the small territory. Palestinian popular sovereignty, and Hamas' victory in what were widely judged to have been relatively free and fair elections, were disregarded by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Bush.

Bush and Cheney also repeatedly sided with military dictator Pervez Musharraf against elected civilian politicians in Pakistan. Even when the Pakistani Parliament, elected in open polls last February, initiated impeachment proceedings against Musharraf earlier this week, the Bush administration came out against the idea of Musharraf's going into exile if convicted, urging that he be allowed to stay "honorably" in Pakistan if he stepped down.

Bush's exceptionalism, whereby he implicitly maintained that no international laws or institutions would be allowed to constrain U.S. actions taken in the name of national security, grew out of the sole superpower status of the United States after fall of the Soviet Union. A unipolar world is, however, an exceedingly rare circumstance in modern world history, and it was unlikely to last very long. China may soon have the economic and technological clout to go toe to toe with the United States; and Russia, fueled by the energy boom, is recovering from its economic disaster of the 1990s.

The collapse of the Soviet economy produced tremendous misery and downward mobility. Uncertainty made couples unwilling to risk having children. In one of the great demographic reversals in history, the Russian Federation's population fell by 10 million in the years after 1991. Russian need for U.S. foreign aid and goodwill led Moscow to acquiesce for a time in the expansion of U.S. influence into Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Russia is now reemerging and flexing its muscles. The run-up in the price of oil and gas has filled Moscow's coffers, since it is one of the great producers of natural gas in the world (prices of natural gas tend to track with those of petroleum). Russia has reasserted its influence in countries such as Uzbekistan, which had briefly licensed a base to U.S. forces but then kicked them out, and in Turkmenistan, which recently agreed to pipe its natural gas through Moscow. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are increasingly acting like Gulf emirs, flush with petrodollars and assured of political leverage because of their control over energy resources.

In a unipolar world, the Bush doctrine of preemptive war allowed Washington to assert itself without fear of contradiction. The Bush doctrine, however, was never meant to be emulated by others and was therefore implicitly predicated on the notion that all challengers would be weaker than the United States throughout the 21st century. Bush and Cheney are now getting a glimpse of a multipolar world in which other powers can adopt their modus operandi with impunity. Bush's rhetoric may have sounded like that of President Woodrow Wilson, but his policy has often been to support the overthrow or hobbling of elected governments that he does not like -- and that has not gone unnoticed by countries that also count themselves great powers and would not mind following suit.

The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine. And that leaves America less secure in a world of vigilante powers that spout rhetoric about high ideals to justify their unchecked military interventions. It is the world that Bush has helped build.

Putin's war enablers: Bush and Cheney | Salon

[AliceInWonderland]

well no shit sherlock; if it involves oil - those two devils have their hands all up in it!

[tkdgirl]

On what basis are Russia's actions justified?

[Grimmlok]

Oh they're not. The US is just one big fat hypocritical pile of shit to be pointing it out.