Cheney slams "unjustified assault" on Georgia

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

PHOENIX, Aug 27 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney upped U.S. pressure on Moscow on Wednesday, calling the Russian occupation of Georgia an "unjustified assault" and pledged to ensure the nation's territorial integrity.

"That young democracy has been subjected to an unjustified assault," Cheney said in address to armed forces veterans gathered at the 90th National Convention in Phoenix.

"We support their democracy, and we will work with our allies to ensure Georgia's territorial integrity as a free and independent nation."

He made the remarks after Russia recognized two rebel regions of Georgia as independent states on Tuesday, driving up tension in the volatile Caucasus and putting Moscow on a collision course with the West.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27472734.htm

[Xipe Totec]

1. Cheney has the heart of a diplomat

he keeps it in a jar by his bed.

[BadgerKid]

5. Which dipolmat's heart is it? n/t

[Xipe Totec]

11. Tariq Aziz nt

[Demeter]

24. And He'd Get the Gold for Sulking In an Olympic Challenge n/t

[Oceansaway]

2. pot,kettle,black....n/t

[bamacrat]

3. I dont understand how they can even comment like this.

What I understand even less is why no media outlet will call them on their hypocrisy.

[coalition_unwilling]

4. Russia's assault on Georgia was entirely "justified," not least by the

pathetic standards Bush and Cheney's administration set vis-a-vis Iraq, Afghanistan Serbia\Kosovo.

[movonne]

6. Fuck cheney

[jwirr]

7. What else can he say? If he told the truth then the Georgian prez

might tell us exactly what sleazy and mcgaffe's adviser told him.

[Pathwalker]

8. Is it wrong to hope that the Russians take him prisoner?

I hope not, because I wish they would take him off our hands - it would be the Ransom of Red Chief.

[Politicalboi]

9. My thoughts exactly

When I heard he was going there I wished someone would arrest him for war crimes.

[Wizard777]

10. That's an assassination attempt!

He's trying to get Putin And Medvedev to laugh themselves to death.

:rofl: :rofl:

[dipsydoodle]

12. That young democracy

.....insert....whose elections we went to all the trouble of providing guidance on how to rig to ensure our guy got voted in ...... blah blah blah.

[Virginia Dare]

13. The man is an expert on unjustified assaults......n/t

[Satyagrahi]

14. It's funny, while the Georgians were developing their invasion plans (since 2006

say Western intelligence sources) with the help of some Israeli military experts (not the Israeli government), Cheney was busy behind the scenes pushing to sell Stinger missiles and other arms to Georgia.

What a coincidence!

You know, one could actually get the impression that he knew in advance about the planned invasion...

[gratuitous]

15. Wow, how did Reuters do that? "Cheney" and "integrity" in the lede

I would have thought the linotype machine would throw up rather than set that first paragraph down.

[MasonJar]

16. Cheney can go Cheney himself!!!!!!!!!!

[Pete2069]

17. We know Cheney track record

Cheney's track record proves he doesn't believe in democracy
because Bush and Cheney's statements and plan assaults on it
are proven facts. 
What seems to be factors in Bush and Cheney's  decission are
Oil reserves , pipe lines to carry it and wealth and power.

Lets see Iraq has oil and Georgia has pipe lines to carry it.

Every place you see the black gold their eyes sparkle and
their lips water.

America if failing because our news media has been stolen as
the white house by Global corporations, foreign nations the
elite.

I still can not believe that democrats are afraid the attack
McCain and the republicans.

McCain has made his POW , war records , his wife , every
action of his life and his voting records open for attack.

http://www.democrats.org/page/community/post/MilleniumDelta/Cgt3

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/mccain-lied-about-his-wife-cindy.html

http://sensico.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/mccain-lied-about-his-divorce-and-marriage/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002898_pf.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/24/mccains-ties-to-lobbyist_n_93037.html

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/McCain_Ties_to_Lobbyists_/2007/12/31/60815.html

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/29/many_lobbyists_among_mccain_fu.html

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/03/12/mccain-stiffs-us-workers-helps-europeans-win-air-tanker-deal/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24846474/

[AlphaCentauri]

18. was he smiling when he was saying it?

cynic

[balantz]

19. Hey, we don't need to worry about Zany,

the Dems impeached, tried and convicted him and are looking out for us and our future

Oh, wait a minute, they never did that did they?

[defendandprotect]

20. Did you notice that Pelosi said in her speech . . that impeachment would have looked "political" ..

I think that was her Convention speech?

[balantz]

22. No I didn't catch that.

I don't go out of my way to watch her because just the sight of her makes me want to wretch.

[defendandprotect]

25. I know . . . !!!

I posted this speech at DU . . . if I recall it was at a Convention breakfast . . .

She also said Dems wanted to end the war in Iraq!

I thought she had the past two years to do that . . . ???

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3860216&mesg_id=3860216


The speaker said Democrats are tough on national security but were rightly skeptical of the real threat from Iraq.

Pelosi also vowed that Democrats would continue to use its investigative power to hold the Bush administration accountable: “This isn’t over — we have Karl Rove to deal with.”

But she said that having the “exercise” of trying to impeach President Bush would be “viewed as a political act” and would not be effective.



"exercise" . . . ???

Maybe she mean EXORCISE . . . ?

[balantz]

27. One Party, two wings. They all (with a very few exceptions) work for the corporations.

How can anyone say Nancy is a true Democrat working for us? She is just another elitist working for her own interests, and the interests of her friends in power.

[laureloak]

21. Beat those war drums!!! There's an election at stake! n/t

[pampango]

23. Here's a pretty detailed view of recent history in the region, especially the days leading up to the

conflict. It's a report from Tbilisi, so take it for what it is worth, but it does have some eye witness reports in it.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/the-truth-about-1.php

"Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

“The first thing that Misha did (after the Rose Revolution) was try to poke his finger in Putin's eyes as many times as possible,” Worms said, “most notably by wanting to join NATO. The West, in my view, mishandled this situation. America gave the wrong signals. So did Europe.”

"...the encouragement was given despite stronger and stronger Russian signals that a Georgian accession to NATO would not be tolerated. Fast forward to 2008, to this year, to the meeting of NATO heads of state that took place in Bucharest, Romania, where Georgia was promised eventual membership of the organization but was refused what it really wanted, which was the so-called Membership Action Plan. The Membership Action Plan is the bureaucratic tool NATO uses to prepare countries for membership. And this despite the fact that military experts will tell you that the Georgian Army, which had been reformed root and branch with American support, was now in better shape and more able to meet NATO aspirations than the armies of Albania and Macedonia which got offered membership at the same meeting.

“So fast forward to early August. You have a town, Tskhinvali, which is Ossetian, and a bunch of Georgian villages surrounding it in a crescent shape. There are peacekeepers there. Both Russian peacekeepers and Georgian peacekeepers under a 1994 accord. The Ossetians were dug in in the town, and the Georgians were in the forests and the fields between the town and the villages. The Ossetians start provoking and provoking and provoking by shelling Georgian positions and Georgian villages around there. And it's a classic tit for tat thing. You shell, I shell back. The Georgians offered repeated ceasefires, which the Ossetians broke."

Lots more at the link.

[Satyagrahi]

26. Michael Totten is a self-described "neocon", so it should come as no surprise

that this "report" is completely one-sided and based on lies. Very interesting lies that contain grains of truth (like the decisive battle for Gufta/Kurta bridge), but lies nevertheless.

Michael J. Totten is a blogger who writes on politics in the Middle East, regularly reporting first-hand in mainstream publications, Web sites, and his blog, Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal. He describes himself as a "weird combination of liberal, libertarian, and neocon."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Totten

[pampango]

29. He is also a self-described "liberal" for what any of that is worth.

I suppose the RWers can ignore him because he lists himself as a liberal and we can ignore him because he uses neocon.

Aside from what he calls himself, what are the lies that you picked out in the article? Attack the message, not the messenger.

[Satyagrahi]

31. Well, I did "attack the message" and debunk the lies in Totten's article in my thread

"What Really Happened in Georgia/Ossetia". Just follow the link I gave you ("Gufta/Kurta bridge" above).

The Georgian attack on Tskhinvali began at 10:30 p.m. The first Russian soldiers entered South Ossetia at 2 a.m. The column of 150 tanks Saakashvili likes to talk about began moving at 11 a.m. the following day. It is therefore a lie that the Georgian attack came as a reaction to the movement of Russian troops.

Even the Financial Times has noticed some contradictions in the official Georgian version of events:

However, Mr Saakashvili’s account of this sequence is seemingly called into question by the public statements of his own senior military staff. At 11.05pm local time, General Mamuka Qurashvili, the chief of peacekeeping operations at the Georgian defence ministry, made a nationwide televised broadcast, announcing the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a massive Georgian operation against South Ossetia. But he did not mention the presence of a Russian invasion force, instead saying the target of the operation was South Ossetian insurgents.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af25400a-739d-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

And Western intelligence sources talking to DER SPIEGEL have basically confirmed that the attack was based on a long-held plan to capture and block the Roki tunnel, just as I described in "What Really Happened in Georgia/Ossetia":

On Aug. 3, the Russian foreign ministry issued a final warning that an "extensive military conflict" was about to erupt. Officials in Europe's seats of government and intelligence agency headquarters had a sense of what the Russians were talking about. Saakashvili's plans for an invasion had been completed some time earlier. A first draft prepared in 2006, believed to be a blueprint of sorts for the later operation, anticipated that Georgian forces would capture all key positions within 15 hours.

-snip-

According to Western observers, by the morning of Aug. 7 the Georgians had amassed 12,000 troops on the border to South Ossetia. Seventy-five tanks and armored personnel carriers were in position near Gori. In a 15-hour blitzkrieg, the tanks were to advance to the Roki Tunnel to seal it off. At that point, there were only 500 Russian soldiers and another 500 fighters with the South Ossetia militia armed and ready to defend Tskhinvali and the surrounding area. At 4:06 p.m., the South Ossetian authorities reported that Tskhinvali had come under attack from grenade launchers and automatic weapons. Fifty minutes later, they reported "large-scale military aggression against the Republic of South Ossetia." According to Western intelligence sources, the Georgian artillery bombardment of Tskhinvali did not begin until 10:30 p.m. on that Thursday. It was orchestrated by 27 Georgian army rocket launchers capable of firing ordnance with a maximum caliber of 152 millimeters. At 11 p.m., Saakashvili announced that the goal of the operation was the "re-establishment of constitutional order in South Ossetia."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,574812-2,00.html

The Russians are lying as well, of course, e.g. about the number of casualties in Tskhinvali. I am not interested in taking sides (if anything I am siding with the poor civilians in this conflict), but to me it seems clear that Saakashvili is the main culprit and the person most responsible for creating this mess. Now, the interesting question is if he was encouraged by the neocons (perhaps even by people close to Cheney himself). A top national security aide to Vice President Cheney reportedly met with the Georgian president shortly before the escalation of the conflict.

[tom_paine]

28. Now THAT'S comedy. n/t

[LynnTheDem]

30. But he's still fine with his unjustified assault on Iraq.

And on America.

How the fuck did we ever, EVER, get such a criminal bunch of fuckwads for our government????!!