This business has all the trappings of an "October Surprise" to me.

It's just coming a bit earlier in this election cycle so as to allow the neocons more time to effectively scare the living daylights out of the ignorant (voting) fools still left among us.

Mark my words, this thing is FAR from over!

George Bush lost whatever moral ground we had when he invaded another sovereign country without provocation - Iraq. However, that has not stopped him from beating on a hornet's nest with a stick, so he has been over there equipping and training Georgia so that they could deploy that "stick". I don't think it came as much of a surprise to either Bush or Putin. Saaskavilli may have been the surprised one when Bush didn't rush in to help. Ooops!

Gee, now Poland is going to allow our missiles to be placed in their country. Who knew? Maybe now Georgia will be admitted to NATO? Then the next confrontation will obligate all in NATO to go up against Russia.

Perhaps it will also help McCain? Wow! This just gets better all the time!

After what the CIA and NATO did to Yugoslavia by pitting ethnic groups against each other, and bombing it to smithereens, and THEN to blame it all on the Serbs and get away with it, I don't blame Russia for being prepared for anything.

This is downright scary. The only thing scarier is what McCain's reaction could be if he got control of our military.

Russia says U.S.-Poland missile deal ‘cannot go unpunished’

And in the strongest threat Russia has issued in reaction to plans to put elements of a missile defense system in former Soviet satellite nations, the Interfax news agency quoted Nogovitsyn as saying Poland was risking attack.

“Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent,” Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying.

In other words, World War 3!

What was the first country that Germany invaded during World war 2?

It was Poland, September 1, 1940. Russia who had a secret pact with Germany opened up a second front a week later. There is an excellent account of this on www.wikipedia.com/ww2.

Well that makes us 16 days away from Sept 1, 2008. Considering what is happening in Georgia, we MUST take this into consideration when we are talking about our future.

What would happen if Russia attacks Turkey?

Actually Germany invaded Poland on Sep 1, 1939 and Russia followed suit a bit more than two weeks later.

But the fact remains that the parallels are at least intriguing if not downright terrifying.

Back to subject, though. The US can only respond by trying to hurt Russia monetarily, and even that we are probably not in a good position to do. Certainly we could not for ten seconds contemplate direct intervention, and if the Georgians really thought we would do so they are blithering idiots.

Churlpat -- a plutarch by any name is still a plutarch

Clinton spread just as much disinformation about the situation in the late Yugoslavia as the Bush crowd has done with their illegal actions. Lying is abundant on all sides, and the MSM is mostly just a cheerleading section for the official line. Eventually it no longer matters if the truth comes out, because everyone has had the lies hammered into their heads: flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop.......

Right now there is a struggle to frame the conflict to the West's advantage as usual. Maybe the South Ossetians and the Abkhazians want to stay in a socialistic society, which should be their prerogative. Saakashvilli is only our puppet anyway, and a pawn in the capitalist vs socialist confrontation.

I do agree that this is serious business and people should be paying attention, and neither do we want the likes of McCain in charge.

Since United States and some European nations violated international law by taking away the province of Kosovo from Serbia the people of South Ossetia has voted twice to be part of Russia, the same rule should apply to Russia.

I understand over 1000 civilians were killed including women and children when Georgia launched its attack of taking over South Ossetia. The Russian did not enter until the next day with over 30,000 civilians who fled into North Ossetia and within two days the Russians defeated the Georgian forces.

It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but -- along with the Georgians -- miscalculated Russia's intentions. The United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.

Russia had two motives, the lesser of which was as a tit-for-tat over Kosovo. If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western sponsorship, then South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia, could be declared independent under Russian sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and Europe would simply confirm their hypocrisy. This was important for internal Russian political reasons, but the second motive was far more important.

By the way the Russians had informed Europe and the USA you are opening a pandora's box by violating their own international laws. There are a number of nations did not recognize Kosovo, because they have internal minority groups who like to be independent like in Spain with the Basques, India, Hungary, etc.

Bill Baker

We should respond by not allowing those naughty Russians to continue to finance our debt and acquire more of our worthless currency in trade for resources of genuine value.

My first strike would be parachuting full brigades of attorneys deep into the Caucasus. Second strike would follow with battalions of MBAs rolling across the steppes in their Beemers.

I'm sorry, Mr. Cowboy, but that sort of warfare is beyond the pale; even in medieval times those would have been considered crimes against humanity.

But if you actually accomplish this, I have a small list of cannon fodder I can send along for consideration. Actually a pretty large list.

Churlpat -- a plutarch by any name is still a plutarch

Hoosier Cowboy, you get the award for humor. (You were being humorous, I trust?)

Bill Baker, you are so right about Kosovo being a Pandora's Box. We in the West are such hypocrites! Nothing is more ludicrous than Bush admonishing Russia for being a bully and making threats as "foreign policy". He absolutely has no shame.

When we violate international laws it is OK, but when someone else does it, then it is a war crime. When do we all grow up? While the big power players play their games people die and have their lives ruined. Has everyone lost the power to put themselves in the place of others? Is that what power does to everyone?

If the far left gets total power we end up with something like Stalin's Russia, but when the far right gets power we then have something like Hitler's Germany. It is the absolute power that corrupts. Look what has happened since the neocon takeover in the US. Here we are in two wars and also picking on Russia and Iran. We don't want to go flying in the opposite direction to the left either. There must be a balance, with one side checking the power of the other. We must learn to compromise, both at home and in the world. Everyone should have a place at the table.

Impotent to act to help much valued "ally" Georgia, the bullyboy hero of Iraq can only come up with a probably ineffectual threat to try to exclude Russia from some of the international power clubs and cartels.
And a weak whining complaint that he is being out-bullied by Putin, who was still his "friend" only a few days earlier in Beijing.
Check out the video record of their jolly tete-a-tete at the opening of the Olympics. World War III might be starting and he and Bush are giggling together like two schoolboys.
About Georgia?
AP says: "So far, the White House has hedged on saying what consequences Russia might face."
Bush's over-stretched military forces can't say "Boo" to the evidently now super-efficient Russian military, and U.S. intelligence information and assets in this vital strategic area add up to about zero. It appears that about the highest level of intelligence available is at secondhand from a small handful of journalists.
General Nogovitsyn has said that by accepting a U.S. missile defense battery Poland was "exposing itself to a strike."
Putin has had a major military victory resulting in very valuable gains in territory and power.
And a very effective low-cost dress rehearsal for an attack on Poland whenever Russia thinks it opportune and necessary to undo the ultra-expensive U.S. rearmament deal for a missile interceptor base.
Poland might now be pondering the reliability of American assistance in the event of a Russian military strike.
AP says of the ever-ineffectual Rice: "Rice flew across the Atlantic to help broker peace." She only got to act like a petty law-clerk witnessing Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili's signature on the hopefully effective truce document devised by the President of France while the President of the United States was "deciding" what not to do.
Apparently now the President, Rice and Gates are at his Crawford ranch videoconferenceing with top national security officials, and watching CNN for intelligence information while trying to "decide" what not to do next.
Sore and embittered, the much misled Georgians are waiting to hear.
Cashel Boylo

Avery Moore

Breaker, Breaker

Internet forums are the Citizen's Band Radio of the 21st century. They can be amazingly informative or like talk radio shows contribute disbelief to the idea that human intelligence ever will equal that of a Norway Rat. Yes, another blow to cranial Evolution.

"Smokey Bear" is now Russia and on this topic there's a familiar schism between publicly accepted belief systems.

The let's-be-reasonable sorts recognize the bear is out there lurking behind some billboard, possibly snoozing, possibly sharpening claws.

And that's OK. Knowing which billboard is the key. Either you don't whiz past, or even better, you change routes entirely. The Bear gets chronic eye strain and back aches from perpetual attention to nothing happening.

The berserker types are narrow-bandwidth. It never occurs to them that, however lazy, arrogant, corrupt, or ornery - Smokey is a nuclear bear. They want a showdown, a gunfight. They want others to do the heavy lifting. They can conceive of invading territory and holding it within a nuclear blast radius.

Since they can astral travel at night too, and spy on enemies remotely, they are convinced that Smokey wants Georgia's - oil.

The State Department has a nice online map of the region. It's dated 1994 and numbered 2762 6-94. It's a resource map. It shows where the gold, brown coal, tungsten, manganese, natural gas and oil really is in the Caucasus.

Now to locate embarrassing heaps of oil and natural gas: that would be Azerbaijan. At Baku, right on the Caspian. Control that hub and Georgia has no more geopolitical significance than Tonawanda, NY.

But we should fight for Georgia.

Lose Baku and the Baku-T'blisi-Ceyhan pipeline through Turkey, and Baku-Supsa pipeline across to the Baltic are irrelevant. Asian oil travels from Baku across Russia to Novorossiysk on the Baltic, exclusively.

Europe, for choosing to help Georgia, is now hostage to one choice.

North America, though perturbed, is indifferent.

Has Smokey invaded Azerbaijan? No. Intend to? No one knows. Can perpetually impoverished Georgia be anywhere near the prize that Azerbaijan is?

Impossible.

But Smokey has a history of bear intervention, bear belligerence, and a short fuse.

And thus we think it prudent to provoke him. To show him how resolved we are. How determined we are - to provoke him...

Honey, take the next left, there's a bear up ahead.