Thread: There May Be Many Mushroom Clouds In Our Future

There May Be Many Mushroom Clouds In Our Future
By Paul Craig Roberts
8-17-8

The success of the Bush Regime's propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

We don't know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime's criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises "change" is too intimidated by the neocon's success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed "Russian invasion" to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

Only this time, the rest of the world didn't buy it. The many years of lies--9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, "the United States doesn't torture," the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children's soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated "terrorist plots," the determined assault on civil liberties--have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

The rest of the world reported the facts--an assault on Russian civilians by American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian troops.

The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life.

The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to follow the script and to be intimidated by the "unipower" was so imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had succumbed.

McCain declared: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations." Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain's claim that nations don't invade other nations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7556857.stm

This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as readers' emails reveal. If in the 21st century countries don't invade other countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?

Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times--Bush and McCain--called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as "nations don't invade other nations," or is President Bush going to beat him to it?

We all know the answer.

The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.

Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia's membership in NATO.

The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict between American pretensions and Russia. Russia is being taught by the neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire.

Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.

The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.

http://www.rense.com/general83/ene.htm

VOTE FOR THE THIRD PARTY...............

Georgia conflict: Key statements

Key quotes from the main players during the conflict between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

15 AUGUST 2008
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
"Georgia has been attacked. Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once. The world needs to help Georgia maintain its sovereignty, its territorial integrity and its independence. This is no longer 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia... when a great power invaded a small neighbour and overthrew its government. The free world will now have to wrestle with the profound implications of this Russian attack on its neighbour for security in the region and beyond."

US President George W Bush
"Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected. Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century. A contentious relationship with Russia is not in America's interest and a contentious relationship with America is not in Russia's interest. Moscow must honour its commitment to withdraw its invading forces from all Georgian territory. Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
"Russia does not reject the principle of territorial integrity but its foreign policy will take into account the will of the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who are unlikely to want to remain in the same state with Georgia. If someone continues to attack our citizens, our peacekeepers, then of course we will answer just as we did."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel
"I found some of Russia's actions disproportionate and in particular think the presence of Russian troops in Georgia proper is not sensible - and so I believe that the six-point plan must be realised immediately and the Russian troops should withdraw from Georgia proper."


14 AUGUST 2008
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
"We support any decision taken by the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, the 1966 international convention and the Helsinki Act on security in Europe. We don't just support this, but will guarantee them, both in the Caucasus and the world as a whole."


13 AUGUST 2008
US President George W Bush
"In recent years, Russia has sought to integrate into the diplomatic, political, economic, and security structures of the 21st Century. The United States has supported those efforts. Now Russia is putting its aspirations at risk by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with the principles of those institutions. To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe, and other nations, and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis."

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
"We are living in an Orwellian world where the Russian Federation accuses Georgia of genocide and ethnic cleansing and meanwhile they are doing it exactly right now... There was a temporary ceasefire, that was the understanding. From this morning there is large-scale movement of Russian weapons, of shooting, of armed incidents, rampages through different towns and villages of Georgia... Russian troops are in the process of completing ethnic cleansing of all Georgian-populated areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
"The armed forces of the Russian Federation which were sent to South Ossetia to reinforce our peacekeeping forces, they will be withdrawn to Russian territory depending on the extent to which the Georgian troops go back to their barracks. Our peacekeepers will remain in South Ossetia.

"The only change relates to the fact that Georgian peacekeepers, who were part of the peacekeeping contingent, but turned out to be simply traitors and cowards and started shooting at their colleagues - of course, they are never again going to appear as part of a peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbour, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed... I have heard the Russian president say that his military operations are over. I am saying it is time for the Russian president to be true to his word."


12 AUGUST 2008
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
At a news conference after agreeing a peace plan with France's President Sarkozy:
"The territorial integrity and belonging of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgia can never be put under doubt."

Earlier, in a television address:
"We are working with an international community, but all we got so far are just words, statements, moral support, humanitarian aid. But we need more - we want them to stop this barbaric aggressor.

"As you know the enclaves of South Ossetia previously controlled by the Georgian government and by local administration headed by ethnic Ossetian Dimitri Sanakoev has been ethnically cleansed by intruding Russian troops, and I get very worrying reports - some of them look to be unfortunately credible - of point-blank executions, on-sight killings, some people taken into some kind of camps or some internal places in Kurta and Vladikavkaz."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
"The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored. The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganised.

"You know, the difference between lunatics and other people is that when they smell blood it is very difficult to stop them. So you have to use surgery. As for claims by the Georgian president that the ceasefire has been observed for two days - that's a lie. Georgian forces continued to fire at peacekeepers, unfortunately people were killed yesterday. There was no ceasefire from the Georgian side."


French President Nicolas Sarkozy
"We don't yet have peace. But we have a provisional cessation of hostilities. And everyone should be aware that this is considerable progress."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
In comments by spokesman:
"We want to see the Russians stand down. What we're calling on is for Russia to stop its aggression."

11 AUGUST 2008
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
"[Russia's actions amount to the] pre-planned, cold-blooded murder of a country."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
"They [the Americans] of course had to hang Saddam Hussein for destroying several Shia villages. But the current Georgian rulers who in one hour simply wiped 10 Ossetian villages from the face of the earth, the Georgian rulers which used tanks to run over children and the elderly, which threw civilians into cellars and burnt them - they [Georgian leaders] are players that have to be protected."


Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
"The ferocity in which the actions of the Georgian side were carried out cannot be called anything else but genocide, because they acquired a mass character and were directed against individuals, the civilian population, peacekeepers who carried out their functions of maintaining peace."


US President George W Bush
"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st Century. The Russian government must reverse the course it appears to be on and accept this peace agreement as a first step toward solving this conflict."


10 AUGUST 2008
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
"We are really seeing absolutely unparalleled situation since many, many decades in the world. This is the most surreal world crisis I could ever imagine and it's very unfortunate that it is happening in my country. I insist that it's happening unprovoked by us, and I insist that it was all pre-planned."

Russian Ambassador to UN, Vitaly Churkin
"Regime change is purely an American invention, purely an American invention; we never apply this terminology in our political thinking and certainly we are all for democracy in Georgia, and it's interesting that our American colleagues chose to bring up publicly this idea of President Saakashvili stepping down."


9 AUGUST 2008
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
"This is 100%, unprovoked brutal Russian invasion. This is about annihilation of a democracy on their borders. We on our own cannot fight with Russia. We want an immediate ceasefire, immediate cessation of hostilities, separation of Russia and Georgia and international mediation."


Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
"Georgia's aspiration to join Nato... is driven by its attempt to drag other nations and peoples into its bloody adventures.

"The actions of the Georgian powers in South Ossetia are, of course, a crime - first of all against their own people. The territorial integrity of Georgia has suffered a fatal blow."


US President George W Bush
In a statement:
"I'm deeply concerned about the situation in Georgia. The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia. They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis. We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for an end to the Russian bombings, and a return by the parties to the status quo."


8 AUGUST 2008
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
"Russia is fighting a war with us in our own territory. This is a clear intrusion on another country's territory. We have Russian tanks on our territory, jets on our territory in broad daylight."


Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
"I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are. We will not allow their deaths to go unpunished. Those responsible will receive a deserved punishment."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7556857.stm

Georgian minister: Israel has sold us out

By Anshel Pfeffer

TBILISI - Israel has joined in the West's betrayal of Georgia, the Georgian reintegration minister, Temur Yakobashvili, told Haaretz yesterday. As the official in charge of bringing Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into the fold, Yakobashvili oversaw negotiations with the Russians to end the fighting there. He warned the world that the situation would escalate into war, but the West ignored him. "They said the Georgians are exaggerating again," he charged.

A former Zionist leader who speaks fluent Hebrew, Yakobashvili credited Israeli defense companies with "enabling us to train our army and giving us the possibility to withstand the Russians," but termed the Israeli government's decision to stop arms exports to his country "a disgrace."

He said the West should have responded by "deploying NATO troops to defend Georgia's vital infrastructure," and that "Israel is betraying us, along with the European countries and the United States."

Referring to rioting by Russian militia groups in villages surrounding Gori, Yakobashvili said: "Today there was a Cossack pogrom against the local population. As a Jew that gives me a different feeling."

Yakobashvili blasted Israel's decision to suspend defense aid to Georgia: "Israel did it at the Russians' behest. It aided the terrorists, the Russians. It's a disgrace. I don't know what it received in return, I only see that Hezbollah continues to get Russian arms, and plenty of it."

"Israel should protect the interests it has here," he continued. "There are many Israeli businesspeople who invested money, and a country should protect its citizens' investments."

He ascribed Georgia's feisty military ability to Israeli training, and said that Russian experts had told him "they never believed Georgia has such an army and that they would encounter such resistance."

Yakobashvili claimed the Georgian forces had destroyed Russia's 58th army and downed 17 planes and three helicopters (data unsubstantiated by other sources). Eventually they had to retreat, he said, because "Russia deployed 30,000 soldiers and a thousand tanks. Our people are not suicidal - we don't want our soldiers to remain in the field and be killed by Russian planes."

The minister claimed that the Abkhazian minority had carried out "ethnic cleansing" in that breakaway region in recent years by expelling members of other ethnic groups, and had supplied weapons to separatists in Ossetia for attacks on Georgian villages.

He was in Tskhinvali, Ossetia, last week, hours before fighting broke out there. "The separatists fired at Georgian villages. We returned fire and asked the Russians to order the Ossetians to stop. The Russian representative told me we have to agree to a total cease-fire and that President Saakashvili had issued such an order to our army, and we did not return fire, even when they bombarded two of our villages. I told the president we should pay the price, just let there be peace. But when we found out that they were continuing to transfer more weapons through the Roki Tunnel [between Russia and Ossetia], we had to attack. It was a matter of screwing or being screwed."

Despite the Russian army's advance toward Tbilisi yesterday, Yakobashvili said he believes the cease-fire reached through French mediation will hold.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1011396.html

After Georgia, Moscow issues nuclear warning to Poland

By Shaun Walker in Tbilisi and Anne Penketh
Saturday, 16 August 2008
REUTERS



Condoleezza Rice with Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi yesterday during their talks on formalising a ceasefire in South Ossetia

A senior Russian general has revived fears of a new Cold War by threatening Poland with a possible nuclear strike, as the President of Georgia bowed to the inevitable and signed a ceasefire the terms of which were dictated by Moscow.

General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia's deputy chief of staff, reflected the Kremlin's fury at an agreement reached on Thursday between the United States and Poland, which is to host part of a US missile defence shield that has been fiercely opposed by Moscow. It "cannot go unpunished", General Nogovitsyn said in Moscow yesterday.

"Poland, by deploying [the system], is exposing itself to a strike – 100 per cent," said the general. But he raised the stakes by coupling the warning with a reminder that Russia's military doctrine provided for the use of nuclear weapons in such a case, and that Poland was aware of this.

The developments came at the end of a day of intensified diplomacy, as the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, spent nearly five hours negotiating with the Georgian President in which she provided "clarifications" about the ceasefire agreement.

Speaking at a news conference outside the presidential palace, an emotional Mr Saakashvili appeared to blame Europe for the Russian invasion of his country, and accused the Russians of being "barbarians" who "despise everything new, everything modern, everything European, everything civilised".

Mr Saakashvili said European leaders who failed to stand up to Moscow shared the blame for the Georgian deaths. The tired-looking President said that months of Russian provocations against Georgia had elicited only "muted and quiet reactions" from European capitals. "Who invited the trouble here? Who invited the arrogance here? Who invited these innocent deaths here? Not only those who perpetrated it but those who allowed it to happen."

Ms Rice struck a much more measured tone, refusing to criticise Europe and making only tempered criticism of Russia. While insisting on an "immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russia's armed forces" in line with the French-brokered truce secured earlier this week, she did not offer any indication of the US response if such action was not forthcoming. She also said that Russia's membership in global clubs was under review.

Despite the ceasefire agreement, assuming it is honoured, there is still a giant gulf between the two sides over what happens next in the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A day after Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said the world could "forget" about Georgia's territorial integrity, Mr Saakashvili stressed that he was not prepared to negotiate the status of the two territories.

But the Georgian leader has suffered a bitter defeat: his army is destroyed, his country ruined, and the Ossetians and Abkhaz are buoyant in the knowledge that they can count on more Russian support than ever before in their desires to be free of Georgian rule.

In Washington, President George Bush kept up his verbal attacks on the Kremlin, accusing Russia of "bullying and intimidation" of an independent nation.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who held talks with the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, said the Russian retaliation to the attack by Georgian forces on 8 August against the South Ossetian capital was "disproportionate". Appearing with Mrs Merkel at a joint news conference in Sochi, the Russian President's summer residence, Mr Medvedev spoke out against the US-Polish deal, saying that " the deployment has the Russian Federation as its target". The Russians have rejected the US contention that the missile shield is designed to be used against possible strikes from states such as Iran.

However, Mr Medvedev gave a more sober assessment than General Nogovitsyn, stressing: "It is not dramatic."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 98990.html

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Why are we pretending we would fight for Georgia?

Messrs Miliband and Cameron want Georgia to join Nato. Such thinking is muddled, dangerous and defies the lessons of history

Sunday, 17 August 2008

Hard on the heels of Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleezza Rice, and keen to share their limelight, David Cameron arrived in Tbilisi yesterday. His visit is a reward to the Leader of the Opposition for having expressed even more bellicose views on the Georgian crisis than the Americans, which should sound loud alarm bells for those of us who may quite soon be living under a Tory government.


In the official view of Washington, the expansion of Nato up to the borders of Russia was a benevolent spreading of democracy. "It is the right of the Georgian people and Georgian government to determine their own security orientation," says Kurt Volker, principal deputy assistant secretary of state, and Matthew Bryza, the American special envoy, adds that Russia would not have attacked Georgia if she had already belonged to Nato.

While Gordon Brown and David Miliband merely mouthed empty platitudes about the crisis (although Miliband has been sympathetic to Georgia's Nato aspirations in the past), Cameron went startlingly further when he said that its membership of Nato should be accelerated. His words so excited the Georgians that they asked him to meet their ambassador in London on Wednesday, and then fly out for his Caucasian photo-op.

No doubt this crisis has illustrated Russian ruthlessness and brutality, but then, as the Chechens might say, we knew that already. It has also exposed the severe limits of US power. Although George Bush, Dick Cheney and sabre-rattling pundits have screeched defiance at Russia, they are bereft of any practical response. Removing the Winter Olympics from Sochi doesn't sound like the ultimate deterrent.

But above all, the crisis has highlighted the incoherence of Western policy since the Cold War ended – and belatedly raised the question of just what purpose Nato now serves. This is something an intelligent opposition should be discussing.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was created in 1949 as a "one for all and all for one" mutual defence alliance between west European countries, of which Great Britain was then militarily much the most important, and the United States, guarding Europe against Soviet aggression. By the terms of the treaty, "an armed attack on any member in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and ... if such an armed attack occurs, each of them ... will assist the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith... such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

That object met with total success. Forty years later, the Berlin Wall fell, Soviet Russia began to implode, and its empire soon fell apart. This left Nato without an obvious role, and it might logically have been wound up. Instead, it evolved, almost without anyone's noticing, into an arm of US policy – and an outlet for Tony Blair's zealous "humanitarian interventionism".

In the spring of 1999, he mawkishly extolled Nato's bombing of Serbia: "No one in the West who has seen what is happening in Kosovo can doubt that Nato's military action is justified... [You need only ask] anyone who has seen the tear-stained faces of the hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, heard their heart-rending tales of cruelty."

But even if Blair had been correct to say that misrule in distant countries justified armed intervention – an alarmingly open-ended principle which has since helped take us into the Iraq disaster – what had it to do with Nato? How did those tear-stained faces become "an armed attack on any member"? And by what geographical conjuring trick did Afghanistan, more recently, become part of "the North Atlantic area" to require a Nato operation there?

Before then the acutely dangerous policy of enlarging Nato had already begun, partly for the most frivolous of reasons. Bill Clinton ingratiatingly promised a Polish-American audience in Chicago that Poland would join, yet another example of the baleful influence of "hyphenated" American domestic politics on foreign policy.

And so, in this heedless way, Nato was expanded to include not only the former Warsaw Pact countries Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, but the Baltic states that were part of the Soviet Union only 20 years ago. One didn't have to be a Russian nationalist to see this as deliberate provocation of an angry and wounded country. With all its brutality, Russia has legitimate security concerns and national interests. When Georgian membership of Nato is flaunted, one wonders what the US reaction would have been if Leonid Brezhnev had invited Mexico to join the Warsaw Pact. Russian policy may sometimes have a paranoid tinge but, as the saying goes, paranoiacs have enemies, too.

No one stopped to point out that, if the fundamental Nato principle applied, an irredentist border dispute between Latvia and Russia should have become an armed conflict fought by Nato, which was plainly absurd. Bryza's claim that Russia would have been deterred if Georgia had already belonged to Nato is mercifully theoretical but highly questionable. And does Cameron really want what's left of our depleted army sent to the Caucasus to fight Russia?

It remained for a former Tory foreign secretary to dash a little cold water of sanity on these overheated effusions. On Friday Sir Malcolm Rifkind chided the folly of making threats about the use of force when these are obviously not going to be carried out. And the day before he had said, "I think people in both the United States and in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in western Europe will have to ask very clearly how important is Georgia to them.

"There was a lot of talk about how Georgia should join Nato and if only Georgia was a member of Nato this wouldn't have happened, and so forth. I think that is frankly totally unconvincing." The truth is surely as Sir Malcolm says: "The United States, Britain, France and Germany are not going to go to war with Russia over South Ossetia, however sympathetic to the people of Georgia we are.

"We are sympathetic to Tibet, we are sympathetic to Zimbabwe, but we don't contemplate military solutions to these problems. So Nato membership is not the answer." Is it too late for our politicians to learn again that kind of plain speaking and common sense?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 99618.html

The new Cold War: Crisis in the Caucasus

Russia finally signs ceasefire – but no sign of pull-out yet as Moscow exploits West's discomfort to the hilt. By Kim Sengupta in Gori, Shaun Walker in Tbilisi, and Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Sunday, 17 August 2008
Getty Images


Georgian refugees in Tbilisi yesterday. Many of them have fled South Ossetia

Russian troops advanced further into Georgia, moving to within 25 miles of the capital at one point yesterday, even as the Kremlin announced that it had signed, and would abide by, a ceasefire stipulating that it withdraws its troops from the territory it has occupied.


At the end of a tumultuous nine days, there was deep uncertainty about what unfolds next in the war in which Russian warplanes had bombed a European ally of the US and revived the spectre of the most tense days of the Cold War.

As he conferred again with his top advisers, George Bush yesterday delivered his toughest attack yet on Moscow, accusing it of invading a sovereign neighbour and "threatening a democratically elected government". Such behaviour was "completely unacceptable to the free nations of the world", the US President declared.

Returning from her emergency visit to Tbilisi, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew directly to Mr Bush's ranch at Crawford, Texas, while Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, joined the talks by video-conference.

But Washington was still struggling to find an effective response to what it condemns as blatant Russian aggression. Moscow, however, takes exactly the opposite view, and is exploiting the West's discomfort to the hilt.

It has seized the opportunity presented by the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's ill-judged attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia to show that Russia will no longer tolerate Nato and Western encroachment on its sphere of influence.

It rammed home that message last week by warning that Poland had placed itself at risk of attack – even nuclear attack – by agreeing to the installation of part of a US anti-missile defence system its territory, a plan that has long infuriated the Kremlin.

In Georgia itself yesterday, Russian troops remained in control of the central Gori region, a strategic area that effectively bisects the country; the port of Poti, a vital economic lifeline; the city of Senaki; and in the separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Last night, however, there were signs that Russian commanders were pulling back from their most forward position at Igoeti, less than half an hour's tank drive from the capital, Tbilisi, and where a column of armoured personnel carriers from the 71st Motorised Rifle Regiment had been deployed from Chechnya. It had driven in unchallenged, before cutting the road.

Soldiers of the Georgian army, who had been waiting for permission from the Russians to go back into Gori, but instead saw the front line move even closer, could only watch, powerless, from the roadside. Lightly armed Georgian policemen, however, mingled with the Russians.

In what the Georgian government angrily described as steps to dismantle the country's economic and military structure, the Russians removed equipment and installations from Poti after sinking five patrol boats and ships, blew up ammunition stocks at Georgian army bases, and destroyed a railway bridge.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis continued to grow, with more than 115,000 people fleeing the conflict. Ossetian, Cossack and Chechen militias which had come in behind the Russian troops had been on a spree of killings, looting and burning in the villages around Gori, and dead bodies had been left piled up in the heat, leading to fears of an outbreak of disease.

In Tbilisi, refugees from Georgian villages in South Ossetia crammed into makeshift centres with few facilities. Around 500 people had taken up residence in a former governmental building without even basic amenities.

The stench of body odour hung in the air, as growing numbers of destitute Georgians arrived. Most slept on the hard, dirty floors, and had no possessions with them, save for the clothes they were wearing when they fled. Phone calls to those left behind in their villages brought only bad news – Ossetian militias were looting and torching their houses, making sure they could never return.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities in the war. The Independent was the first Western media organisation to reach Tskhinvali, the capital of breakaway South Ossetia. They found a city in ruins following the initial pulverising Georgian bombardment and the ferocious Russian counter-attack. Homeless people, many of them injured, were seeking sanctuary. Stray dogs, according to local inhabitants, were chewing the flesh from human bodies.

In a sign of the ferocious sectarian divisions, the South Ossetian paramilitaries who held the Independent reporters at gunpoint repeatedly threatened to kill their Georgian driver, Merabi Chrikishilli, and vowed retribution on all Georgians when the Russians crossed the border.

This threat was carried out – with devastating effect on civilians – as the Georgian army panicked and fled from Gori, its main base in the region, amid streams of refugees fleeing the violence. The victims were mainly the old and infirm, unable to undertake the arduous journey to safety.

Merabi Chrikishilli's elderly relatives are among many people now hiding in cellars, with little food and water, while armed gangs roam through the villages. Some refugees who had fled from Georgian enclaves, under attack in South Ossetia, have now found themselves trapped in the Russian-controlled zones at the mercy of the militias.

Dr Georgia Abramishvili, a 28-year-old surgeon who had treated those injured when the Russians carried out their first bombing of Gori, died in the final strikes, when an air-to-ground missile smashed into the grounds of the hospital, despite a Red Cross flag flying on the roof to deter any such attack.

Russian officers in Georgia denied that their forces had carried out attacks on civilians. Some admitted, however, that atrocities were being carried out by the militias. Major General Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Borisov, the commander in charge of Gori, said: "Ossetians are running around and killing poor Georgians. This is a problem and we are trying to deal with it. I have ordered my men to arrest anyone carrying out looting and other criminal acts."

In Tskhinvali yesterday, the South Ossetians paraded around 40 haggard and frightened-looking Georgian civilian captives through the city. Most were elderly men, many with cuts and bruises on their faces, walking with their shoulders slumped. A militiaman hit one of the men on the head as he walked by.

For many in Georgia, there is the bitter feeling that President Mikheil Saakashvili's assiduous courting of America has been a one-sided love affair. Over two-fifths of the country is in Russian hands, and the truce brokered by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy gives Moscow significant freedom in moving its troops around supposedly sovereign Georgian territory.

The Georgian President is now a beleaguered figure, engaged in increasingly erratic public acts. The day after his army panicked and fled from the strategic city of Gori, he held a victory rally in Tbilisi. And even after his army fled Gori without the Russians even firing a shot, he led a patriotic rally in central Tbilisi promising never to surrender.

On Friday, after five hours of negotiations, Ms Rice persuaded Mr Saakashvili to sign up to the ceasefire, promising a package of economic aid but making very clear there would be no military help. Nor did she say what would happen if the Russians did not sign up to the ceasefire.

But the Secretary of State then stood stony-faced as the Georgian President appeared to lose control at the press conference, repeatedly calling the Russians "barbarians" who were raping his country. Local analysts say that opposition to Mr Saakashvili has been muted during the conflict, but may grow afterwards, making his position untenable.

Even the ceasefire, to which Russia has now agreed, contains ambiguities that Moscow is likely to exploit to keep up the pressure on Mr Saakashvili, whom it detests, and to maximise the embarrassment for Mr Bush. Only after "additional security measures" are in place would Russia withdraw its forces from the conflict zone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said yesterday, claiming this proviso formed part of the ceasefire signed by President Dmitry Medvedev.

Earlier, Mr Lavrov bluntly warned the West it could "forget about" the sanctity of international borders in the case of Georgia – strongly implying that Russia would establish South Ossetia and Abkhazia as virtually independent, or even incorporate them into Russia itself.

While the US is determined to "punish" Moscow for its actions, its options are limited. Mr Gates last week ruled out the use of force. But other reprisals might see Russia expelled from the G8; Mr Bush last week referred to the "G7" and not the G8, or being turned away from the World Trade Organisation. And David Cameron, who is visiting Tbilisi, has added his voice for Russia to be expelled from the G8. There are also calls for moves to rescind the award of the 2014 winter Olympics to Sochi, the southern Russian city just a few miles from the border with nominally Georgian Abkhazia.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 99773.html

Leading article: Do not feed the bear's paranoia

Western leaders should adapt their rhetoric to show a more thoughtful realism and understanding of Russian fears

Sunday, 17 August 2008

One thing is clear in the New Cold War that has sent shivers down spines all over the world. It is that the United States, Britain and the rest of the West will not go to war with Russia to defend Georgia. The question asked by Geoffrey Wheatcroft today, is a pertinent one, therefore. What was the point of inviting the Georgians to join Nato? Nato is, after all, explicitly an alliance of mutual self-defence that commits each member to respond to an armed attack on any other member as if it were an attack on itself.

One argument has been made by American hawks. It is that, if Georgia had been a member of Nato, Russia would not have dared to drive its tanks to within 20 miles of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. This is simplistic in the extreme. It overlooks the tensions that were inherent in the rebirth of Georgia as an independent state in 1990-92. As Shaun Walker reports, the break-up of the USSR left a number of riddles unresolved about the level at which the principle of self-determination applies. In Georgia, ethnic minorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia were as unhappy about Georgian domination as Georgians had been about Russian rule. Since 1993, Russian troops have been stationed in both areas as "peace-keepers" – in effect as guarantors of autonomous status within Georgia. Of course, Russian policy has been aggressive and destabilising, as Vladimir Putin fomented separatism in Georgia's tiny autonomous republics. But how could Nato membership have been compatible with such a situation?

The honest answer is that it could not have been, and that was why it was pursued with such enthusiasm by Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian President. He wanted to join Nato precisely because it would have meant a confrontation with the Russians – how could Russian troops be stationed on the soil of a Nato country? Mr Saakashvili has shown himself as a leader of poor judgement. In all the playground back-and-forth about who started it, it was Mr Saakashvili's decision to launch a military attack on the capital of South Ossetia eight days ago that stands out as the most disastrous mistake.

There may be those who interpret this to mean that The Independent on Sunday advocates a policy of appeasement towards Russian aggression. We reject the charge. We agree with George Bush when he condemns Russian bullying. But so much of the West's response to this crisis has been waffle and, where it has not been meaningless guff, it has actually made matters worse.

Although Gordon Brown has been conspicuous by his low profile, at least he has avoided making a dash to Tblisi, as David Cameron has done, to show disingenuous solidarity with the Georgian people and to repeat – apparently on behalf of the British Government – the promise of Nato membership. Instead of looking statesmanlike, which may have been the intention, he looks concerned but unworldly and immature.

One does not need to be a Kremlin apologist to point out what Nato expansion looks like from Russia. Russia's pride and paranoia may seem irrational, but it is real and needs to be managed. That does not mean "appeased", but neither should it mean "provoked". When President Bush said on Friday that "the days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us", it does not take much imagination to see how that might be interpreted in Russia. No doubt Mr Bush meant it in a benign, "why can't we all get along together" way, but to a Russian it could easily be an expression of ideological imperialism (of the type that sought to bring democracy to Iraq) and American triumphalism. "The Cold War is over" means "We won", and the end of spheres of influence means "Get used to it".

From Moscow, too, a missile defence deal between the US and Poland, hurriedly signed on Thursday, looks unfriendly. Of course, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia's deputy chief of general staff, could have chosen his words more carefully when he said that the US move "cannot go unpunished". But then that goes for both sides. You do not need to be a Russian nationalist to find the official rationale for the US-Poland deal – that it offers protection against Iran – unconvincing.

The West, by which we mean primarily the 26 Nato members, needs to get this straight before a more serious crisis arises, most likely in Ukraine. If the Georgian crisis acts as an inoculation against such a future threat; if it marks the end of Nato expansion; and if Western leaders adapt their rhetoric to a more thoughtful realism – then it is possible that something positive might come out of the summer of 2008. But only if Western leaders show a clear-eyed understanding of Russia's fears and change the tone and substance of their response.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/le ... 99616.html