U.S. Watched as a Squabble Turned Into a Showdown

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — Five months ago, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, long a darling of this city’s diplomatic dinner party circuit, came to town to push for America to muscle his tiny country of four million into NATO.

On Capitol Hill, at the State Department and at the Pentagon, Mr. Saakashvili, brash and hyperkinetic, urged the West not to appease Russia by rejecting his country’s NATO ambitions.

At the White House, President Bush bantered with the Georgian president about his prowess as a dancer. Laura Bush, the first lady, took Mr. Saakashvili’s wife to lunch. Mr. Bush promised him to push hard for Georgia’s acceptance into NATO. After the meeting, Mr. Saakashvili pronounced his visit “one of the most successful visits during my presidency,” and said he did not know of any other leader of a small country with the access to the administration that he had.

Three weeks later, Mr. Bush went to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, at the invitation of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. There, he received a message from the Russian: the push to offer Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership was crossing Russia’s “red lines,” according to an administration official close to the talks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/washington/18diplo.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

[Submariner]

1. Our MSM really sucks

If they did their jobs the way they are supposed to, I think I would recall seeing more blog discussion of this Georgia/South Ossetia conflict prior to this clusterf**k. I like to think I'm informed, but I do not recall much Georgia discussion of the fighting going on behind the scenes. We don't hear anything until we find out Dumbo is writing checks his ass can't cash embarrassing the U.S. again.

Good post. thx

[groovedaddy]

2. My guess is these idiots really thought the neo-con hegemony gambit

would scare nations like Russia into towing the line that the U.S. was number 1 and not to be messed with. We really didn't have a lot of moral ground to stand on in telling the Russians to honor Georgian sovereignty.

[bemildred]

3. "Watched" is much too passive a description.

They are still far from "watching".