Georgia hoped US would intervene on their behalf, as a favor for Iraq support

[BurtWorm]

What a bunch of naive bastards running Georgia, eh? But it's hard to feel sympathy for a government that thought the US would actually spend American blood and political capital against Russia, as realistic a goal as that might seem considering the incompetent lunatics in charge of the US government these days.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/world/europe/10georgia.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all



Russian officials said that strong ties to the United States had emboldened Mr. Saakashvili, who wants to make Georgia part of NATO, into sparking the conflict by trying seize back South Ossetia. But there were signs that Mr. Saakashvili was feeling the limits of how much American help he could expect after signing up as an ally in Iraq.

Pentagon officials said late on Friday that the Georgian government had officially requested assistance in airlifting home the approximately 2,000 Georgian troops now in Iraq. The request was under review, and standard procedures would indicate that the United States government would honor the request, officials said.

Alexander Lomaya, secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, said only Western intervention could prevent all-out war. “We still believe that a unified and consolidated Western pressure and Western opinion can bring some fruit,” he said.

Mr. Lomaya said conflict arose because Russia sought to “thwart its neighbors’ movement toward Western society and Western values.”

“Russia has clearly decided to redraw the borders of the Eastern Europe map of the post-cold war situation,” Mr. Lomaya said. “If the world is not able to stop Russia here, then Russian tanks and Russian paratroopers can appear in every European capital.”

In the early 1990s, he said, Russia began cultivating separatist movements along the outer limits of its territory — in Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states — in an attempt to consolidate its sphere of influence. Russia has funneled military and financial support to large ethnic-Russian populations in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russian officials, too, blamed outside meddling for stoking the conflict. In a news conference, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia said Georgian attacks on Russian citizens in South Ossetia “amounted to ethnic cleansing,” and reserved some of his harshest language for Georgia’s allies, referring at one point to “Mr. Saakashvili and his Western friends.”

[glowing]

1. kinda like when Poppy Bush said it would look the other way if they decided

to invade Kuwait.. another trick of the hand by the Neo-Cons. I wonder where the President studied in the US? Or what think tank he associated with. We certainly do well on exporting democracy.

[seemslikeadream]

2. we can't be everywhere we start trouble

[AlCzervik]

3. “Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,”

Oh yes, yes he did, George W. Bush said that, yes he did.

[BurtWorm]

5. Yes, he did say that.

Being the genius that he is.

[bahrbearian]

4. “Mr. Saakashvili and his Western friends.”

Oh boy, start up the Cold War chimpy. Asshole