We helped you kill, rape and torture Iraqis - now help us, beg Georgians

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4500362.ece

August 11, 2008

We helped in Iraq - now help us, beg Georgians

As Russia forces its neighbour to retreat from South Ossetia, the people of Gori tell our correspondent of betrayal by the West

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

Smoke rose as Russian artillery fire exploded less than half a mile from the bridge marking South Ossetia’s border with Georgia. A group of Georgian soldiers hastily abandoned their lorry after its wheels were shot out and ran across the border.

Georgian troops looked disheartened as they regrouped around tank lines about 2km from the border. Many said that they had been fighting in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, until the early hours when they were suddenly ordered to withdraw from the breakaway region.

[billyoc]

1. Georgia who?

[kwenu]

2. Biggest Republican Suckers since the Republicans made Suckers out of the American people.

[BlooInBloo]

3. Uh... the Russians will actually shoot back. Not a chance the American military...

would take that on. They only like killing, raping, and torturing *defenseless* people.

[bushmeister0]

4. Sorry, our presidunce is too busy smacking asses and falling down. You're on your own!

[malaise]

5. Prrofound headline

They will learn. It's never about ordinary people - just oil.

[AllentownJake]

6. Iraq didn't have the ability to end the world

Despite what our leaders were telling everyone. Sorry Russia does.

[seemslikeadream]

7. We helped in Iraq - now help us, beg Georgians

5 hours ago: A refugee sits in a bus in the South Ossetian settlement of Dzhava August 10, 2008. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner flew to Tbilisi on Sunday on an EU mission to mediate an end to the conflict in Georgia's rebel South Ossetia region, which was under Russian control after Georgian forces retreated

[daleo]

8. It seems like the U.K. conservative media is taking an anti-Russian stance

The Telegraph and the Times at any rate. And Cheney is talking tough about the Russians. So it looks like the right wing is getting comfortable with banging on the war drum, again. It's not a good sign.

[misterconcept]

9. Let the Games Begin

In June of this year (2008), Charlie Black, a career Republican operative and strategist, stated that, “a terrorist attack would be of great benefit to the McCain campaign.” It is a foregone conclusion that the Bush-Cheney Regime has employed a propaganda-enhanced, media blitz to instill fear in the American people for the purpose of enlisting support for its perverse policies here and abroad. It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that this same perversity would provoke, precipitate, or even produce a terrorist attack to maintain its power base throughout the next administration. Following Black’s untimely airing of this sentiment, the possibility of facilitating this strategy was removed and the Republican hierarchy had to somehow ‘up the ante.’ What could be more useful than the re-emergence of aggression from the former Evil Empire—they hit the jackpot.

In a previous commentary, I pointed out that Georges Bush, Senior and Junior; Dick Cheney; David Addington; along with the entire Carlyle Group; are on the same payroll as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nouri Maliki, and Muqtada al-Sadr. I omitted several other names from that list including those of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. When one examines recent history, one must consider the following: the former Soviet Union began implementing a free market economic system in 1983. A mere 25 years later, Moscow boasts of having the most billionaires in residence of any city in the world, among them Wally Putin. When this Muscovite consortium of oil billionaires challenged the management authority of British Petroleum in Russia, Putin, overnight, went from being the face of modern Russia to a throwback to the Brezhnev years. In response to Putin’s rejection of western influence over his new cash cow, the United States and Western Europe formed political and economic alliances with neighboring Georgia and launched an effort to enroll this ‘pro-democracy’ state into NATO. Thus began the current conflict.

It is no coincidence that Bush and Putin were together at the Olympics when Putin boldly announced that the invasion had begun, reminiscent of two mafia dons meeting at a racetrack. This new battlefield is yet another turf war where oil is the prize rather than heroin. The only good news is that the greed and corruption among Russia’s ‘leadership,’ is so thorough and pervasive that little or no money has been allocated for the modernization of the Russian war machine. That fact, coupled with the reality of the depletion of American military power resulting from the Iraq fiasco, when East meets West on the field of battle in Georgia, this war may have to be fought with knives and clubs.