Trouble in South Ossetia escalates

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Okay, well its easy to think its about race identity when you went on a rant about Zbignew Brzezinski trying to destroy the Slav, and America trying to wreck Slavs, etc., etc. I don't think its fair to discard the sovereignty of Georgia simply because the collapse of the Soviet State was not handled well. And I don't think rallying behind Wilson-style ethnic self-determination is the right way to deal with a state that's not guaranteeing protections for its citizens and rule of law. Not every tribe gets a country. Sorry.

It's okay. I also agree that Wilsonianism won't work--that's why I support the integration of Abkhazia and Ossetia into Russia rather than their independence. It is a better and more viable option than independence, and the Georgians have shown they can't run the places, and the inhabitants don't want them running them, that's all.

As for Zbignew Brzezinski, he is a Pole, and his hatred is directed against Russians in particular, but if you'd read some of it's stuff it's some of the most incredibly vitriolic attacks on a people I can ever remembering reading, and he was very influential in the State Department.

[Pelranius]

Brzezinski is so virulently Russophobic that he has forgotten that Chinese and Muslim peoples also exist.

In fact, his proposals on relations with them are quite sensible. Perhaps all his lunancy is stored in the "Russia related matters" of his mind?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Poles just...can't...be neutral about Russia. Neither can their Lithuanian cousins. My Lithuanian firend's dad started dating a Russian immigrant. His mother stopped - full stopped - talking to him. For months.

[Sea Skimmer]

Those two separatists regions between them have only about a quarter of a million people, just 70,000 in south ossetia, and only about 2/3rds actually accepted Russian passports. Why the fuck should such tiny numbers get the right to declare sovereignty when so many other far more numerous people are trampled the world around? They can move to Russia if they want to, the only reason they ever got this semblance of independence is because Georgiahad no military at all in 1992, and was willing to accept a ceasefire rather then see pointless bloodshed continue. Hell even Kosovo at least had a couple million people, making it more significant then the average city on the world stage.

[Phantasee]

What I don't understand is why Georgia is apparently blank on Google Maps. There's not a single city marked on it, same with Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Argentina, as far as I can tell.

[Axis Kast]

May I also remark that even if one can rightfully be skeptical about Russian sources, it is bad pool to simply stamp them "biased" and refuse to consider them at all? Take them with a grain of salt, by all means, but rejection out of hand does nothing for the debate save declare where your sympathies lie and that you refuse to consider alternative views.

I have trouble accepting a Russian-language source when it is the only available source alleging Georgian atrocities.

This isn't simply a blanket condemnation of all things Russian, but a reaction to (1) the obvious defects with Russian media in general, and (2) the fact that Russia is now at war with Georgia, thus giving it obvious reasons to make political hay.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Those two separatists regions between them have only about a quarter of a million people, just 70,000 in south ossetia, and only about 2/3rds actually accepted Russian passports. Why the fuck should such tiny numbers get the right to declare sovereignty when so many other far more numerous people are trampled the world around? They can move to Russia if they want to, the only reason they ever got this semblance of independence is because Georgiahad no military at all in 1992, and was willing to accept a ceasefire rather then see pointless bloodshed continue. Hell even Kosovo at least had a couple million people, making it more significant then the average city on the world stage.

Well, I am not supporting their independence, obviously.

[Axis Kast]

Given his comment about the possibility of moving to Russia, I take it that SeaSkimmer feels Georgia's decision to try and retain/restore those two provinces was understandable.

[Straha]

Russia and Germany expanding their territory on unwilling people through force and then subjecting them through brute power: Perfectly acceptable?

The only area that would have resisted is Bohemia, and I proposed making it an autonomous protectorate. If it wanted independence again, it would probably be granted. If the Russians and Poles don't want to be immoral, well, they can just not invade.

And Lithuania. And Estonia. And Latvia. Etc.

To address as to why this is an issue, it's hypocrisy. You say on one hand that Russia has the moral obligation to defend its Serb brothers from mistreatment and oppression in Ossetia on one hand, saying that Ossetian self-determination should rule supreme. While, on the other hand, you blithely ignore Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Bohemian self-determination. If you dropped self-determination as a pretext and acknowledged your reasoning as "Russia is a big power, Georgia is small. Russia should get what it can take, and tough cookies to Georgia if it can't stop them." then there'd be no hypocrisy in your posts at least. Moral bankruptcy, yes. But in this world that's no big deal.

Actually, if you re-read the article, it shows quite clearly that the local government authorities do not like the soldiers. In fact the police chief even apologized for their actions to the reporter according to the article. It would not surprise me in the least if these mercenaries declared themselves to be part of the Bosnian army to be on the winning side when the dust settled. Can you show evidence of any of their SS ideology showing up in other units or from Bosniak officials in power then or now?

Why would they have come there except to fight for the Bosniaks in the first place, praytell?

Shall we re-read my post?

It would not surprise me in the least if these mercenaries declared themselves to be part of the Bosnian army to be on the winning side when the dust settled.

So, in other words, OF COURSE THEY BLOODY CAME TO FIGHT FOR THE BOSNIAKS. I said as much in the post. What you didn't prove (and blithely ignored) is whether the Bosniaks wanted these mercenaries to fight for them, or that the Bosniak central government ever espoused or supported that band of mercenaries' position. It's quite possible that, in a war zone with no strong central government, a group of 'idealists' got their hands on weapons (going for as low as $5 an AK-47 over in Albania on the street at the time), declared themselves to be supporters of the Bosnian government and acting on their own initiative secured that town for the Bosniak cause whether the Bosnians wanted them to or not. And judging by the fact that the Bosnian chief of police in that very article said he had no control over these thugs, I'd imagine that the government didn't want them there.

[Pelranius]

Strangely enough, the local Islamic fundamentalists (as opposed to foreign fighters) in Bosnia fought on the side of the Serbs.

Which doesn't look too crazy in context, when everyone decided to the raise the colors of all the collaborationist outfits from WWII, the SS Hanjar, the Serbian Chetniks and the Croatian Ustase. Which is sort of weird, when one would think that the various ethnic leaders would want their soldiers to have a positive mindset (i.e. do not name your unit after losers to give your troops a positive mindset. The Partisans defeated the Hanjar, Chetniks and Ustase).

Weird.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Let's look at what a mercenary is.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
mer·ce·nar·y Audio Help /ˈmɜrsəˌnɛri/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mur-suh-ner-ee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation adjective, noun, plural -nar·ies.
–adjective
1. working or acting merely for money or other reward; venal.
2. hired to serve in a foreign army, guerrilla organization, etc.
–noun
3. a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army.
4. any hireling.

Hmm, it appears that mercenaries need to be paid.

[Straha]

Let's look at what a mercenary is.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
mer·ce·nar·y Audio Help /ˈmɜrsəˌnɛri/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mur-suh-ner-ee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation adjective, noun, plural -nar·ies.
–adjective
1. working or acting merely for money or other reward; venal.
2. hired to serve in a foreign army, guerrilla organization, etc.
–noun
3. a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army.
4. any hireling.

Hmm, it appears that mercenaries need to be paid.

GASP! Look at the bolded section above. If I have control of a town to such an extent that the police are afraid of me, and I'm certain of being on the winning side when the dust settles I'm pretty sure that I can get whatever sort of 'other reward' I want out of the town and its occupants. Even if that reward is only the personal satisfaction that I've helped further the goals of the Ulema in Bosnia.

That being said I applaud on how you merrily skimmed by the rest of the post without even a backwards glance. And you have again ignored the request for proof that, as you put it in your own words, "the fucking Bosniaks worshiped the ideal of the SS Hanjar Division and other vile nazi-era crimes their fathers had committed, and wanted to impose Sharia law on all of Bosnia-Herzegovina." So, can you provide any proof beyond that piddling band of thugs that the Bosnian government publicly venerated the Hanjar Division and espoused its doctrines for general consumption?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

GASP! Look at the bolded section above. If I have control of a town to such an extent that the police are afraid of me, and I'm certain of being on the winning side when the dust settles I'm pretty sure that I can get whatever sort of 'other reward' I want out of the town and its occupants. Even if that reward is only the personal satisfaction that I've helped further the goals of the Ulema in Bosnia.

That being said I applaud on how you merrily skimmed by the rest of the post without even a backwards glance. And you have again ignored the request for proof that, as you put it in your own words, "the fucking Bosniaks worshiped the ideal of the SS Hanjar Division and other vile nazi-era crimes their fathers had committed, and wanted to impose Sharia law on all of Bosnia-Herzegovina." So, can you provide any proof beyond that piddling band of thugs that the Bosnian government publicly venerated the Hanjar Division and espoused its doctrines for general consumption?

Two light infantry brigades worth of troops organized into a division is not a piddling band. The issue with Sharia law, I admit, I've already ceded toward Netko on--he was quite willing to acknowledge that the President of Bosnia was a thoroughly unsavoury individual, and on that count I'll concede to overstating the point. But trying to claim that there is absolutely no connection between an armed force and the nation it's operating in would really put the burden of proof on you, not me. They had to get ammunition, etc, somewhere, even if the territories they controlled were self-sufficient in foodstuffs.

[Broomstick]

Shit, I'm less Russian than you are, Broomstick. I'm as Russian as fucking bochwurst. My family nontheless lived there for about 150 years, so I have a certain affinity with the Russian people which may or may not be misplaced.

Part of the problem with that region is the "you aren't really X even though your family has lived in Xland for YYYY years!" attitude. But let's be honest, it's not restricted to just Eastern Europe - think of all those Koreans who have lived in Japan all their lives, have never been outside Japan, speak Japanese as their native tongue, and nonetheless legally not Japanese. WTF? Or maybe I'm just biased as an American living in a country where anyone can become a citizen.

If your family lived in Russian for several generations then as far as I'm concerned their Russian, at least in culture. However, given their social status, their experience was different from Russians in other social strata.

I was just trying to explain that my interest in the Russian side of this conflict was based off of personal reasons rather than the previously supposed ideological nutjobbery attested to, which I actually don't have.

I have an interest in the Russian side of things as well, but I don't kneejerk into assuming the Russians are in the right. Frankly, I know next to nothing about this particular conflict and don't feel I can have a definitive opinion until I do more research into the matter. I am inclined to think the Georgians started this clusterfuck, at least as far as the shooting, but that doesn't mean the Russian response was proportional - or maybe it was. As I said, I don't feel I'm yet in a position to have an informed opinion. Due to having to catch up on chores after a very tiring week and what I think is the start of head cold I haven't been able to really research this or look into third-party sources.

Anyway, are you quite done with accusing me of antisemitism?

Excuse me? I don't believe you're an anti-Semite, nor do I recall making that accusation. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding between us arising from sarcasm?

You are the only fucked up bitch on this board who could have managed to turn my willingness to try and COMPROMISE with you and ADMIT TO THE CRIMES OF THE TSARIST ERA onto an attack on your family! And here I admired you and respected you and now I'm just goddamned well crying over the fact that you've chosen to misinterpret me so thoroughly.

Well, gee, maybe after generations of hearing "you aren't really Russians" we DO tend to be a bit kneejerk - that is what I thought you were saying and if that wasn't what was intended then I apologize for the misinterpreting your words.

The goddamned Tsarists did some absolutely horrible things to Jews, including the fact that they CONSIDERED THEM TO BE PARASITES WHO WERE NOT ACTUALLY RUSSIANS AND NOT ACTUALLY PART OF THE RUSSIAN STATE.

Let's be honest here - that's what just about everyone in Europe did (and some still do). Don't just tar the Russians with the brush when they're far from the only guilty party. Hell, in their defense what they mostly did was impose the Pale of Settlement as opposed to simply attempting to exterminate them as the Nazis did - not that the Pale was a wonderful thing, but it wasn't the worst of all possible situations, either.

Because you WANT me to be an evil autocrat? Because you've decided in your head that I am one and I can't ever change, or something? What the hell did I do to deserve that?

Marina, your lust for authoritarian government is ... well, let's just say that we are in great disagreement on how to govern a nation and I suspect we're going to continue to differ. I don't think you're incapable of change, it's just that you think in such absolute terms that even your best ideas aren't workable in the real world.

Nobody likes the current situation in South Ossetia. That's why the whole world is looking at it going "Shit - this could get even uglier". Then you come waltzing in declaring one side morally better than the other or some such and accusing anyone with a different opinion of "Russiaphobia" - it's just not in accord with reality. There is no "moral" way to conduct war, which is when you kill people and break things. Civilians always get killed. You can't attack troops in a city without getting "collateral damage" which, when you get down to it, are non-combatants bleeding to death in the streets.

I grew up in an ethnically Russian family in the US during the Cold War. If anyone had an experience of "Russiaphobia" you'd expect it to be me but I just didn't see it. We had some concern when one of my sisters applied for a job with the Department of Defense but it turned out the Feds were disappointed we hadn't maintained the language in our family. There was certainly a conflict between the governments of the US and USSR, and some fears one both sides were quite legitimate, but this "Russiaphobia" you speak of... I just don't see it. The Russians have, historically, acted as arrogant, overbearing assholes at times which is more or less true of ANY empire-building nation. That's not bias against Russia, that's knowing history.

I AM working on changing that. Now that I've come to accept how this country's course is wrong, I'm actually going to pony up and get the fuck out--just give me seven or eight years to get my life in order, thanks much.

Well, I hope you find a nation to your liking. Myself, I'm inclined to stay - my experience with traveling outside the US made me realize that I am, for better or worse, very much American so I guess I'll be staying and trying to make the best of it. The course of the US is capable of changing, I am optimistic it will be for the better within my lifetime.

Having minor noble ancestry does not make you nobility, nor, in this day and age, guarantee you shit.

As if I don't know that already. I learned that the goddamned hard way, thank you very much. Granted, I probably am a lot more bitter than anyone who was born poor, but you can't fault me for that, I think, with such an abrupt fall from grace and prosperity as I had.

Being poor sucks even when you're used to it - having to learn the necessary survival skills on the fly is even worse. My family does have centuries of experience in getting by on very little, my parents' foray into the middle class did not erase that from our family culture. In that, the peasantry does have an advantage.

[Broomstick]

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Do you realize how far you've gone over the edge in your insane hatred of me

Chill out, Marina.

We don't hate you.

Really, we don't.

Most days, we like you a lot.

But right now you're acting like a 12-year-old drama queen in the midst of a meltdown. We know you have issues. We sympathize. But at a certain point we have to tell you that you're overreacting. You are. We're telling you this not because we hate you, but because we LIKE you.

When you're friends say you're going over the top, you're going over the top. Take a deep breath and step back from the fight.

[loomer]

I would like to extend a voice of sanity and say that, were I a religious man, I would be praying for this conflict to come to a swift and peaceful end without further deaths or injuries to either side.

All of you baying for the blood of one side or another need to calm down, remember that these are people, and then continue. Edi, Russians are people too. Marina, so are Georgians. And the same to the rest of you.

Hell, plenty of them are all interrelated and share bloodlines, so praying for the deaths of Russian soldiers is also praying for the deaths of cousins, uncles and nephews of Georgian citizens.

[Straha]

But trying to claim that there is absolutely no connection between an armed force and the nation it's operating in would really put the burden of proof on you, not me. They had to get ammunition, etc, somewhere, even if the territories they controlled were self-sufficient in foodstuffs.

I'll gladly concede that there might have been some support from the Bosnian government. But I have severe doubts that the Bosnian government had any more association with the group than the EU has with mercenary groups it's hired in the past in Africa. And, I repeat this perhaps a third time, the acrimony evident between the Bosnian government and the mercenary group in the article severely underlies your claim that "the fucking Bosniaks worshiped the ideal of the SS Hanjar Division and other vile nazi-era crimes their fathers had committed," as does the fact that, according to your article, a grand majority of the mercenaries were foreigners. So, since your article is clearly insufficient proof to your claims if examined with any degree of critical reading, either concede that you were wrong or back up your claims.

[Guardsman Bass]

This New York Times article is saying that Russian forces are actually in Georgia "proper" now beyond South Ossetia.

TBILISI, Georgia — Russia expanded its attacks on Georgia on Sunday, moving tanks and troops through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advancing toward the city of Gori in central Georgia, in its first direct assault on a Georgian city with ground forces during three days of heavy fighting, Georgian officials said.

The maneuver — along with bombing of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi — seemed to suggest that Russia’s aims in the conflict had gone beyond securing the pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to weakening the armed forces of Georgia, a former Soviet republic and an ally of the United States whose Western leanings have long irritated the Kremlin.

Russia’s moves, which came after Georgia offered a cease-fire and said it had pulled its troops out of South Ossetia, caused widespread international alarm and anger and set the stage for an intense diplomatic confrontation with the United States.

Two senior Western officials said that it was unclear whether Russia intended a full invasion of Georgia, but that its aims could go as far as destroying its armed forces or overthrowing Georgia’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

“They seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point,” one senior Western diplomat said, speaking anonymously under normal diplomatic protocol.

The escalation of fighting raised tensions between Russia and its former cold war foes to their highest level in decades. President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO admit the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.

But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is showing a resolve to reassert its dominance in a region it has always considered its “near abroad.”

The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, is the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia also escalated its assault Sunday on despite strong diplomatic warnings from Mr. Bush and European leaders, underscoring the limits of Western influence over Russia at a time when the rest of Europe depends heavily on Russia for natural gas and the United States needs Moscow’s cooperation if it hopes to curtail what it sees as a nuclear weapons threat from Iran.

President Bush, in Beijing for the Olympics, strongly criticized the Russian attacks, especially outside South Ossetia, and urged an immediate ceasefire.

In an interview on NBC on Monday morning, he said he had been “very firm” with both Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, and its president, Dmitri Medvedev.

Earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney intensified the administration’s warnings to Russia. In a telephone conversation with the Georgian president, he said “that Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community,” a spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said in a statement released by the White House.

Russian officials say Georgia provoked the assault by attacking South Ossetia last week, causing heavy civilian casualties. But Western diplomats and military officials said they worried that Russia’s decision to extend the fighting and open a second front in Abkhazia indicated that it had sought to use a relatively low-level conflict in a conflict-prone part of the Caucasus region to extend its influence over a much broader area.

There was heavy fighting on Sunday on two fronts. Russian artillery shells slammed the city of Gori, a major military installation and transportation hub in Georgia. In the separatist region of Abkhazia, Russian paratroopers and their Abkhaz allies battled Georgian special forces and tried to cross the boundary into undisputed Georgian territory, Georgian officials said.

Russia dropped a bomb on Tbilisi’s international airport shortly before Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France, who was sent by the European Union to try to mediate, was due to land, Georgian officials said. It twice bombed an aviation factory on the outskirts of the capital. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet patrolled the coast of Abkhazia, and its Defense Ministry said Russian warships had sunk a Georgian gunboat that fired on them.

The Kremlin declined to say whether its troops had entered Georgia proper but said all its actions were intended to strike at Georgian military forces that had fired on its peacekeeping troops in South Ossetia.

A senior Russian defense official, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said early Sunday that Russia did not intend to “break into” Georgian territory.

The Bush administration said it would seek a resolution from the United Nations Security Council condemning Russian military actions in Georgia.

In a heated exchange with his Russian counterpart at the United Nations, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad of the United States accused the Kremlin of seeking to oust Mr. Saakashvili.

He charged that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had said as much Sunday morning in a telephone conversation with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, telling her “that the democratically elected president of Georgia ‘must go,’ ” Mr. Khalilzad said. Mr. Khalilzad said the comment was “completely unacceptable.”

In Washington, American officials said that Georgian troops had tried to disengage but that the Russians had not allowed them to.

“The Georgians told them, ‘We’re done. Let us withdraw,’ ” one American military official said. “But the Russians are not letting them withdraw. They are pursuing them, and people are seeing this.”

The official was not authorized to brief the press and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official added: “This is not about military objectives. This is about a political objective: removing a thorn in their side.”

Tensions with Mr. Saakashvili escalated when he made a centerpiece of his presidency the reunification of Georgia with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, pro-Russian regions that won de facto autonomy in fighting in the early 1990s.

Russia has issued passports to many residents in the territories and has stationed peacekeeping troops in them. Heavy fighting broke out last week in South Ossetia when Georgian troops tried to take its capital, in what seems to have been a major miscalculation.

Reports of the death toll varied widely, from the low hundreds to more than 2,000, but none could be independently verified.

Russian officials say more than 30,000 South Ossetians have fled into Russia.

Russia says it is acting to protect residents there and to punish Georgia for the assault, which Georgia says was to protect Georgian enclaves in the territory from attack and to push out illegally deployed Russian troops.

Russian officials told Russian news agencies late Sunday night that Georgian troops were attacking Tskhinvali.

There were no independent observers with either country’s forces, and verifying claims about military activity was not immediately possible.

Georgian officials expressed alarm on Sunday that Russia might be aiming to take Gori, about a 45-minute drive south from Tskhinvali. Gori, a major staging area for the Georgian military, sits in a valley that is the main route connecting the east and west halves of Georgia.

Shota Utiashvili, an official of the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the Russians had moved tanks and troops to within a few kilometers of Gori and were “trying to cut the country in half.”

He said that if they tried to occupy Georgia, “there will probably be guerilla warfare all over the country.”

Mr. Utiashvili said: “We need large supplies of humanitarian aid, because we have thousands of wounded. And weapons. We need weapons.”

Sunday evening, artillery and tank fire could be heard from the outskirts of Gori. During a pause in the fighting, Georgian military personnel appeared to be flowing into the city. Georgian officials said they would defend it.

Ambulances with flashing red and blue lights roared back and forth on the highway between Gori and Tbilisi, along with troop transports and families fleeing Gori in cars and donkey carts.

“The whole family is running away. There is nowhere for us to take shelter,” said Ketevan Sunabali, 40, who had left home in a pair of red Winnie the Pooh slippers. She said she had heard the bombs exploding and seen the smoke and just jumped in the car with her husband, without stopping to take any of her belongings.

“I had a home. I had a father,” said Gogita Kazahashvili, 29. “My father died today from the bombing. I’ve seen with my own eyes. My house was destroyed. I buried my father myself, by where the house was.”

A refugee who said he was fleeing from Kakhvi, which he described as a Georgian-controlled enclave squeezed between parts of South Ossetia along the winding border, said Russian soldiers had come to his house, and he had run away. Along the road, refugees carried their possessions in wheelbarrows and plastic bags.

A New York Times reporter saw artillery being fired from Russian-controlled areas into Georgian territory near the villages of Eredvy and Prisi, about two miles from Tskhinvali. Grassy fields were burning in the villages and clouds of dust rose with the impact of the shells.

Even one close Russian ally expressed alarm about the possibility of Russian troops moving on Gori and clashing with Georgians on unchallenged Georgian territory. “If it happened, then it’s a big mess, it’s a big problem, because it is direct confrontation,” said Maksim K. Gvindzhiya, deputy foreign affairs minister for the de facto government of Abkhazia. “It’s going out of the conflict zone.”

Fighting escalated in Abkhazia as well, Mr. Gvindzhiya and Georgian officials said.

Russia doubled the number of its troops in Abkhazia to about 6,000 early Sunday, landing paratroopers at an airport near the Black Sea. There was heavy fighting in the Kodori Gorge, the only area in Abkhazia that Georgia controls, with Russian paratroopers ferried in by helicopter.

In Washington, Secretary Rice worked through the night Saturday with other Bush administration officials on a Security Council resolution. American diplomats said that they did not want an actual Security Council vote on the resolution until Tuesday or so, the better to draw out the debate and publicly shame the Russian government. While the resolution will carry no punitive weight, and is almost sure to be vetoed by Russia, a permanent Council member, the hope is that it could create more pressure for a cease-fire, officials said.

Meanwhile, Georgian and Western diplomatic officials said Georgia had offered a cease-fire proposal to Russia, though Russian officials did not acknowledge receiving such an offer.

It's not a perfect article - it includes some editorializing - but it's interesting.

[Guardsman Bass]

Incidently, could a mod split off the whole bit about how the Bosnians may or may not have had Nazi sympathies along with the whole spat between Broomstick, IP, and the Duchess?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Chill out, Marina.

We don't hate you.

Really, we don't.

Most days, we like you a lot.

But right now you're acting like a 12-year-old drama queen in the midst of a meltdown. We know you have issues. We sympathize. But at a certain point we have to tell you that you're overreacting. You are. We're telling you this not because we hate you, but because we LIKE you.

When you're friends say you're going over the top, you're going over the top. Take a deep breath and step back from the fight.

And yet I've done nothing wrong, whereas you've continuously distorted everything I've said. Now you think you can play all high and mighty, but the record of brazen lunacy in this thread is clear and it isn't mine. And I damn well know who my friends are, and someone who tries to turn my words against me, distort what I've said until it means the opposite, and then mockingly extends a hand of friendship to me condition on my accepting they were right about my words, and I was wrong, is certainly not a friend. IP had the decency to concede the specific argument that I am a lunatic autocrat, but you just can't give it up, can you?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

But trying to claim that there is absolutely no connection between an armed force and the nation it's operating in would really put the burden of proof on you, not me. They had to get ammunition, etc, somewhere, even if the territories they controlled were self-sufficient in foodstuffs.

I'll gladly concede that there might have been some support from the Bosnian government. But I have severe doubts that the Bosnian government had any more association with the group than the EU has with mercenary groups it's hired in the past in Africa. And, I repeat this perhaps a third time, the acrimony evident between the Bosnian government and the mercenary group in the article severely underlies your claim that "the fucking Bosniaks worshiped the ideal of the SS Hanjar Division and other vile nazi-era crimes their fathers had committed," as does the fact that, according to your article, a grand majority of the mercenaries were foreigners. So, since your article is clearly insufficient proof to your claims if examined with any degree of critical reading, either concede that you were wrong or back up your claims.

I'll concede that specific sentence is incorrect that you have grown fond of quoting. Since the original argument it underpinned was supported by others, I trust you have no objection to my maintaining it?

[fgalkin]

I see a BBC reporter convoy was deliberately targeted by an Su-25.

Did his car had a big white "BBC" painted over it for you to have evidence of this allegation?

Even the journalist himself did not say it was deliberate.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[nickolay1]

Furthermore, there have been photos and videos showing Georgian troops using civilian vehicles, similar to the one used by the reporters.

[Darksider]

Furthermore, there have been photos and videos showing Georgian troops using civilian vehicles, similar to the one used by the reporters.

So the russian's response to Georgian troops using civillian vehicles is to blast everything in sight?

Yes, that will certainly alleviate western fear of russia.

God dammit. Why can't anyone fight a war in a civilized fasion anymore. Why do they always have to involve civillians?

[Flagg]

Furthermore, there have been photos and videos showing Georgian troops using civilian vehicles, similar to the one used by the reporters.

So the russian's response to Georgian troops using civillian vehicles is to blast everything in sight?

Yes, that will certainly alleviate western fear of russia.

God dammit. Why can't anyone fight a war in a civilized fasion anymore. Why do they always have to involve civillians?

Yeah, damnit! Why can't we go back to the days of... Umm... Wait... I got nothin'