| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:28 pm Post subject: |
| Are You Ready For Nuclear War?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Pervez Musharraf, the puppet installed by the US to rule Pakistan in
the interest of US hegemony, resigned August 18 to avoid impeachment.
Karl Rove and the Diebold electronic voting machines were unable to
control the result of the last election in Pakistan, the result of
which gave Pakistanis a bigger voice in their government than America's.
It was obvious to anyone with any sense—, which excludes the entire Bush
Regime and almost all of the "foreign policy community"—that the
illegal and gratuitous US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and
Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon civilians with US blessing, would
result in the overthrow of America's Pakistani puppet.
The imbecilic Bush Regime ensured Musharraf's overthrow by pressuring
their puppet to conduct military operations against tribesmen in
Pakistani border areas, whose loyalties were to fellow Muslims and not
to American hegemony. When Musharraf's military operations didn't
produce the desired result, the idiotic Americans began conducting
their own military operations within Pakistan with bombs and missiles.
This finished off Musharraf.
When the Bush Regime began its wars in the Middle East, I predicted,
correctly, that Musharraf would be one victim. The American puppets in
Egypt and Jordan may be the next to go.
Back during the Nixon years, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, Warren
Nutter, was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs. One day in his Pentagon office I asked him how the US
government got foreign governments to do what the US wanted. "Money,"
he replied.
"You mean foreign aid?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "we just buy the leaders with money."
It wasn't a policy he had implemented. He inherited it and, although
the policy rankled with him, he could do nothing about it. Nutter
believed in persuasion and that if you could not persuade people, you
did not have a policy.
Nutter did not mean merely third world potentates were bought. He
meant the leaders of England, France, Germany, Italy, all the allies
everywhere were bought and paid for.
They were allies because they were paid. Consider Tony Blair. Blair's
own head of British intelligence told him that the Americans were
fabricating the evidence to justify their already planned attack on
Iraq. This was fine with Blair, and you can see why with his multi-
million dollar payoff once he was out of office.
The American-educated thug, Saakashkvili the War Criminal, who is
president of Georgia, was installed by the US taxpayer funded National
Endowment for Democracy, a neocon operation whose purpose is to ring
Russia with US military bases, so that America can exert hegemony over
Russia.
Every agreement that President Reagan made with Mikhail Gorbachev has
been broken by Reagan's successors. Reagan's was the last American
government whose foreign policy was not made by the Israeli-allied
neoconservatives. During the Reagan years, the neocons made several
runs at it, but each ended in disaster for Reagan, and he eventually
drove the modern day French Jacobins from his government.
Even the anti-Soviet Committee on the Present Danger regarded the
neocons as dangerous lunatics. I remember the meeting when a member
tried to bring the neocons into the committee, and old line American
establishment representatives, such as former Treasury Secretary
Douglas Dillon, hit the roof.
The Committee on the Present Danger regarded the neocons as crazy
people who would get America into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
The neocons hated President Reagan, because he ended the cold war with
diplomacy, when they desired a military victory over the Soviet Union.
Deprived of this, the neocons now want victory over Russia.
Today, Reagan is gone. The Republican Establishment is gone. There are
no conservative power centers, only neoconservative power centers
closely allied with Israel, which uses the billions of dollars
funneled into Israeli coffers by US taxpayers to influence US
elections and foreign policy.
The Republican candidate for president is a warmonger. There are no
checks remaining in the Republican Party on the neocons' proclivity
for war. What Republican constituencies oppose war? Can anyone name one?
The Democrats are not much better, but they have some constituencies
that are not enamored of war in order to establish US world hegemony.
The Rapture Evangelicals, who fervently desire Armageddon, are not
Democrats; nor are the brainwashed Brownshirts desperate to vent their
frustrations by striking at someone, somewhere, anywhere.
I get emails from these Brownshirts and attest that their hate-filled
ignorance is extraordinary. They are all Republicans, and yet they
think they are conservatives. They have no idea who I am, but since I
criticize the Bush Regime and America's belligerent foreign policy,
they think I am a "liberal commie pinko."
The only literate sentence this legion of imbeciles has ever managed
is: "If you hate America so much, why don't you move to Cuba!"
Such is the current state of a Reagan political appointee in today's
Republican Party. He is a "liberal commie pinko" who should move to Cuba.
The Republicans will get us into more wars. Indeed, they live for war.
McCain is preaching war for 100 years. For these warmongers, it is
like cheering for your home team. Win at all costs. They get a
vicarious pleasure out of war. If the US has to tell lies in order to
attack countries, what's wrong with that? "If we don't kill them over
there, they will kill us over here."
The mindlessness is total.
Nothing real issues from the American media. The media is about
demonizing Russia and Iran, about the vice presidential choices as if
it matters, about whether Obama being on vacation let McCain score too
many points.
The mindlessness of the news reflects the mindlessness of the
government, for which it is a spokesperson.
The American media does not serve American democracy or American
interests. It serves the few people who exercise power.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US and Israel made a run at
controlling Russia and the former constituent parts of its empire. For
awhile the US and Israel succeeded, but Putin put a stop to it.
Recognizing that the US had no intention of keeping any of the
agreements it had made with Gorbachev, Putin directed the Russian
military budget to upgrading the Russian nuclear deterrent.
Consequently, the Russian army and air force lack the smart weapons
and electronics of the US military.
When the Russian army went into Georgia to rescue the Russians in
South Ossetia from the destruction being inflicted upon them by the
American puppet Saakashvili, the Russians made it clear that if they
were opposed by American troops with smart weapons, they would deal
with the threat with tactical nuclear weapons.
The Americans were the first to announce preemptive nuclear attack as
their permissible war doctrine. Now the Russians have announced the
tactical use of nuclear weapons as their response to American smart
weapons.
It is obvious that American foreign policy, with is goal of ringing
Russia with US military bases, is leading directly to nuclear war.
Every American needs to realize this fact. The US government's insane
hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet.
Russia has made no threats against America. The post-Soviet Russian
government has sought to cooperate with the US and Europe. Russia has
made it clear over and over that it is prepared to obey international
law and treaties. It is the Americans who have thrown international
law and treaties into the trash can, not the Russians.
In order to keep the billions of dollars in profits flowing to its
contributors in the US military-security complex, the Bush Regime has
rekindled the cold war. As American living standards decline and the
prospects for university graduates deteriorate, "our" leaders in
Washington commit us to a hundred years of war.
If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a
nuclear war, vote Republican.
http://vdare.com/roberts/080818_you.htm
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Are we closer to World War? Read this and you tell me.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 3:48 PM
From: "eddie stinson" <eddiestinson@gmail.com>
To: eddiestinson@gmail.com
-----Inline Attachment Follows-----
Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, August 15, 2008
The signing on August 14 of an agreement between the governments of the United States and Poland to deploy on Polish soil US 'interceptor missiles' is the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis.
Far from a defensive move to protect European NATO states from a Russian nuclear attack, as military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet.The preliminary deal to place elements of the US global missile defense shield was signed by Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and US chief negotiator John Rood on August 14. Under the terms, Washington plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland coupled with a radar system in the Czech Republic, which it ludicrously claims are intended to counter possible attacks from what it calls "rogue states," including Iran. To get the agreement Washington agreed to reinforce Poland's air defenses. The deal is still to be approved by the two countries' governments and Poland's parliament. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in televised remarks that "the events in the Caucasus show clearly that such security guarantees are indispensable."
The Bush White House Press spoksperson, Dona Perino stated, officially, "We believe that missile defense is a substantial contribution to NATO's collective security."
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, as I detail painstakingly in my book, to be released this autumn, Full Spectrum Dominance: The National Security State and the Spread of Democracy, 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. Senior Russian lawmakers said on Friday the agreement would damage security in Europe, and reiterated that Russia would now have to take steps to ensure its security. Andrei Klimov, deputy head of the Russian State Duma's international affairs committee, said the deal was designed to demonstrate Warsaw's "loyalty to the US and receive material benefits. For the Americans, it is an opportunity to expand its military presence across the world, including closer to Russia. For NATO, this is an additional risk...many NATO countries are unhappy with this, including the Germans and the French." Klimov called the agreement "a step back" toward the Cold War. Russian responseThe US plans to deploy a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in northern Poland as part of a US-controlled missile shield for Europe and North America, has been officially sold under the ludicrous argument that it is against possible attacks from "rogue states," including Iran. Last Spring then Russian President Vladimir Putin exposed the shallowness of the US propaganda line by offering a startled President Bush that Russia would offer the US use of Russian leased radar facilities in Azerbaijan on the Iran border to far better monitor Iran missile launches. The Bush Administration simply ignored the offer, exposing that their real target is Russia not "rogue states like Iran." Russia rightly views deployment of the US missile shield as a threat to its national security.The latest Polish agreement advances a Russian response.Russian officials earlier said Moscow could deploy its Iskander tactical missiles and strategic bombers in Belarus and Russia's westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad if Washington succeeded in its missile shield plans in Europe. Moscow also warned it could target its missiles on Poland.Russia is also discussing to put in place an orbital ballistic missile system in response to US missile defense plans for Central Europe, according to a senior Russian military expert."A program could be implemented to create orbital ballistic missiles capable of reaching US territory via the South Pole, skirting US air defense bases," said Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, now vice president of the Academy of Security, Defense and Law Enforcement Studies.Previously as part of the post Cold War agreements with the US, agreements which have been ´significantly ignored by Washington as it pushed the borders of NATO ever closer to Moscow's doorstep, the Soviet Union had abandoned such missiles in accordance with the START I Treaty.Obama backs missile defense tooThe deal would further divide European countries into what Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski calls openly, US "vassals" and those pursuing more independent policies. Any illusions that a Democratic Obama Presidency would mean a rollback of such provocative NATO and US military moves of recent years should be dismissed as dangerous wishful thinking!
Obama's foreign policy team in addition to father Zbigniew Brzezinski, includes Brzezinski's son, Ian Brzezinski, current US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs. Ian Brzezinski is a devout believer of US missile defense policy, as well as Kosovo independence and NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia.
Last edited by Alpha on Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:34 pm; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:42 am Post subject: |
| Washington Post
'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast.
By Michael Dobbs
Sunday, August 17, 2008; B01
It didn't take long for the "Putin is Hitler" analogies to start following the eruption of the ugly little war between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia . Neoconservative commentator Robert Kagan compared the Russian attack on Georgia with the Nazi grab of the Sudetenland in 1938. President Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that the Russian leader was following a course "horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s."
Others invoked the infamous Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet leaders claimed the right to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe in order to prop up their crumbling imperium. "We've seen this movie before, in Prague and Budapest ," said John McCain, referring to the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. According to the Republican presidential candidate,"today we are all Georgians."
Actually, the events of the past week in Georgia have little in common with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe . They are better understood against the backdrop of the complica ted ethnic politics of the Caucasus , a part of the world where historical grudges run deep and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye.
Unlike most of the armchair generals now posing as experts on the Caucasus, I have actually visited Tskhinvali, a sleepy provincial town in the shadow of the mountains that rise along Russia 's southern border. I was there in March 1991, shortly after the city was occupied by Georgian militia units loyal to Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first freely elected leader of Georgia in seven decades. One of Gamsakhurdia's first acts as Georgian president was to cancel the political autonomy that the Stalinist constitution had granted the republic's 90,000-strong Ossetian minority.
After negotiating safe passage with Soviet interior ministry troops who had stationed themselves between the Georgians and the Ossetians, I discovered that the town had been ransacked by Gamsakhurdia's militia. The Georgians had trashed the Ossetian national theater, decapitated the statue of an Ossetian poet and pulled down monuments to Ossetians who had fought with Soviet troops in World War II. The Ossetians were responding in kind, firing on Georgian villages and forcing Georgian residents of Tskhinvali to flee their homes.
It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time."
When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus , there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.
Let us examine the role played by the three main parties.
Georgia. Saakashvili's image in the West, and particularly in the United States , is that of the great "democrat," the leader of the "Rose Revolution" who spearheaded a popular uprising against former American favorite Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003. It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies: He sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station.
While the United States views Saakashvili as a pro-Western modernizer, a large part of his political appeal in Georgia has stemmed from his promise to reunify Georgia by bringing the secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under central control. He has presented himself as the successor to the medieval Georgian king David the Builder and promised that the country will regain its lost territories by the time he leaves office, by one means or another. American commentators tend to overlook the fact that Georgian democracy is inextricably intertwined with Georgian nationalism.
The restoration of Georgia 's traditional borders is an understandable goal for a Georgian leader, but it is a much lower priority for the West, particularly if it involves armed conflict with Russia . Based on their previous experience with Georgian rule, Ossetians and Abkhazians have perfectly valid reasons to oppose reunification with Georgia , even if it means throwing in their lot with the Russians.
It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was disproportionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian "peacekeepers" were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault.
It was a huge miscalculation. Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin (and let there be no doubt that he is calling the shots in Moscow despite having handed over the presidency to his protege, Dmitri Medvedev) now had the ideal pretext for settling scores with the uppity Georgians. Rather than simply restoring the status quo ante, Russian troops moved into Georgia proper, cutting the main east-west highway at Gori and attacking various military bases.
Saakashvili's decision to gamble everything on a lightning grab for Tskhinvali brings to mind the comment of the 19th-century French statesman Talleyrand: "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake."
Russia. Putin and Medvedev have defended their incursion into Georgia as motivated by a desire to stop the "genocide" of Ossetians by Georgians. It is difficult to take their moral outrage very seriously. There is a striking contrast between Russian support for the right of Ossetian self-determination in Georgia and the brutal suppression of Chechens who were trying to exercise that very same right within the boundaries of Russia .
Playing one ethnic group against another in the Caucasus has been standard Russian policy ever since czarist times. It is the ideal wedge issue for the Kremlin, particularly in the case of a state such as Georgia , which is made up of several different nationalities. It would be virtually impossible for South Ossetia to survive as an autonomous entity without Russian support. Putin's government has issued passports to Ossetians and secured the appointment of Russians to key positions in Tskhinvali.
The Russian incursion into Georgia proper has been even more "disproportionate" -- in President Bush's phrase -- than the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali. The Russians have made no secret of their wish to replace Saakashvili with a more compliant leader. Russian military targets included the Black Sea port of Poti -- more than 100 miles from South Ossetia .
The real goal of Kremlin strategy is to reassert Russian influence in a part of the world that has been regarded, by czars and commissars alike, as Russia 's backyard. Russian leaders bitterly resented the eastward expansion of NATO to include Poland and the Baltic states -- with Ukraine and Georgia next on the list -- but were unable to do very much about it as long as America was strong and Russia was weak. Now the tables are turning for the first time since the collapse of communism in 1991, and Putin is seizing the moment.
If Putin is smart, he will refrain from occupying Georgia proper, a step that would further alarm the West and unite Georgians against Russia . A better tactic would be to wait for Georgians themselves to turn against Saakashvili. The precedent here is what happened to Gamsakhurdia, who was overthrown in January 1992 by the same militia forces he had sent into South Ossetia a year earlier.
The United States . The Bush administration has been sending mixed messages to its Georgian friends. U.S. officials insist that they did not give the green light to Saakashvili for his attack on South Ossetia . At the same time, however, the United States has championed NATO membership for Georgia , sent military advisers to bolster the Georgian army and demanded the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity. American support might well have emboldened Saakashvili as he was considering how to respond to the "provocations" from South Ossetia .
Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus where the Georgian tail is wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in extending NATO membership, or even the promise of membership, to countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend.
In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia , while the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia , have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow . The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia .
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Last edited by Alpha on Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:32 pm; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:29 pm Post subject: |
| Russia warns of response to US missile shield
Aug 20 01:42 PM US/Eastern
228 Comments
Poland Signs U.S. Missile Shield Deal
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia says its response to the further development of a U.S. missile shield in Poland will go beyond diplomacy.
Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the U.S. missile shield plans are clearly aimed at weakening Russia.
The U.S. says the missile defense system is aimed at protecting the U.S. and Europe from future attacks from states like Iran.
The United States and Poland signed a deal Wednesday to place a U.S. missile defense base just 115 miles from Russia's westernmost fringe.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal Wednesday to build a U.S. missile defense base in Poland, an agreement that prompted an infuriated Russia to warn of a possible attack against the former Soviet satellite.
Rice dismissed blustery comments from Russian leaders who say Warsaw's hosting of 10 U.S. interceptor missiles just 115 miles from Russia's westernmost frontier opens the country up to attack.
Such comments "border on the bizarre frankly," Rice said, speaking to reporters traveling with her in Warsaw.
"When you threaten Poland, you perhaps forget that it is not 1988," Rice said. "It's 2008 and the United States has a ... firm treaty guarantee to defend Poland's territory as if it was the territory of the United States. So it's probably not wise to throw these threats around."
The deal, which Washington sought as a way of defending the U.S. and Europe from a hypothetical threat of long-distance missiles from Iran, has strained relations between Moscow and the West. Those ties were already troubled by Russia's invasion of its former Soviet neighbor, U.S. ally Georgia, earlier this month.
Speaking to reporters traveling with her, Rice said, "the Russians are losing their credibility."
Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski signed the deal Wednesday morning.
"It is an agreement which will help us to respond to the threats of the 21st century," she said afterward.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the agreement came after tough but friendly negotiations.
"We have achieved our main goals, which means that our country and the United States will be more secure," he said.
After Warsaw and Washington announced the agreement on the deal last week, top Russian Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn warned that Poland is risking attack, and possibly a nuclear one, by deploying the American missile defense system, Russia's Interfax news agency reported.
Poles have been shaken by the threats, but NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop dismissed them Tuesday as "pathetic rhetoric."
"It is unhelpful and it leads nowhere," he told reporters at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
Many Poles consider the agreement a form of protection at a time when Russia's invasion of Georgia has generated alarm throughout Eastern Europe. Poland is a member of the European Union and NATO, and the deal is expected to deepen its military partnership with Washington.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski also expressed "great satisfaction" at the outcome of the long months of negotiations.
Poland and the United States spent a year and a half negotiating, and talks recently had snagged on Poland's demands that the U.S. bolster Polish security with Patriot missiles in exchange for hosting the missile defense base.
Washington agreed to do so last week, as Poland invoked the Georgia conflict to strengthen its case.
The Patriots are meant to protect Poland from short-range missiles from neighbors—such as Russia.
The U.S. already has reached an agreement with the government in Prague to place the second component of the missile defense shield—a radar tracking system—in the Czech Republic, Poland's southwestern neighbor and another formerly communist country.
Approval is still needed the Czech and Polish parliaments.
No date has been set for the Polish parliament to consider the agreement, but it should face no difficulties in Warsaw, where it enjoys the support of the largest opposition party as well as the government.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 11:33 pm Post subject: |
| w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1013156.html
Last update - 03:02 20/08/2008
Russia weighs increasing military aid to Arab world
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
Syrian President Bashar Assad is scheduled to leave for Russia on Thursday for a two-day visit that has been described by analysts as important at a time when Moscow may be considering closer ties with the Arab world.
Syrian media have described Assad's visit to Moscow as "a working visit" to discuss closer ties in a variety of unspecified areas.
A number of reports in recent months have mentioned large arms deals between Russia and Syria, including advanced anti-aircraft missile systems.
Russian and Syrian analysts have said that Israel's military assistance to Georgia has paved the way for a particularly successful visit for the Syrian president, whose country has taken a clear stance on the side of Moscow in the recent conflict in the Caucasus.
"The significant military assistance provided by Israel to Georgia in its war against Russia will affect in the future - and probably in the near future - ties between Russia and Israel, and Russia's attitude toward Arab states," a Russian analyst said in an interview to Syrian television. "Russia will re-examine its ties with Israel, and it is not unlikely that Moscow will now decide to increase its military assistance to Arab countries in conflict with Israel, including Syria."
Russia has held up the transfer of certain weapons systems to Syria and Iran as a result of U.S. and Israeli pressure, but now there is hope in Damascus that the situation will change in their favor, and Russia will authorize the arms sales.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on Tuesday if Lebanon were to become a terrorist state under the domination of Hezbollah, Israel would unleash more massive firepower at its disposal.
Olmert said if Hezbollah guerrillas attack again as the dominant force in Lebanon, Israel will hit back harder than before. He said Israel "did not use all means to respond then, but if Lebanon becomes a Hezbollah state, then we won't have any restrictions in this regard." He did not elaborate on this issue.
The prime minister warned the next war with Lebanon would involve attacks on Israel's cities, saying a future conflict "will reach the cities and homes of Israeli citizens and the goal of our enemy will be to hurt the home front."
Speaking during a visit Tuesday to the Home Front Command, Olmert said a future war will be conducted differently than the Second Lebanon War. "Gone are the days when wars are fought on remote and hidden battlefields while life in the cities carries on as usual," he said.
In 2006 Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon fired almost 4,000 rockets at northern Israel during a monthlong war that ended in a United Nations brokered cease-fire.
Olmert's remarks were released in a statement by his office.
The premier further stressed the importance of maintaining calm and preventing panic among the public in light of media reports pointing to increasingly dangerous threats to the country. "We don't need to scare ourselves too much with regards to the threats," Olmert said. "Ultimately, the threat that we foresee in our imaginations is more demonic than it really is.
"In many respects, the Home Front Command will be the first and most important command in any future war and I am impressed by the astounding progress in its readiness and the change in its mindset," Olmert said.
During the visit, Olmert was briefed on the Home Front command's preparedness and its efforts to internalize and implement the lessons learned as a result of the errors made during the Second Lebanon War. The prime minister received a synopsis of the Home Front Command's emergency plans in the face of threats to Israel's interior, as well as contingency plans for meeting civilians' needs in wartime, methods of operation, and deployment strategies.
Accompanying Olmert during his visit were Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai; IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi; Home Front Command chief Yair Golan; the director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, Ra'anan Dinur; and other officials from the defense ministry, the IDF, and the PMO.
The Lebanese unity government approved a political platform earlier this month, according to which Hezbollah enjoys the right to use all means at its disposal "to liberate land occupied by Israel." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 10:45 am Post subject: |
| Crisis in the Caucasus. What Were They Smoking in the White House?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis120.html
by Eric Margolis
The Bush administration appears to have pulled off its latest military fiasco in the Caucasus. What was supposed to have been a swift and painless takeover of rebellious South Ossetia by America’s favorite new ally, Georgia, has turned into a disaster that left Georgia battered, Russia enraged, and NATO badly demoralized. Not bad for two days work.
Equally important, Russia’s Vladimir Putin swiftly and decisively checkmated the Bush administration’s clumsy attempt last week to expand US influence into the Caucasus, and made the Americans and their Georgian satraps look like fools.
We are not facing a return to the Cold War – yet. But the current US-Russian crisis over Georgia, a tiny nation of only 4.6 million, and its linkage to a US anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, is deeply worrying and increasingly dangerous.
On 7 August, Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, ordered his US and Israeli-advised and equipped army to invade the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has been struggling for independence from Georgia since 1992. Most of its people were Russian citizens who wanted union with Russian North Ossetia.
If not directly behind Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, Washington had to have been at least fully aware of Saakashvili’s plans. The Georgian Army was trained and equipped by US and Israeli military advisors stationed with its troops down to battalion level. CIA and Israel’s Mossad operated important intelligence stations in Tbilisi and coordinated plans with the Saakashvili, whose political opponents have long accused him of being very close to CIA and the Pentagon.
Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia was launched while the world was absorbed by the Beijing Olympics, and Prime Minister Putin was in the Chinese capital. The attack was clearly planned to be a lightening strike that would occupy all of South Ossetia and then Abkhazia before Moscow could react, presenting the Kremlin with a fait accompli.
Who in Bush’s or Cheney’s office approved this stupid adventure? Why did the very smart Israelis get sucked into this imbroglio?
Saakashvili’s stealth "coup de main" quickly turned into a disaster. Russia’s 58th Army responded by routing Georgian forces and delivering a humiliating strategic and psychological blow to the Bush administration. Saakashvili fell right into Moscow’s trap.
Georgia and Russia have been feuding since 1992 over two Georgian ethnic enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose people differ in ethnicity and language from Georgians and who wanted to rejoin Russia.
The young, US-educated Saakashvili became Georgia’s president in 2003 after an uprising, believed organized by CIA and financed by US money, overthrew the former leader, Eduard Shevardnadze. I came to know and respect Shevardnadze in Moscow when he was Mikhail Gorbachev’s principal ally and architect of Soviet reform.
Had the able, clever Shevardnadze still been in power, this misadventure would never have happened.
Saakashvili quickly became the golden boy of US rightwing neoconservatives and their Israeli allies, who held him a model of how to turn former Russian-dominated states into "democratic" US allies. Georgian critics claim Saakashvili kept power by intimidation, bribery, and vote rigging. The youthful Georgian leader, his head swelled by promises of US support and NATO membership, launched a war of words against Moscow.
Amazingly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a supposed Russian expert, even publicly assured Saakashvili that the US would "fight" for Georgia. Washington’s latest fiasco falls squarely into her lap.
US money, military trainers, advisers, and intelligence agents poured into the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Israeli arms dealers, businessmen and intelligence agents quickly followed, reportedly selling some $200 million or more of military equipment to the Georgian government.
By expanding its influence into Georgia, the Bush administration brazenly flouted agreements with Moscow made by president George H.W. Bush not to expand NATO into the former USSR. President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both violated this pact. Under the feeble Yeltsin regime, bankrupt Russia could do nothing. But under Putin, newly wealthy Russia finally pushed back after a long series of provocations fromWashington.
Russia’s tough deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, sneeringly observed that Georgia had become a "US satellite." He was absolutely right. And Ivanov, a former KGB colleague of Vlad Putin, knows a satellite when he sees one. Georgia provided the US oil and gas pipeline routes from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan that bypassed Russian territory. Russia was furious its Caspian Basin energy export monopoly had been broken, vowing revenge.
Now that the Russians have checkmated the US and client Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia will likely move into Russia’s orbit. The west rightly backed independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who are ethnically and linguistically different from Georgians, should have as much right to secede from Georgia.
Besides thwarting Bush’s clumsy attempt to further advance US influence into Russia’s Caucasian underbelly, Putin delivered a stark warning to Ukraine and the Central Asian states: don’t get too close to Washington. Putin put the US on the strategic defensive and showed that NATO’s new eastern reaches – the Baltic, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Caucasus – are largely indefensible.
It’s a good thing Georgia was not admitted to NATO, as the White House had reportedly promised Saakashvili. Had Georgia been admitted before this crisis, the US and its NATO allies would have been in a state of war with Russia. Disturbingly, Germany’s conservative prime minister, Angelika Merkel, rushed to Tbilisi to assure Saakashvili that her nation still backed NATO membership for Georgia.
Is the west really ready to be dragged into a potential nuclear war for the sake of South Ossetia? Are American and German troops ready to fight in the Caucasus? Georgia is a bridge too far for NATO.
President George Bush, VP Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain all resorted to table pounding and Cold War rhetoric against Russia. McCain, whose senior foreign policy advisor is a neoconservative and was a registered lobbyist for Georgia, demanded that the US and NATO "punish" Russia and put it into diplomatic isolation.
Unfortunately, the indignant John McCain’s could not even properly pronounce "Abkhazia."
America’s neocon amen chorus demanded a confrontation with Russia, chanting their usual mantras about Munich, appeasement and the myths of World War II. One certainly wondered if the Caucasian fracas was not staged by the Republicans to provide Sen. McCain with the "three a.m. phone call" he has been longing for and a chance to sound tough. This he did, even though his rhetoric was empty and his solutions vapid. Barack Obama ducked the issue or issued a few tepid bromides about halting "Russian aggression."
Meanwhile, hypocrisy flew thicker than shellfire. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, and is threatening war against Iran, accused Russia of "bullying" and "aggression." Putin, who crushed the life out of Chechnya’s independence movement, piously claimed his army was saving Ossetians from Georgian ethnic cleansing and protecting their quest for independence.
Bush and McCain demand Russia be punished and isolated. The humiliated Bush is sending some US troops to Georgia to deliver "humanitarian" aid. Equally worrisome, the US rushed to sign a pact with Warsaw to station anti-missile missiles and anti-aircraft batteries, manned by US troops, in Poland. This response is dangerous, highly provocative, and immature. The next president will have to deal with the Bush administrations reckless and foolish acts in the Mideast, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and now, the Caucasus
The west must accept Russia has vital national interests in the Caucasus and the former USSR. Russia is a great power and must be afforded respect. The days of treating Russia like a banana republic are over. Have we learned nothing from World War I or II, both of which began with flare-ups in obscure Sarajevo and the Danzig Corridor?
The US’s most important foreign policy concern is keeping correct relations with Russia, which has thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at North America. Georgia is a petty sideshow. US missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic are a dangerous, unnecessary provocation that is sowing dragon’s teeth for future confrontation.
August 19, 2008
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.
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Neocons put US at Risk of Nuclear War with Russia (click on the pic at the following URL):
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/08/neocons-put-us-at-risk-of-nuclear-war.html
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Margolis also wrote the following article about the USS Liberty attack/cover-up:
THE USS LIBERTY:' AMERICA'S MOST SHAMEFUL SECRET
http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2001/04/the_uss_liberty.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:32 am Post subject: |
| Super-Zionist Bill Kristol Now McCain Advisor
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/5671
.
Posted on Fri, Feb. 08, 2008
What would President McCain's foreign policy be?
Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: February 09, 2008 05:14:25 PM
WASHINGTON — One thing is clear about John McCain's foreign policy views: Much like his political heroes Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt, he believes that America's power is a force to make the world better.
How McCain would wield that power as president is less clear, however.
The Arizona senator, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a leading supporter of President Bush's troop "surge" in Iraq — a stance that some observers credit with reviving his political fortunes as security in Iraq has improved, at least temporarily.
Less well known are McCain's promises, if elected, to expand the Army and the Marine Corps to 900,000 soldiers and Marines from a planned strength of about 750,000; to form a U.S.-led League of Democracies to act when the United Nations can't or won't; and to form a new government unit, patterned after the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services, "to fight terrorist subversion" and "take risks that our bureaucracies today rarely consider taking."
McCain's foreign-policy advisers are a mix of traditional Republican "realists," who favor a pragmatic approach to the world, and "neoconservatives," who lobbied for the Iraq invasion, advocate tougher action to squelch Iran's and North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and favor using U.S. power to transform the Muslim world.
McCain has broken with his party on some key issues. He's taken a more lenient stance on immigration, expressed greater concern about global climate change and opposed the Bush White House on the Guantanamo Bay prison and the use of interrogation techniques that could be considered torture.
"I think he's a very interesting mix," said Gary Samore, who served in the Clinton White House and is now vice president of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.
On issues such as climate change and immigration, McCain would be "very different from the Bush administration," Samore said. "On other issues, he's been very bellicose," he added, citing Iran and North Korea.
McCain already has indicated that he plans to use national security as a cudgel against the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election campaign.
In Norfolk, Va., on Friday, he talked tough on Iran and said he's best prepared to deal with security threats on his first day in office.
Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "want to set a date for withdrawal in Iraq. I believe that would have catastrophic consequences. They (terrorists) would try to follow us home," McCain said.
But McCain hasn't spelled out in detail yet how he'd deal with threats to America's security.
Would he keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq if the situation there stagnates or grows worse? Would he follow through on threats to attack Iran if it appears close to obtaining a nuclear weapon? How would he deal with instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan? Or an increasingly competitive China and an increasingly combative Russia?
McCain's advisers are reluctant to criticize President Bush, even in private. But they suggest that while their candidate agrees with many current White House policies, he's critical of how they've been implemented.
Unlike Bush, McCain would come to the Oval Office with combat experience, years of studying national security issues and extensive foreign travel.
His advisers dispute the notion that McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, would be quick to order the U.S. military into action.
McCain is willing to "use military force when necessary as a last resort," said Randy Scheunemann, the campaign's director of foreign policy and national security. But the senator also believes the war on terrorism "is a war of ideas," he said.
McCain has promised to increase funds for public diplomacy and to launch a "crash program" to teach more soldiers and civilians critical foreign languages.
The campaign hasn't spelled out where McCain would find the billions of dollars it would take to recruit and train 150,000 additional soldiers and Marines.
"Obviously, it's going to cost more money to recruit people, and it's going to take some time," Scheunemann said. Considering the current strains on U.S. military forces, McCain "reached a conclusion (that) you've got to increase the size."
McCain's foreign-policy team is sprinkled with people, including Scheunemann, who were ardent backers of the 2003 Iraq invasion and who dismissed critics who warned of unintended consequences. They include former CIA Director James Woolsey, an adviser mostly on energy security, and William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard.
McCain was an early advocate of overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
At a January town hall in New Hampshire, McCain told a questioner that it "would be fine with me" if the United States had a military presence in Iraq for 100 years. He stressed that he meant a peacetime presence like that of U.S. troops in Germany and Japan.
Scheunemann pointed out that McCain has been endorsed by top officials from every recent Republican administration. He said McCain has "united the foreign-policy wings of the Republican Party."
But McCain's views on the use of U.S. military power have shifted over time.
As a freshman GOP congressman in 1983, he drew national media attention for opposing President Ronald Reagan's extension of the U.S. Marine deployment in Lebanon.
He said in a speech on the House of Representatives floor: "The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place."
But in the last dozen years, McCain has supported U.S. interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, the 1991 Gulf War and Iraq.
Samore said that, whatever McCain's instincts, he'll be restrained from new interventions by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Bush has overdrawn the bank account on use of force for the time being," he said. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 6:22 am Post subject: |
| VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/080821_treason.htm
August 21, 2008
And None Dare Call It Treason—McCain Advisor's Georgia Connection
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Who is Randy Scheunemann?
He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.
But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.
He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.
From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000—pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.
What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.
Scheunemann came close to succeeding.
Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy.
U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?
Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have sought for 45 years to stay out of a shooting war with Russia and we are not going to get into one now. President Bush assured us there will be no U.S. military response to the Russian move into Georgia.
That is a recognition of, and a bowing to, reality—namely, that Russia's control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and occupation of a strip of Georgia cannot be a casus belli for the United States. We may deplore it, but it cannot justify war with Russia.
If that be true, and it transparently is, what are McCain, Barack Obama, Bush, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel doing committing the United States and Germany to bringing Georgia into NATO? For that would commit us to war for a cause we have already conceded, by our paralysis, does not justify a war.
Not only did Scheunemann's two-man lobbying firm receive $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded.
Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic annexed by Joseph Stalin in June 1940 during his pact with Adolf Hitler, was set free at the end of the Cold War. Yet hundreds of thousands of Russians had been moved into Latvia by Stalin, and as Riga served as a base of the Baltic Sea fleet, many Russian naval officers retired there.
The children and grandchildren of these Russians are Latvian citizens. They are a cause of constant tension with ethnic Letts and of strife with Moscow, which has assumed the role of protector of Russians left behind in the "near abroad" when the Soviet Union broke apart.
Thanks to the lobbying of Scheunemann and friends, Latvia has been brought into NATO and given a U.S. war guarantee. If Russia intervenes to halt some nasty ethnic violence in Riga, the United States is committed to come in and drive the Russians out.
This is the situation in which the interventionists have placed our country: committed to go to war for countries and causes that do not justify war, against a Russia that is re-emerging as a great power only to find NATO squatting on her doorstep.
Scheunemann's resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9-11. He signed the PNAC ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9-11, threatening him with political reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq. He was executive director of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," a propaganda front for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war.
Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain's camp.
The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.
Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?
Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George Bush?
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.
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See Founding Father George Washington's 'Farewell Address' at the bottom of the following URL:
http://astandforjustice.org
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Neocons put US at Risk of Nuclear War with Russia, Scheunemann Lobbied for Georgia
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/08/neocons-put-us-at-risk-of-nuclear-war.html
Excellent 'Democracy Now' segment on the Russia/Georgia situation:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/21/tensions_high_as_nato_suspends_formal
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/68uvwb
McCain PNAC Neocon adviser got money from Georgia
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/13/mccain-adviser-got-money-from-georgia/
Neocons Call For U.S. To Launch War With Russia
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/11/neocon-russia-war/
The Neocons Vs. Russia (PNAC vs. Putin):
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.com/articles/Editorial-Georgia.html#Georgia
In Georgia, Russia sends clear message US, Israeli influence will not be tolerated
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=95161#
War in Georgia: The Israeli Connection:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/08/10/war-in-georgia-the-israeli-connection.php
Pat Buchanan interviewed about South Ossetia:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/08/17/pat-buchanan-interviewed-about-south-ossetia.php
On Joe Klein and the Jewish Neoconservatives
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/08/01/on-joe-klein-and-the-jewish-neoconservatives.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: |
| Crisis in the Caucasus. What Were They Smoking in the White House?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis120.html
by Eric Margolis
The Bush administration appears to have pulled off its latest military fiasco in the Caucasus. What was supposed to have been a swift and painless takeover of rebellious South Ossetia by America’s favorite new ally, Georgia, has turned into a disaster that left Georgia battered, Russia enraged, and NATO badly demoralized. Not bad for two days work.
Equally important, Russia’s Vladimir Putin swiftly and decisively checkmated the Bush administration’s clumsy attempt last week to expand US influence into the Caucasus, and made the Americans and their Georgian satraps look like fools.
We are not facing a return to the Cold War – yet. But the current US-Russian crisis over Georgia, a tiny nation of only 4.6 million, and its linkage to a US anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, is deeply worrying and increasingly dangerous.
On 7 August, Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, ordered his US and Israeli-advised and equipped army to invade the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has been struggling for independence from Georgia since 1992. Most of its people were Russian citizens who wanted union with Russian North Ossetia.
If not directly behind Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, Washington had to have been at least fully aware of Saakashvili’s plans. The Georgian Army was trained and equipped by US and Israeli military advisors stationed with its troops down to battalion level. CIA and Israel’s Mossad operated important intelligence stations in Tbilisi and coordinated plans with the Saakashvili, whose political opponents have long accused him of being very close to CIA and the Pentagon.
Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia was launched while the world was absorbed by the Beijing Olympics, and Prime Minister Putin was in the Chinese capital. The attack was clearly planned to be a lightening strike that would occupy all of South Ossetia and then Abkhazia before Moscow could react, presenting the Kremlin with a fait accompli.
Who in Bush’s or Cheney’s office approved this stupid adventure? Why did the very smart Israelis get sucked into this imbroglio?
Saakashvili’s stealth "coup de main" quickly turned into a disaster. Russia’s 58th Army responded by routing Georgian forces and delivering a humiliating strategic and psychological blow to the Bush administration. Saakashvili fell right into Moscow’s trap.
Georgia and Russia have been feuding since 1992 over two Georgian ethnic enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose people differ in ethnicity and language from Georgians and who wanted to rejoin Russia.
The young, US-educated Saakashvili became Georgia’s president in 2003 after an uprising, believed organized by CIA and financed by US money, overthrew the former leader, Eduard Shevardnadze. I came to know and respect Shevardnadze in Moscow when he was Mikhail Gorbachev’s principal ally and architect of Soviet reform.
Had the able, clever Shevardnadze still been in power, this misadventure would never have happened.
Saakashvili quickly became the golden boy of US rightwing neoconservatives and their Israeli allies, who held him a model of how to turn former Russian-dominated states into "democratic" US allies. Georgian critics claim Saakashvili kept power by intimidation, bribery, and vote rigging. The youthful Georgian leader, his head swelled by promises of US support and NATO membership, launched a war of words against Moscow.
Amazingly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a supposed Russian expert, even publicly assured Saakashvili that the US would "fight" for Georgia. Washington’s latest fiasco falls squarely into her lap.
US money, military trainers, advisers, and intelligence agents poured into the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Israeli arms dealers, businessmen and intelligence agents quickly followed, reportedly selling some $200 million or more of military equipment to the Georgian government.
By expanding its influence into Georgia, the Bush administration brazenly flouted agreements with Moscow made by president George H.W. Bush not to expand NATO into the former USSR. President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both violated this pact. Under the feeble Yeltsin regime, bankrupt Russia could do nothing. But under Putin, newly wealthy Russia finally pushed back after a long series of provocations fromWashington.
Russia’s tough deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, sneeringly observed that Georgia had become a "US satellite." He was absolutely right. And Ivanov, a former KGB colleague of Vlad Putin, knows a satellite when he sees one. Georgia provided the US oil and gas pipeline routes from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan that bypassed Russian territory. Russia was furious its Caspian Basin energy export monopoly had been broken, vowing revenge.
Now that the Russians have checkmated the US and client Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia will likely move into Russia’s orbit. The west rightly backed independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who are ethnically and linguistically different from Georgians, should have as much right to secede from Georgia.
Besides thwarting Bush’s clumsy attempt to further advance US influence into Russia’s Caucasian underbelly, Putin delivered a stark warning to Ukraine and the Central Asian states: don’t get too close to Washington. Putin put the US on the strategic defensive and showed that NATO’s new eastern reaches – the Baltic, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Caucasus – are largely indefensible.
It’s a good thing Georgia was not admitted to NATO, as the White House had reportedly promised Saakashvili. Had Georgia been admitted before this crisis, the US and its NATO allies would have been in a state of war with Russia. Disturbingly, Germany’s conservative prime minister, Angelika Merkel, rushed to Tbilisi to assure Saakashvili that her nation still backed NATO membership for Georgia.
Is the west really ready to be dragged into a potential nuclear war for the sake of South Ossetia? Are American and German troops ready to fight in the Caucasus? Georgia is a bridge too far for NATO.
President George Bush, VP Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain all resorted to table pounding and Cold War rhetoric against Russia. McCain, whose senior foreign policy advisor is a neoconservative and was a registered lobbyist for Georgia, demanded that the US and NATO "punish" Russia and put it into diplomatic isolation.
Unfortunately, the indignant John McCain’s could not even properly pronounce "Abkhazia."
America’s neocon amen chorus demanded a confrontation with Russia, chanting their usual mantras about Munich, appeasement and the myths of World War II. One certainly wondered if the Caucasian fracas was not staged by the Republicans to provide Sen. McCain with the "three a.m. phone call" he has been longing for and a chance to sound tough. This he did, even though his rhetoric was empty and his solutions vapid. Barack Obama ducked the issue or issued a few tepid bromides about halting "Russian aggression."
Meanwhile, hypocrisy flew thicker than shellfire. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, and is threatening war against Iran, accused Russia of "bullying" and "aggression." Putin, who crushed the life out of Chechnya’s independence movement, piously claimed his army was saving Ossetians from Georgian ethnic cleansing and protecting their quest for independence.
Bush and McCain demand Russia be punished and isolated. The humiliated Bush is sending some US troops to Georgia to deliver "humanitarian" aid. Equally worrisome, the US rushed to sign a pact with Warsaw to station anti-missile missiles and anti-aircraft batteries, manned by US troops, in Poland. This response is dangerous, highly provocative, and immature. The next president will have to deal with the Bush administrations reckless and foolish acts in the Mideast, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and now, the Caucasus
The west must accept Russia has vital national interests in the Caucasus and the former USSR. Russia is a great power and must be afforded respect. The days of treating Russia like a banana republic are over. Have we learned nothing from World War I or II, both of which began with flare-ups in obscure Sarajevo and the Danzig Corridor?
The US’s most important foreign policy concern is keeping correct relations with Russia, which has thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at North America. Georgia is a petty sideshow. US missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic are a dangerous, unnecessary provocation that is sowing dragon’s teeth for future confrontation.
August 19, 2008
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.
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Neocons put US at Risk of Nuclear War with Russia (click on the pic at the following URL):
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/08/neocons-put-us-at-risk-of-nuclear-war.html
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NATO ships enter Black Sea for exercises
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 21, 2008
BRUSSELS, Belgium: NATO warships entered the Black Sea on Thursday for what the alliance said were long-planned exercises and routine visits to ports in Romania and Bulgaria.
The move is not linked to the tensions over Russia's invasion of Georgia, which lies on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, about 900 kilometers (550 miles) from the Romanian coast, said officials at NATO's military command in southern Belgium.
Three warships — from Spain, Germany and Poland — sailed into the Black Sea on Thursday. They are due to be joined by a U.S. frigate, the USS Taylor, later this week.
They are "conducting a pre-planned routine visit to the Black Sea region to interact and exercise with our NATO partners Romania and Bulgaria, which is an important feature of our routine planning," said Vice-Adm. Pim Bedet, deputy commander at allied maritime headquarters in Northwood, England.
However, the move risks increasing tensions with Russia which has deployed ships from its Black Sea fleet to the Georgian coast.
The NATO flotilla includes Spain's SPS Adm. Juan de Bourbon, Germany's FGS Luebeck and the Polish ship ORP General K Pulaski. Romanian and Bulgarian ships will join them for exercises during a three-week deployment which NATO says has been planned for over a year. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
