Russian military convoy headed from Gori to Tbilisi – UPDATE
Wed, Aug 13, 2008
UPDATE – Georgian president to John McCain – Put up or shut up. Don’t hold your breath, Misha.
CNN is in full on crisis reporting mode, no commercials, as a Russian military convoy heads down the road from Gori to Tbilisi. They have had Saakashvilli on the air live for 15 minutes. After the interview, CNN reported that the convoy turned off the road and is no longer headed to Tbilisi, likely toward a Georgian military base in the area. According to CNN, there are about 16 troop carriers and one tank, which Georgian authorities were aware of, moving down the road as part of a redeployment.
This is Russian military arrogance at its finest. This is a victory parade designed to provoke. They are all probably drunk. Think Animal House with guns. They are likely begging anyone on the road to throw a tomato at them so they can then justify yet another disproportionate response, that leads to more heavy bloodletting, and even more invasion. Kinda like this.
Georgian officials said Gori was looted and bombed by the Russians. An AP reporter later saw dozens of tanks and military vehicles leaving the city, roaring south.
Troops waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: “Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi!”
Again, behold the impotence of the Bush foreign policy.
This road is the only road leading from Tbilisi to Turkey, a NATO ally. On a normal day, it is choked with trade traffic, Turkish and European trucks loaded with goods going in both directions. It is the main service road for the pipeline. This main trunk route in the Caucasus, the only land route out of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia into Europe, is now basically occupied by the Russian military.
In a non-Bush world, this would be the perfect opportunity for a message to be sent to Russia. Perhaps a buzz from an F-15. Perhaps more. This convoy is in the middle of nowhere. It’s very similar to the episode in the Kosovo conflict wherein another drunken horde of Russian soldiers decided to have a joyride to the Pristina airport, and thereby create an international incident.
But again, if someone decided to throw a tomato at this convoy, or if Georgia decided to defend its capital, they are alone. Because George W. Bush is president of the United States.
For more, get your Georgia briefing here.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:32 am
bush is speaking in 30 minutes. All will be well
August 13th, 2008 at 10:52 am
15 min. Delay. They must be telling George Atlanta is not the capitol of this Georgia.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Meanwhile fox is featuring Bigfoot in a cooler. NOT kidding.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
…and now “rad girls” putting Tabasco in their eyes.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Yes, if only John Kerry were President. He would put the Russians in their place!
August 13th, 2008 at 11:00 am
We’d surely have more leverage and intl. clout, OC. Situation is a good example why change is necessary. I suppose McCain will toss out more empty sabber rattling as red meat to the knuckle draggers.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Bush says we support France’s efforts to broker a deal. Freedom Fries!
August 13th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Bush: We’re gonna smack you bitches upside the head with our military’s humanitarian aid.
Easy, tough guy.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Ah, yes, I remember fondly the days before George W. Bush was president. Back then, no other country ever did anything bad, because they were afraid of the U.S. and our leverage and international clout.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:25 am
America neutered. thanks to George W. Bush.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:39 am
>>> Again, behold the impotence of the Bush foreign policy.
That’s right. Bush did it.
>>> In a non-Bush world, this would be the perfect opportunity for a message to be sent to Russia. Perhaps a buzz from an F-15.
Quick, name the US airbase nearest to Tbilisi and the unrefueled range of an F-15. Didn’t think so.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I know we’re all playing politics here, but I can’t believe any American would believe the US has any ethical latitude to say anything to Russia.
RE: Iraq, Kosovo, Granada, Vietnam
Check that. I just remembered we’re talking about Americans. No people on earth with more mental retardation and hypocrisy.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am
And wow, suddenly the lefties are warmongers. Who’dda thunk it?
Of course, nothing like this will ever happen in an Obama administration, once he’s implements his global Kumbaya Doctrine.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Over at Little Green Footballs, they’re quoting “La Russophobe”, an anonymous troll that unfortunately, is published on Pajamas Media, as an authority on Discovery Institute’s Real Russia Project and its website, Russia Blog. Plenty of very popular bloggers, like the author and geostrategist Thomas P.M. Barnett, have permalinked to Russia Blog and have occasionally cited it on their websites.
The author of Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson, strongly dislikes the Discovery Institute for its position advocating “intelligent design theory”.
Regardless of how one feels about these scientific and culture war issues, they have nothing, zilch, to do with Russia or the Real Russia Project, except that Mr. Mamchur happens to work in the same building as the ID folks and has the name of their think tank on his website. Nonetheless, one would search Russia Blog in vain for the slightest mention of intelligent design or its advocates. So much for the idea of Russia Blog as a conspiracy to promote ID in Russia! But over at LGF, Robert Spencer, the bestselling author of the book “Defeating Jihad”, which is what LGF is supposed to be all about, is also being accused of being a religious fanatic, and has clearly had it with the fever swamps. Just because LGF is a right wing libertarian fever swamp instead of a leftwing one like the Daily Kos doesn’t make it any better.
For the record, this troll “La Russophobe” has never provided the slightest evidence that they have travelled to Russia or speak Russian. By all evidence, this person or group of persons cannot look up the names of Russian institutions on yandex.ru or other websites, since he/she/they typically derides anyone not having a page on Wikipedia or getting any ENGLISH-language Google hits as “losers”. For her, if Yuri Mamchur of Discovery Institute claims to have a degree from the Russian Tax Academy of Law, and this university cannot be found using an ENGLISH language Google search, then Mr. Mamchur’s degree is presumably fake and this institution does not exist. Naturally, La Russophobe did not correct her false post about Mr. Mamchur upon being confronted with the Russian-language website of the Russian Tax Academy of Law by several commenters, a Moscow institution that has existed for many decades.
For La Russophobe, only a mailed diploma and dozens of other pieces of evidence from someone’s personal life would suffice, but alas, Mr. Mamchur, values his privacy, and did not care to send documentation to an anonymous troll without so much as a P.O. box. Would you?
La Russophobe’s pattern, like that of any troll, is to always put the burden of proof on real people using their real names and always ask “have you stopped beating your wife lately” type questions. This was one reason why after two posts on Russia Blog in 2006, “Kim Zigfield” became the only person ever to be banned from Russia Blog. The editors of the website made an announcement at that time as to the reasons why. Kim Zigfield and her sock puppets were demanding that the editors of Russia Blog fact check and rebut every single comment made toward her or against her, as well as engaging in schoolyard insults of anyone who disagreed with her. This is akin to demanding that Tom Barnett, Richard Fernandez, or any other blogger who gets hundreds of comments a week read and respond personally to every single one, a physical impossibility for any sane person with a life outside of blogging (even for Charles Johnson!).
At the time that Kim Zigfield was banned, this person also claimed, that she could not find powdered cane sugar when she was in Russia (year and cities visited totally unspecified) and that it probably still did not exist in the country, along with many other basic consumer staples. When expats and Russia Blog readers from St. Petersburg to Sakhalin laughed at this, she declared that it was up to the editors of Russia Blog to produce bags of powdered sugar from the darkest corners of Siberia to disprove her statement. Typical troll behavior, the burden of proof is always on someone else.
Little Green Footballs’ “lizardoids” have cited La Russophobe’s claim that the Real Russia Project, the program of Discovery Institute which publishes Russia Blog, is somehow affiliated with Russia Today TV, a Moscow-based, Russian government funded English language news channel that was launched in 2006 to give Russia its own equivalent of Al-Jazeera. Russia Blog has occasionally reposted Russia Today’s videos, but otherwise there is no evidence for this claim, and in fact, there is no affiliation. Kim Zigfield also claimed, in a convoluted, conspiratorial paragraph worthy of a John Birch Society member, that Russia Blog is connected to Russia Profile, a tiny bimonthly magazine that publishes out of the same old Soviet RIA Novosti building that Russia Today occupies in Moscow. However, other than a rare crosspost, and Russia Profile republishing Russia Blog’s content, there is no relationship there either.
As for Russia Blog’s alleged connection with David Johnson, a Maryland-based Russophile who maintains a very large email listserv on Russia, like Tom Barnett, Mr. Johnson simply picks up Russia Blog content when he chooses to do so. There is no affiliation, and Mr. Johnson often posts articles harshly critical of Russia and its present leadership. Mr. Mamchur has done so as well, but like Time magazine, Mamchur has decided to give some credit where credit is due for the positive economic changes that have taken place in Russia these past few years.
La Russophobe implies that Russia Blog is part of a Kremlin-backed propaganda effort in the U.S., and Charles Johnson says its articles “read like a press release from the Kremlin”. But who backs La Russophobe? Obviously it someone’s fulltime job, and not just the hobby of someone living in New York City, a very expensive place to spend hours every day on a hobby. Charles Johnson isn’t interested in such questions, even when his own readers confront him with La Russophobe’s track record of making wild accusations against anyone with a different point of view about Russia – that is, anyone who doesn’t think that modern Russia is the Evil Empire reborn.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
In response to John, who said:
Quick, name the US airbase nearest to Tbilisi and the unrefueled range of an F-15.
The answer would be AB Incirlik (located in Adana, Turkey – a distance of 604 miles), and the range of an F-15 is “3,450 miles (3,000 nautical miles) ferry range with conformal fuel tanks and three external fuel tanks.”
Wow. You really can find anything at all on the internet with Google.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
@Kevin: LOL. You saved me from doing that.