Best idea ever. It's next to godliness.

Dan, Bush thought they were going to Atlanta.

eep.

Don't poke the bear, don't poke the bear...

Um, pretty much the worst idea ever, but I have a feeling it has more to do with trying to boost John McCain than advance America's interests. He's probably thinking it's some sort of tripwire measure like our troops in Korea, but really, he's probably not thinking at all.

His legacy plan is to definitively instigate WWIII before he leaves office. Nice one DB in Chief.

Actually McCain is sending Lieberman over there, I read. Not for political reasons, surely, just because we're all Georgians.

All of a sudden I have Prince's, "Ronnie Talk to Russia" in my head. . . "you can go to the zoo, but don't feed guerillas who wanna blow up the world".

Yeah, it's a Very Bad Idea.

LOL!!! And no one is talking about how Condi Rice was in Georgia on July 10th meeting with their President saying how the US had their back WHILE Russian fighters flew recon. missions over her dumb little head. And we won't even touch the fact one of McCain's advisors was on the PAYROLL of the Gerogian Gov't.

Nope, let's talk about John Edwards instead....

WW III.

Yeah - it's insane. But have we really thought Dubbya was anything but insane?

To me, the worst part is that we promise these people support in the first place. Daddy Bush fucked the Kurds.

Who knows how many Dubbya will manage??

The question "how else can king George fuck things up with 5 months to go" is answered every day as I sit aghast

You say WE as if "we" meant us, and I disagree. As an illegal immigrant, I'm proud to be a Mexican!

So far Bush has been able to count on the press doing it's typical poor job at reporting: passing off Georgian press releases as news. Russia as always has been a bit heavy-handed, but the agreement brokered by Sarkozy included allowance for limited Russian incursions to secure Ossetia from Georgian attack. No truce was broken. The Georgian press releases ignored the details of the agreement, painted the Gori incursion as against the truce, and the US press, as is their way, simply regurgitated the press releases as news.
Georgia's alliance is part of a long term plan to secure a pipeline to bring oil from central Asia to the US market - from Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkish deep water ports (Georgia doesn't have any deep water ports). Gori lies along the major E-W axis, which would also be the route of the pipeline.

It's like we are being led right back into the Cold War. Why? Because war is good for Republicans.

doing nothing = people suffer and die/Russia pays no price/Russia violates international war by engaging in aggression, she is as much war criminal as Bush you all love to point out why give Russia a pass??/Kazahkstan next/Ukraine next/Aggresion and force are rewarded/ Russia gets more control over oil supply to west.

When are where do you propose to draw the line? Nowhere? Do you folks actually oppose agression and war crimes, or only when the USA commits them?

the proper way to handle this would be to send in the UN, emergency aid personell and a few troops to protect them.

Not to engage either side but to help civilians and if either side starts attacking then the entire world sees.

would russia rather mccain or obama win? if this is all trumped up to support mccain, as one wonders above, would it be that far-fetched to question russia's role in this ruse?

Well, already provoked a Russian response to even our lip-service "Georgian integrity must be respected!" Russia's response? "Yeah, forget that. And we're moving ballistic missiles (SS-21) in to back that up."

Bad news? Getting worse with every minute.

Lordy, lordy 2:40 Gordy - Non and I actually agree on something!

There is Hope in the World after all.

I'm not at all sure Putin really CARES who wins the U.S. election, so much as he's acutely aware that Russian control of Ossetia is essential to maintaining control over the oil that flows through it.

And having control over that oil pretty much guarantees that whomever becomes POTUS, Putin will have major leverage to wield against them.

What if Russia, in response, decided to start supplying the Taliban with money and arms. Proxy warfare of the cold war type. Bad idea for both sides.

Yes, Dan, like invading Iraq, it's a very bad idea--to send troops to repel a nuclear superpower who is... invading a country it has no business invading.

@14--The Cold War wasn't just good for Republicans, it was good for the military/industrial complex, of which the Democrats played a part as well. Follow the money...

chess

this is a snarl, not www III

the EU and Russia fear American militarism

the new Russia is aligned with the new EU, and they would both prefer to kick us off the map and take in trillions of euros

America is a declining power and the danger is folks like Bush who are still fighting WW II - the glory days - 60 years later

by the way the Georgian troops ran in fear when the Red army showed its teeth, so much for the Bush Georgian Army game

Putin knows Bush is all talk and posture at this point - and at the same time Russian nationalism has surged and Russian wealth, oil and natural gas money, will rebuild the Red Army.

Well, I believe by "sending troops" he means stuff like this:

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123110749

which really is no big deal. We do shit like this all the time, all over the world, and 99.9% of the time it's a non-event.

#23 - Air Force delivered 16 pallets of stuff, valued at one million dollars - wow - what the hell is on the pallets?

all PR and bluff as usual

old army goods sent for PR purposes to a population that can get any thing it wants from EU trucking systems and the cites of Georgia totally un dameaged by anything but goat urine

almost bad opera

All Russia has to do is harass them.

You know, put ships between them and the docks, park tanks on the airfields, that kind of thing.

And we'll look like utter fools - powerless.

How very sad that McCain/Bush 08 has brought our nation so very very low.

I can't begin to guess what the backroom motives for this are, but I don't think it's all that big a deal, geopolitically speaking. It's a big deal for Georgia, and it's a big deal for Russia, but nobody's going to start a war over it.

Bush has nothing, and Putin knows it. We'll send them some blankets, big deal. The outrage is that Georgia ever thought for two seconds that NATO would go to war with Russia over them. They will not. The only good thing about Bush's foreign policy is that his laughingstock of an administration has rendered the possibility of FURTHER loser's-bet foreign entanglements is almost nil. If Georgia thought otherwise, they're stupid.

If there was ever a time to embrace Dina Martina's cover of 'Devil Went Down To Georgia' it would be now.

He was in a bind, he was way behind, he was willing to make a deal....

i agree FNARF it is completely symbolic, and a way to help old man mccain. sending troops now after russia back down is just a way for them to try to tell their neo-con georgian president that they have not abandoned him. the troops theyre sending are not combat troops is just a photo op to show american troops in uniform in georgia.

now if he sent the 82nd to the south ossetian border than we would have a problem.

ooops- putin made a move. he is such a douche. lets see what our mentally challenged prez does now. is he gonna say- you better move your troops back, im serious now...

"Russia issued a rebuke to President Bush on Thursday over the conflict in neighboring Georgia, refusing an immediate withdraw of its troops there, affirming its support for two separatist enclaves and warning the United States to avoid doing anything that would encourage its Georgian ally to reignite hostilities."

I want to thank #13 - kinaidos - for spilling the truth.

I enjoy slog for many reasons - but the occasional gem like kinaidos' explanation - is tops.

Not that I don't enjoy a good rant now and again, too...

@kinaidos: You do, of course, mean the long-functioning pipelines (look up Baku-Supsa and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) already up and running? Yeah, Gori is on that pipeline. And since Russia's now occupying it ... moot?

Yes Dan you were very wrong about Iraq. Indeed this thing in Georgia is yet another result of the war on Iraq.

But hey sloggers! Remember that post Dan put up about the fat woman who rolled over in her sleep onto a baby and killed it. Gawd-I'm still laughing. Someone mentioned how horrible it must be for that women to have killed that child. Dan of course has the right attitude about the incident. Who gives a fuck about that woman and kid. We sloggers have been amused-now let's move on to the next big thing.

Like Mr Poe who can't sleep and pulls things out of his ass. And Mr Fnarf who worries about his image as Fnarf, a daily denizen of the Slog, whose appreciation for snark, even at this point in the game, is still so 2003. Got a 2003 tat and ear plugs do you Fnarf?

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THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA, RIGHT? by DAN SAVAGE editorial director of THE STRANGER Aug. 2008

"I was wrong about Iraq"