The Caucasian Talk Circle
After blowing away a Russian Peacekeeping base in South Ossetia, ‘experts’ were ’surprised’ by Russia’s response. Yeah, right.
Inevitably, chatter about Georgia is coming round to the pieces that don’t fit. And we wonder if we’re really watching a Brechtian play within a play.
Even Stratfor analysts are puzzllng over ‘The Mystery of The Georgian Invasion‘ while others ask why Saakashvili chose to risk it all. Sure he did?
It’s a stretch to believe that the US knew nothing of the invasion, even though Bush was in China watching the synchronised swimming. There are some 130 permanent Pentagon advisors in Georgia, along with Special Forces, CIA spooks and so on. Yet it seems no one noticed anything unusual - like Georgia mobilising for WW3.
One might wonder whether the US was doing the same. Thousands of soldiers, contractors and trainers - from as far afield as Italy, Ohio and Kaiserslauten - were sent to Georgia only days before the invasion. So was a large contingent of troops from Atlanta. OK, you say, it was just a town-twinning exercise. Except that the exercise was called ‘Rapid Reponse 2008′.
Ironic title? Now ‘Military Experts’ claim to have been surprised by Russia’s rapid response. (How ‘expert’ is that.) But it’s hard to think of anything more provocative and unequivocal than blowing away a garrison of Russian peacekeepers on their own patch.
Another line we’re handed is that Saak misread the signs. Not true, says Condi. As recently as July, she claims to have warned Saakashvili about ‘starting something he couldn’t finish’. Did he clean fergit by August? Or was he signed off by a higher ranking hawk?
And then there’s the most baffling, non-event of the war: not blocking the Roki Tunnel. The Exiled’s War Nerd admits he ‘just doesn’t get it’.
‘The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force — and it’s a good one by all accounts — didn’t have as its first mission the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of HE. Hell, there are any number of ways to block a tunnel.’
‘Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel. I don’t go in for this kind of long-distance micromanaging of warfare, because there’s usually a good reason on the ground for tactical decisions; it’s the strategic decisions that are really crazy most of the time. But this one I just don’t get.’
Commenter Wu Wei asked the same obvious question while in Georgia. She was told, ‘there weren’t enough planes’. But then adds: ‘So whoever was planning this offensive, it wasn’t the Georgians, or they surely would have got some.’
Well yes, unless someone wanted to leave the door open. And that’s where you might conclude it was all a war within a war, a propaganda war. The PR strategy was in place and fine tuned. Saakashvili had his TV slots and even teleconferences with hedge-fund managers booked before it started. The ear of John McCain had been primed well in advance too. Hey, the ‘War On Terror’ isn’t scary anymore. Bring on the ‘Russian Menace’.
It all looks like a re-run of last PR hit on Russia, the Litvinenko affair, where the blame sheets and the casebook had been written up long before the crime had been invented. And in exactly the same way, the storyline is full of holes.
Fistful of Euros has a good debate entitled, ‘Was Georgia Played?’. To me, it now looks more like Russia was played. But either way, ordinary Georgians and Ossetians are the big losers. Again, a cynical War Nerd concludes, ‘some pawn swapping took place‘.
It turns out the Georgians did bomb the tunnel, but used cluster bombs. They’ve admitted this to human rights watch, the american guv sponsored front that pretends to be interested in human rights.
The israeloamericans probably had several contingency plans operating, for each of the probable outcomes of Georgia’s attack. The one you are describing, where the Georgians got booted, of using the Russian successful response to make propagandistic political gains against Russia. The European response, especially the more obvious israeloamerican puppet guvs, is obviously a scripted set-up. The constant Georgian attempts to provoke a response by their aggressive actions leading up to their attacking South Ossetia probably means their masters in tel aviv and washington were really trying to provoke a Russia response of some sort that could be used for political/propaganda purposes.
But what if Russia held back from counterattacking directly? The aggressors must have had a contingency plan for this. My guess, then, is that Georgia was meant to ethnic cleanse the South Ossetians out of the territory. Then a similar attack would do the same to Abhkazia immediately after South Ossetia was secure in Georgian hands. With the native population run out, Georgian nationals would be quickly moved in. This is reminiscent of how these goons ran their operations in the former Yugoslavia and is how israel has ethnic cleansed Palestine from 1948 on. This is probably the plan sackofshite was told he was operating under. And also why they attacked under cover of the Olympics to keep the initial operations out of the western media.
Not destroying the tunnel may have been deliberate so the South Ossetians would leave by that route. The Georgians using cluster bombs on that tunnel could help both of these scenarios. If the Russians did counter, their armour would not be too much hindered by the cluster bombs. At the same time, the civilians would still be able to evacuate to Russia. The extra bloodshed the bombs caused would reinforce their desire to not return.
Both outcomes could have been possible, along with a third possibility, a weak Russian response resulting in some sort of bogged down stalemate in South Ossetia. Maybe a scenario similar to Russia’s war in Afghanistan was planned for that outcome, with rapid spreading of the conflict to Chechnya and the neighbouring region by overt means and by expanding their covert terrorist operatives still operating there. The Russians already broke one of these covert groups setting up to begin operations that has been connected to the Georgian attack.
So maybe the reason the tunnel was not seriously attacked was it was more useful left passable. There is a lot of other evidence that the israeloamericans were operationg this war with multiple contingency plans. Initially, the israelis were bragging in their media about how their advisers both lead Georgian attacking forces and were responsible, through their training work, for Georgian success. Then when the Georgians were routed, the israeli media quickly changed their tune and started downplaying israeli involvement, even pretending they would stop shipping weaponry to Georgia. This is evidence that at least some of the israeloamerican establishment had some hope of the Georgians being able to take the breakaway territories successfully, and then seeing those hopes quickly dashed a day or so later. Whatever the outcome, it seems the israeloamericans, and their European puppets, were fully prepared to exploit this attack to their advantage with well thought out strategies that would take into account what ever the outcome on the ground turned out to be.
BTW. There have been unconfirmed rumours circulating in Russia that the Russians captured an american soldier among a squad of Georgians (there are many reports of dead americans and other nationality soldiers among the dead Georgian soldiers, as well). It is claimed the guy is a demolitions expert. If true, it’s possible to speculate he might of been a part of a forward special ops squad that got zapped before they could reach their objective by rapidly deployed and well informed Russian forces. Where he was captured was not said and the Russian don’t appear to have confirmed it officially, anyway, so likely was just a rumour.