According to Putin, as quoted by Levy from Putin’s interview with CNN, “The suspicion would arise that someone in the United States created this conflict on purpose to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates in the competitive race for the presidency in the United States.” And more specifically, “They needed a small victorious war.”

What my piece, “How War Began in Georgia” demonstrates based on initial press reports in the region is the high probability that Georgia’s attack was carefully planned–perhaps too carefully for it to have been entirely the responsibility of Saakashvili and his military staff without any input from the American and Israeli advisors. These indicators may be listed as follows:

1. On August 6, Saakashvili announced Georgia’s acceptance of peace negotiations within the next day or so. This was exactly the day before the attack was launched. Saakashvili’s proposal was mentioned in a couple of the press reports published on Aug. 6 and 7, but has yet to be acknowledged by the NYT. In light of what later happened, it seems best explained as a diversionary tactic to diminish the anticipation of the attack that began just hours later.

2. The whole world’s attention at the time was on the Chinese Olympics that were just beginning to take place. Significantly, Putin was in attendance at these Olympics, so Russia’s leadership would be entirely in the hands of Dmitri Medyadev, who could be expected to be less likely to take effective counter steps against the attack.

3. The attack occurred throughout the night, when the 9,000 Russian troops used as peacekeepers in South Ossetia were undoubtedly confined to their quarters. These troops were stationed in South Ossetia with full international support in order to minimize conflict between Georgians and South Ossetians, so the only conceivable way to neutralize their active resistance was to launch the attack at night, when they had no idea a major operation had been undertaken.

4. The attack focused on the total destruction of the city of Tshkhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, very possibly in the effort to present its elimination as a fait accompli before the Russian troops could be mobilized. Presumably, the elimination of South Ossetia’s capital city was calculated to automatically win the war the day it began, thereby restoring South Ossetia to Georgian control before Russia could take steps to prevent this from happening.

And 5. The American response was almost instantaneous, almost as if planned. McCain gave aggressive press conferences from the very beginning, and the U.S. media excluded from consideration everything described above in items 1 to 4. The NYT, for example, has yet to admit that the attack began on the night of August 6 rather than a day later, thus obscuring the responsibility of Georgia instead of South Ossetia and the 9,000 Russian troops for what happened.

It is hard to believe that Saakashvili and his military leadership could have come up with such an intricate strategy on their own without Washington’s active complicity in planning the operation, not simply taking Georgia’s part once it was obvious the operation totally failed. American and Israeli advisors were present in Georgia at the time, and Saakashvili has repeatedly boasted of having had sustained contact with the top Republican leadership in Washington. Connect the dots, and conspiracy become most likely indeed. In other words, Putin is very probably telling the truth.

Edward Jayne

There was some prior blowback too, Edward, but it flashed across the media screen in the U.S. (in fact, in BBC instant headlines) and vanished into our Great Historical Black Hole, evidently to be forever little known or at all remembered in the Land of Brie.

About three weeks ago, Russia and China agreed to condemn the U.S. Shield, which as I noted in a comment to Dissident Voice at the time, represented a TRULY historic achievement by The Chipmunk. To wit, getting Russia and China together in opposition to the United States about anything of worldwide importance.

You’re absolutely right. If Georgia’s surprise invasion of South Ossetia were scheduled in late October, it would have been entirely beneficial to the McCain campaign. However, it came two months early, giving plenty of time for Obama to settle on Biden for his VP candidate with ample foreign policy experience and for at least some of the American public to realize that McCain is a dangerous candidate for the White House, ready to take action on everything that comes along, including events very probably encouraged by his own emissaries (in this instance his top foreign policy expert Randy Schoenemann, who also served as Georgia’s lobbyist in Washington).

Interestingly, U.S. outrage about Russia’s seemingly inexplicable attack against Georgia led to a quick settlement in the U.S.-Polish missile defense agreement that included the unanticipated provision that some of the missile batteries at the Russian border would be pointed directly into Russia and that they would be manned by a crew of about 100 American military personnel [see U.S. ad Poland in Missile Deal," by Thom Shanker and Nicholas Kulish on the front page of the August 15 NYT]. Blowback came with Russia’s pledge of more sophisticated anti-missile weaponry to Syria, the promise of similar benefits to Iran, and Israel’s quick effort to remove itself from the fray obviously in the effort to avoid provoking Russia into giving more generous such benefits to Iran. See Peter Baker’s August 22 NYT piece, “U.S. Sees Much to Fear in a Hostile Russia.”

So exactly when our economy is beset with the consequences of a double bubble in housing and finance, we verge on a double bubble in international warfare–both a 21st century crusade against infidel Muslims and a renewed Cold War against Russia. Obviously the coming election is of crucial importance in determining whether this is going to happen.

Edward Jayne

In August, 2006, two producers working for Fox News in Amman, Jordan resigned in protest of the network’s coverage. In their resignation letter, Serene Sabbagh and Jomana Karadsheh wrote “We can no longer work with a news organization that claims to be fair and balanced when you are so far from that.”

They went on to write “Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism.”

And here is what Serene Sabbagh had to say on her decision to resign:
“From the onset of the war in Lebanon, I was devastated at the way that Fox was handling the coverage from Lebanon in the U.S., and I felt there was bias, the slant, the racist remarks, the use of the word “we” meaning Israel, and it was just unbearable up until basically the massacre at Qana. And as a mother of three, watching the images, the raw images of children being pulled out of the rubble, and then I switched to Fox News to hear some of their anchors claiming that these little kids that were killed, these innocent victims that were killed, were human shields used by Hezbollah. And one of the anchors went as far as saying they were planted there by Hezbollah to win support in this war. And it was unbelievable. For me, that was the breaking point, and this is when I decided, me and my colleague Jomana, to hand in our resignation.”

What they should have done, if they could, was to take Fox News and their bosses to court. A society that condones and abets such falsities is no better than beasts in a jungle. The vemin and lice thriving in such a jungle have a far better code of conduct.

As for the effect on your presidential election, I think that’s another screw-up by Saakashvili’s Israeli minders. If all this had happened two months later, it might have precipitated McCain into the White House. Now, it happened early enough to allow Obama to choose Biden and more to the point, between now and November, the shouting will have died down, it will be clear that Europe is going to do nothing and US voters will be able to think calmly about whether they really want a confrontation with Russia, which I would guess they don’t. Georgia in October would have helped McCain, Georgia in August helps Obama.