US “Advisors” Already In Georgia, Ossetia?

Apparently so, if this Russian paper can be believed:

Thousands of mercenaries are fighting for Georgia in this burning conflict with South Ossetia. They are commanded by the U.S. military instructors, RIA Novosti reported with reference to a high-ranked officer of Russia’s military intelligence.

[…]

The U.S. military instructors directly command and coordinate actions of mercenaries without being involved in actual fighting, the source specified. According to intelligence data, there are roughly 1,000 military instructors of the United States in Georgia.

Task force of Russia has annihilated a few groups of mercenaries. Some of mercenaries have been captured, and investigators are working with them, the source said.

Hmmm. This is beginning to look like a combination of World War One and Vietnam, right down to the dodgy reporting:

American broadcaster CNN has been accused of using the wrong pictures in their coverage of the conflict in South Ossetia. A Russian cameraman says footage of wrecked tanks and ruined buildings, which was purported to have been filmed in the town of Gori, in fact showed the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

Gori was said to be about to fall under the control of the Russian army but the cameraman says the video was actually shot in Tskhinvali, which had been flattened by Georgian shelling.

How very interesting. Of course, most of us would never know the difference anyway.

The Personal Is Political

According to local radio and TV news reports, Cindy McCain paid a visit to a Detroit-area hospital for treatment when she was “injured” by someone who shook her hand too vigorously. The doctors diagnosed her pain as aggravation of carpal tunnel syndrome, and she continued her campaigning with her arm in a sling.

I’m glad Cindy was able to get medical attention when she needed it. But of course she would: she can afford it. 

Think of the thousands of people who get repetitive-motion injuries from their work, and can neither afford to get medical treatment for it nor quit their jobs, so that they lives their lives in agony.

Think about the Republicans’ universal health-care plan: don’t get sick.

How will you vote this November?

It Isn’t Paranoia If They Really Are Out to Get Us

[Edited to update the information.]

Today a man walked into the Arkansas State Democratic Headquarters and shot the state party chairman, Bill Gwatney. Mr. Gwatney died four hours later.

The police shot the suspect; he died after being airlifted to a nearby hospital.

Did the assailant own books by Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and other rightwing hate-spewers, just like the man who killed the parishioners of a liberal church in Knoxville, Tennessee?

More on Georgian conflict

It turns out that 1% of the world’s oil transits Georgia. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline had already been closed due to attacks by Kurds.

The Guardian is reporting that the Russians have introduced (or simply allowed) militias composed of Ossetians, Cossacks, and Chechens to pillage behind them. Young boys and girls are being taken by the militias back to Ossetia. While atrocities are the essence of all war, reports of noble Russian motives in saving the Ossetians should be taken with a grain of salt.

An Ossetian’s View Of Georgian Aggression And Russia’s Response

Most of the US media seems to be working hard to depict the Ossetia-Georgia-Russia conflict as a simple matter of Evil Russians Massacring Innocent Georgians Without Cause, which is why it was a pleasant surprise to see this letter in yesterday’s StarTribune:

RUSSIA ATTACKS GEORGIA
Tbilisi started it

I’ve had a phone conversation with my Ossetian cousin who has relatives in Tskhinvali, the capital of Southern Ossetia. He told me about the terrible, indiscriminate shelling of their town by the Georgian army at the beginning of the conflict. There were numerous victims among the civilian population, mostly the ethinic minority of Ossetians. The center of Tskhinvali is destroyed.

Although Georgia is an ally of the United States and we need to support it, there can be no justification for its leaders to authorize mass bombardment of its own people. What are the chances that after this bloodshed the Ossetians would want to live peacefully in the same country with their Georgian neighbors?

The State Department should warn Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that he cannot build a democratic state based on coercion and the killing of civilians.

VLAD FRANGULOV, MINNEAPOLIS

Mikhail Gorbachev has also written about the devastation wreaked by Georgia on the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali:

LOL Bush, Beijing Style

Courtesy of the Guardian.