Russian military in Georgia (2 Viewers)

[sv288]

Russia should be getting to the capital. Then Ukraine. Funny thing is that Staling wasn't Russian he was Georgian.

 

[PolarBear]

Three major US naval strike forces due this week in Persian Gulf
DEBKAfile Special Report
August 12, 2008, 10:04 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile’s military sources note that the arrival of the three new American flotillas will raise to five the number of US strike forces in Middle East waters – an unprecedented build-up since the crisis erupted over Iran’s nuclear program.
This vast naval and air strength consists of more than 40 carriers, warships and submarines, some of the last nuclear-armed, opposite the Islamic Republic, a concentration last seen just before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Our military sources postulate five objects of this show of American muscle:
1. The US, aided also by France, Britain and Canada, is finalizing preparations for a partial naval blockade to deny Iran imports of benzene and other refined oil products. This action would indicate that the Bush administration had thrown in the towel on stiff United Nations sanctions and decided to take matters in its own hands.
2. Iran, which imports 40 percent of its refined fuel products from Gulf neighbors, will retaliate for the embargo by shutting the Strait of Hormuz oil route chokepoint, in which case the US naval and air force stand ready to reopen the Strait and fight back any Iranian attempt to break through the blockade.
3. Washington is deploying forces as back-up for a possible Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.
4. A potential rush of events in which a US-led blockade, Israeli attack and Iranian reprisals pile up in a very short time and precipitate a major military crisis.
5. While a massive deployment of this nature calls for long planning, its occurrence at this time cannot be divorced from the flare-up of the Caucasian war between Russia and Georgia. While Russia has strengthened its stake in Caspian oil resources by its overwhelming military intervention against Georgia, the Americans are investing might in defending the primary Persian Gulf oil sources of the West and the Far East.
DEBKAfile’s military sources name the three US strike forces en route to the Gulf as the USS Theodore Roosevelt , the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Iwo Jima . Already in place are the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea opposite Iranian shores and the USS Peleliu which is cruising in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

 

[damian]

I feel really glad I live far away from all this. It all sounds a bit frightening.

 

[4th Hussar]

From what I have been able to see on the news the civilians are suffering most from this unfortunate event. Methinks that Georgia could use a good trauma surgeon right now.

 

[Canadian Samurai]

Randy, thanks for that article which may or may not be an accurate foreshadowing of coming events. So while alternative media like Debka are actually going out and reporting on major international geopolitical issues, mainstream media website CNN.com (with their huge international force of reporters) is only able to bring the world the following tabloid-worthy headlines (this is just a sample from their main homepage on August 13th 2008 - screenshot attached below as proof):

"Police: Man Locked kin in filthy trailer for 3 years"
"Chef Julia Child, others part of WWII spy network"
"'I killed her,' inmate allegedly whispers on tape"
"Vietnam to deport ex-rocker Glitter to UK"
"World's tallest woman, 53, dies in Indiana"
"And the winner of the worst writing of 2008 is ..."
"Tori dumps '90210'; Jolie takes Cruise role"
"Woman chases after crooks with broom"
"Stolen gnome travels to 12 countries"
"100-pound turtle surprises neighbors"
"iReport.com: Share thoughts on 'Tropic Thunder'"
Video: "Lisa Marie's confessions"
Video: "Plastic Surgery's Nip"

I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry at what CNN considers to be the most breaking news affecting people's lives. I used to go to CNN all the time for quality news but now they seemed to have digressed into absolute trash? According to this article other mainstream American media are no better: http://www.slate.com/id/2183032/ What does this say about the decadence and decline of Western culture I wonder? No mystery why South Ossetia wants to join Russia rather than Western-back Georgia - they can't stand our media any more.

 

[Harrytheheid]

I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry at what CNN considers to be the most breaking news affecting people's lives.

CS - Yup....for once, I have to agree with you. Even the good old BBC has been infected. Mind you - that all began in the late 1950's early 1960's.
Och, you even see much the same kind of thing happening on this forum - occasionally.
H

 

[Canadian Samurai]

Okay, I just popped on over to Foxnews.com and they contributed these additional quality headlines that greatly enhance my understanding of the world’s affairs:

“Bigfoot Trackers Say They've Got a Body | VIDEO”
“Buy Evidence of My Husband's Adultery on eBay”
“L.A. Man Kills Neighbor Over Loud Music, Police Say”
“FOXBusiness: House in Detroit Sells for $1”
“Ky. Student Gets Booted After Dress Deemed Too Short”
“Women on the Pill Have Bad Taste in Men, Study”

And here's another superb piece of reporting they recently posted under their "science news" section: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,400562,00.html

 

[PolarBear]

The plot thickens in the Great Game

from the Middle East Times August 11th, 2008

Again where is the US Media on this story?


SPECIAL REPORT: Kuwait Readying for War in Gulf?
CLAUDE SALHANIPublished: August 11, 2008

Leading the U.S. and British naval battle groups, and a French hunter-killer submarine, headed for the Gulf is the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (shown here) with its 80-plus combat planes. (Photo by CVN 71 via Newscom).
The small oil-rich emirate of Kuwait – situated between Iraq, Iran and an un-enviable geographic hard place on the northern end of the Persian Gulf – has reportedly activated its "Emergency War Plan" as a massive U.S. and European armada is reported heading for the region.
Coming on the heels of Operation Brimstone just a week ago that saw U.S., British and French naval forces participate in war games in the Atlantic Ocean, the object of which was to practice enforcing an eventual blockade on Iran, the joint task force is now headed for the Gulf and what could easily turn into a major confrontation with Iran.

The naval force comprises a U.S. Navy super carrier battle group and is accompanied by an expeditionary carrier battle group, a British Royal Navy carrier battle group and a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine.

Leading the pack is the nuclear-powered carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and its Carrier Strike Group Two; besides its 80-plus combat planes the Roosevelt normally transports, it is carrying an additional load of French Naval Rafale fighter jets from the French carrier Charles de Gaulle, currently in dry dock.

Also reported heading toward Iran is another nuclear-powered carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan and its Carrier Strike Group Seven; the USS Iwo Jima, the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and a number of French warships, including the nuclear hunter-killer submarine Amethyste.

Once the naval force arrives in the Gulf region it will be joining two other U.S. naval battle groups already on site: the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Peleliu; the Lincoln with its carrier strike group and the latter with an expeditionary strike group.

Telephone calls to the Pentagon were not returned by publication time.

This deployment is the largest naval task force from the United States and allied countries to assemble in the strategic waters of the Persian Gulf since the two Gulf wars.

The object of the naval deployment would be to enforce an eventual blockade on Iran, if as expected by many observers, current negotiations with the Islamic republic over its insistence to pursue enrichment of uranium, allowing it, eventually, to produce nuclear weapons yields no results.

Adding to the volatility is the presence of a major Russian navy deployment affected earlier this year to the eastern Mediterranean comprising the jewel of the Russian fleet, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov with approximately 50 Su-33 warplanes that have the capacity for mid-air refueling. This means the Russian warplanes could reach the Gulf from the Mediterranean, a distance of some 850 miles and would be forced to fly over Syria (not a problem) but Iraq as well, where the skies are controlled by the U.S. military, and the guided missile heavy cruiser Moskva. The Russian task force is believed to be composed of no less than a dozen warships as well as several submarines.

However, Russia is unlikely to get involved in a military showdown in the Persian Gulf, particularly at this time when it is engaged in a major confrontation with the Republic of Georgia in South Ossetia.

For Iran however, a naval blockade preventing it from importing refined oil would have devastating effects on its economy, virtually crippling the Islamic republic's infrastructure. Although Iran is a major oil producer and exporter, the country lacks refining facilities having to re-import its own oil once refined.

Iran's oil – both the exported crude as well as the returning refined product – passes through the strategic Straits of Hormuz, controlled by Iran on one side and the Sultanate of Oman – a U.S. ally – on the other. The strait is about 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, making it easy to control, but at the same time placing Western naval vessels within easy reach of Iran's Revolutionary Guards fast moving light crafts that could be used by Iranian suicide bombers.

Although Kuwait is on the opposite end of the entrance to the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, Kuwait City is less than 60 miles from Iran – and with good reason to worry.

"Kuwait was caught by surprise last time, when Iraqi troops invaded the small emirate and routed the Kuwaiti army in just a few hours," a former U.S. diplomat to Kuwait told the Middle East Times.

 

[1879fanatic]

Now, the Soviet woops sorry, the Russian Foreign Minister tells the rest of the world to "Forget Georgian territorial integrity". This is either a cry for help or a demonstration on how far the Russians can go before getting a reaction from the West like "not being invited to meetings anymore". If this was 40 years ago... never mind. Mike

 

[Alexdakar]

Wow the tallest woman died at 53 that's young.

 

[theBaron]

Wow the tallest woman died at 53 that's young.

But she had some of the attending health problems that come with excessive growth. I think she was also diabetic, and had some of the health problems that accompany that disease, too.

The previous couple of posts are spot-on with their observations about news reporting in this country. It is sensationalistic and geared towards 2-second sound bites and video clips. It is impossible to inform yourself correctly from that kind of information source.

I've said it before, TV is not the best way to transmit information. We process visual information much differently from auditory information, and the information in moving images differently from that in what we read.

Add to that the watered-down and/or biased curriculum taught for years in history classes in our schools, plus our cultural trait that few of us do look beyond our own state's borders, let alone the country's, and it's no wonder that the average person knows nothing about what's going on. And that is the real danger. A free republic requires citizens who are educated and aware.

Prost!
Brad

 

[Peter Reuss]

Now if Paris Hilton were to head to Georgia, we'd get exclusive coverage from all outlets!

 

[Combat]

Russia has close ties with Iran. Could be time for the strike on those nuclear reactors. That's going to happen anyway. A two for one deal.

 

[PolarBear]

Welcome Back to the 19th Century
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 13, 2008

By JOSEF JOFFE

Wait a minute, isn't this the 21st? Chronologically, it is. But last Friday, Russia -- like the mad scientist Emmett Brown in "Back to the Future" -- thrust us backward by about 150 years in the Caucasus: into the age of imperialism and geopolitics, resource wars and spheres of influence.

It was strictly 19th-century when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin casually announced that "war has started." In the old days, such pronunciamentos were routine; war, to recall Clausewitz, was just the "continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." (For the specifics, look up: the Crimean War, Prussia's conquest of Germany, the Balkan Wars; then go farther afield to the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars.)



But this is the 21st century, isn't it? At least in that vast swath extending from Berkeley to Berlin and to Beijing (with an outrigger in Moscow), anything "geo" could only refer to "economics." Welfare had replaced warfare. Tankers had replaced tanks, balance of payments the balance of power. At least in the Berlin-Berkeley Belt, all of us were playing win-win games, wheeling, dealing and consuming.

Chanting "no more war," we worried about "soft politics" and "soft power": how to battle AIDS and desertification, SARS and subprime crises. Sure, in international politics, it was still hardball -- the eternal struggle for influence and advantage, but without the ultima ratio. Basically, we in the West didn't think that somebody in the bleachers would empty an AK-47 at us.

Say hello to Vladimir Putin and his stand-in Dmitry Medvedev. By attacking Georgia, they have raised the curtain on a post-World War II premiere. They have launched the first real war in "Greater Europe" since 1945. (The 1990s clashes in the Balkans were secessionist/internal wars; the invasion of Prague in 1968 was, if you pardon the expression, an act of "bloc recentralization.")

But the Caucasus is the real thing: armies marching, fleets circling, rockets flaring. Many are blaming "hot-headed" President Mikheil Saakashvili for having baited the bear, and he is no angel, for sure. Didn't he go first by ordering his army into South Ossetia?

But in 1939, they also blamed the "hot-headed" Poles for refusing to placate Hitler, and so he just had to flatten Warsaw on Sept. 1. They also castigated the Czechs, a "faraway country of which we know little" for being so obstinate in resisting German demands on the Sudetenland.

Apologists for Russia can point to lots of mitigating circumstances, starting with the biggest one of Christmas Day 1991, when the hammer-and-sickle flag over the Kremlin went down for the last time, and up went the Russian tricolor. Poof, and a whole empire from the Baltic to Kazakhstan was suddenly gone. Yes, that chilled the Russian soul, and so did Georgia's love affair with the United States. How dare Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin, sidle up to the EU and NATO?

In the greater scheme of things, though, Georgia's geopolitical crimes pale against a simple historical truth: 8/8 is payback for 12/25, when the Soviet Empire expired.

That, as Mr. Putin has told us, was the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," and ever since he was anointed neo-czar in 2000, he has been working hard, and as time went by ever more ham-handedly, to reverse the verdict of the Cold War -- to regain what Russia had lost.

* * *

So, forget about Mr. Saakashvili's bluster and bumbling; think "revisionism" and "expansionism," terms beloved by diplomatic historians trying to explain the behavior of rock-the-boat states. A revisionist power wants back what it once had; an expansionist power wants more for itself and less for the rest. The R&E Syndrome is a handy way to explain all of Mr. Putin's strategy in the past eight years. Draw an arc from the Baltic to the Caspian and then start counting.

Moscow has unleashed a cyberwar against tiny Estonia, formerly a Soviet republic. It has threatened the Czech Republic and Poland with nuclear targeting if they host U.S. antimissile hardware on their soil that could not possibly threaten Russia's retaliatory potential. It has exploited small price disputes (normally resolved by lawyers screaming at each other) to stop gas deliveries and thus show Ukraine, Belarus and former Warsaw Pact members who runs the "Common House of Europe," to recall Mikhail Gorbachev's famous phrase.

Mr. Putin has always reserved the harshest treatment for Georgia. Tbilisi's mortal sin was the attempt to get out from under the bear's paw and snuggle up to the West. Ever since, Moscow has tried to subjugate Georgia or to split it up. It was either undermining the government by cutting off trade and gas, or putting the whole country on the butcher's block. Hence Russia's support, including arms and troops, for the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Reports from the fighting suggest that Russia's war aims go way beyond driving Georgian troops from South Ossetia. According to President Saakashvili, the Russians have captured the city of Gori in central Georgia, cutting the country into two. Moscow denies this.

The object is pure 19th-century: domination plus winning the resource war. Georgia is the "last of the independents," so to speak, a critical conduit of oil and gas that goes around Russia into the Black Sea and (with a planned gas pipeline) via Turkey into the Mediterranean. It is no accident that Russian planes are bombing throughout the country, and narrowly "missed" pipelines. The message to the West is: "You don't really want to invest in energy here."

If Moscow gains control over Georgia, it is "good night, and good luck" to Europe. All of its gas and oil bought in Eurasia (minus the Middle East) will pass through Russian hands in one way or the other.

So, in the Caucasus, we are not observing restless natives turning faraway "frozen conflicts" into hot ones. Who ever heard of Abkhazia? And isn't "Ossetia" some kind of caviar? No, these are the flash points of the 21st century's Great Game, and the issue is: Who will gain control over the Caspian Basin, the richest depository of strategic resources next to the Middle East.

By penetrating deeply into Georgia, Russia is signaling to the West: "We will!" Alas, neither the U.S. nor the EU was prepared for the return of the 19th century. They thought that Clausewitz was dead once and for all, that it was win-win games now and forever, that Russia, lured by respectability and riches, would turn into a responsible great power. Apparently, George F. Kennan, the diplomat and historian, had it right. To him is attributed a very apropos aphorism: "Russia can have at its borders only vassals or enemies."

But the issue runs a lot deeper as of 8/8: What are Russia's borders? Will it be satisfied with Georgia? As Prince Gorchakov, Russian chancellor, put it in 1864, in the midst of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus: "The greatest difficulty is to know when to stop." And what is the regime's character? Government by, for and of goons?

At least we now know one thing: Dreams of multipolarity, of governance by committee, are premature. Revisionist powers are never responsible. Which goes for China, too. Though it pursues a "peaceful rise," it also wants more for itself and less for the common good. Indeed, it was China and the other wannabe-superpower, India, that buried the Doha Round and thus any chance for expanded free trade.

Which leaves us with the two usual suspects, America and Europe, to take care of global business. And with NATO, the alliance supposedly doomed by victory in the Cold War. With 8/8, Messrs. Putin and Medvedev have given the old lady more steroids than might have been consumed on the way to the Beijing Olympics.

Mr. Joffe is publisher-editor of Die Zeit and a fellow of the Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford.

 

[bromhead]

Spot on as to dismal coverage of events etc,,four times as much today on the midget sino gymnasts as anything in that part of the world. One brief not repeated bit on the Israeli F16s and upgrades showing the dorsal packs added,systems,,interviews w pilots speaking sort of candidly from behind shields,helmets of course. One rather contemptuous about any Iranian F14s in any sort of flying condition these days.
I recently spoke w some younger types on vacation about events etc. They seemed interested but soon it was a bit obvious that there was almost no awareness of history pre 1990, mistakes repeated etc. All educated including a degree or two in the "Newer " school system, this in the present net age.

 

[theBaron]

Now if Paris Hilton were to head to Georgia, we'd get exclusive coverage from all outlets!

Sorry, Rev, I wouldn't watch, she's a skank, I don't think she's attractive at all, and worse, that head is empty.

Hard to believe she's Kim Richard's niece.

But you've got the right idea. Fox should send Laurie Dhue, Ainsley Earhart and Julie Banderas to cover the story. They'd get the highest ratings ever.

It's the aptly-named Fox News Network.

Prost!
Brad

 

[Combat]

Mikhail Gorbachev is on Larry King tonight. Should be interesting.

 

[Njja]

Why is anyone suprised? Russians simply cannot be trusted, not today, tomorrow or ever. They will say and do anything to get their way.

I especially like them saying there is a cease fire while they continue to attack and move troops into the area.

Last thing we need to do is get involved.

 

[Louis Badolato]

Looks like Peter Hopkirk is going to have to write an annex to his book "The Great Game".

And I wouldn't trust our media to cover a garbage can.

 

[Njja]

Sorry, Rev, I wouldn't watch, she's a skank, I don't think she's attractive at all, and worse, that head is empty.

Hard to believe she's Kim Richard's niece.

But you've got the right idea. Fox should send Laurie Dhue, Ainsley Earhart and Julie Banderas to cover the story. They'd get the highest ratings ever.

It's the aptly-named Fox News Network.

Prost!
Brad

Laurie Dhue........is gone from Fox