Nice call, Bruce.

Americans have long excelled at checkers, while Russians excel at chess. Right now, I think Washington and the West would be wise to listen to Moscow, rather than merely shake our fists and raise our voices in ill-thought indignation.

Right now would likewise be an ideal time for President George W. Bush to return to managing professional baseball teams, and leave diplomacy to professional diplomats.

I think the striking thing about the conflict is the mismatch between the US' strident tone and it's complete lack of action otherwise. The US has shown itself to be unable to help its allies when in need. This is a development that will have big impacts in the future.

The question that is not clear, either in US media, or in interviews we have seen on tv, is: what does Russia want with this latest action in Georgia? Is it all about oil, NATO, or coming to the aid of Ossetians?

You're right, Mongo:

Moscow, as Vladimir Rezun (Viktor Suvorov) famously noted ("The Liberators: My Life in the Soviet Army" and "Inside the Soviet Army"), well knows that American political bravado on this day is likely little more than bluff and requisite election-year peacockery--just as it knew that Americans would alternately rage and resume quiet forty years ago, when Eastern-bloc soldiers poured into Czechoslovakia without serious military challenge, as U.S. forces were tied up in the Republic of Vietnam.

Contrary to what Western media sources are today reporting regarding potential ramifications of Russia's "invasion" of Georgia, it seems as if Russia herself has scored a key propaganda triumph worthy of that witnessed when a handful of American bombers with virtually no warning appeared over Tokyo to achieve a tremendous psychological victory over dangerously overconfident Japanese military leaders in April 1942.

Just three months in the wake of the sixty-third Victory Day celebration in Red Square, the Russians are looking mightly slick once more, while American troops benignly, wearily perform multi-tour peacekeeping duties ordered by leaders who've no clue as to how to execute an end to needless bloodshed in Iraq.

"One of the few things I am absolutely sure of right now is that the US was not on top of this development, and that includes the US media as well as the US government."

Perfectly put!

Except that I would add that it is just unfortunate that today the US news broadcasting (along with the rest of western media for that fact) are now no more than entertainment shows, where no investigative reporting happens and attention grabbing headlines that exploit emotions of the viewer (eg shock, fear) are the only things that seem to matter.

Whilst accountability for reporting the truth or let alone the full story has gone out the window which is why you get no facts, no news, just media “opinions”

Charlie Rose spoke with Vitaly Churkin, Ambassador of the Russian Federation, on the conflict between Georgia and Russia last night. The video should be up soon, but there are some related videos that are already posted.

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 New York Times bestselling 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!

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 cane sugar from the darkest corners of Siberia to disprove her statement. Typical troll behavior, the burden of prove 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.

I would like to thank Pajamas Media’s editors for allowing someone to finally set the record straight. I do not wish to engage the “Lizardoids” over on their turf at LGF or register with Mr. Charles Johnson, as he clearly has his mind made up even when confronted by his own readers with contrary facts about the credibility of “La Russophobe” and others.

Anything further I could say to him, as with “Kim Zigfield”, would get distorted and twisted beyond recognition before being reposted. And when “Kim Zigfield”, who is probably not a woman but a man, gets called to account for his/her slanders of anyone who disagrees with her, she plays the victim, saying “you slander La Russophobe”. That’s like saying someone is slandering Superman or Mickey Mouse - not a real person using their real name, or even a genuine dissident. New York City isn’t Teheran, Baghdad, or Beijing, where anonynimity in blogging may be a necessity.

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 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 (i.e. if Dinesh D’Souza and Spencer have the same publisher, ergo, Spencer must endorse D’Souza’s views, ergo, if Russia Blog has Discovery Institute on its masthead, everyone who contributes to it must endorse intelligent design, even when they say otherwise, if Kim Zigfield says Russia Profile is the same thing as Russia Blog or that they are connected just because the names sound the same and there has been some crossposting, ergo, it must be true).

Most of the time, Russia Profile's editors, like the editors of another website called iPutin, simply repost Russia Blog content without requesting permission, perhaps because they use a webcrawler to pick it up.

Most LGF commenters are exhibiting stupid, mindless, pack behavior - and this from people who pride themselves on being smarter and more mature than the Kos Kidz and other denizens of fever swamp websites they call the sewers of the Internet.

Georgia launched a full-scale assault on S Ossetia and its targets were to create a refugee crisis. This was not a strategic offensive to simply retake S Ossetia it was to get S Ossetian to flee and Russian forces to come in to protect S Ossetian civilians and launch a counter attack.
It was obviously a propaganda stunt by Georgia so Russia would intervene. Big bad Russia invades poor little Georgia.
Foreign mercs were used brought in by Ukraine and FSB intelligence has arrested Georgian intelligence officer of recruiting and carry out planned terror attacks.
US must have known about this.

Nobody seems to mention that it was the Georgians/Israelis that obliterated S. Ossetia's capital.

It not about Russia blocking the Caspian oil pipeline through Georgia it's a pretext so the US can increase it's presence there and use that as a front so they can destabilise Russia's south. Cut her out of the Caspian so the US has all the export routes coming out of the Caspian basin. That s why they created, financed, trained and supported the Chechen wars so they could use that as a proxy base to capture Dagestan. That failed so they use another tactic.
Brezinskis book The Grand Chessboard is the blueprint for what is going on now.

As someone who was called "unspeakable filth" by LaR when I dared to point out that she/he had taking some Putin quotes out-of-context, I applaud Craig's comments.
I too wonder "But who backs La Russophobe? Obviously it someone's fulltime job, and not just the hobby of someone living in New York City"

Hi Patrick - it was actually Steve Nelson who posted about LaR, not me. - Craig

James,
Would you provide some actual evidence that any Israelis were anywhere near South Ossetia at the time of the Georgian attack last week? Your claims remind me of the rumors that were circulated after 9/11 that Israelis somehow had advanced knowledge of the attack or were told to stay away from New York City's World Trade Center, when in fact, several Israelis died when the buildings collapsed.

AS an american i respect the fact that Georgia helped in our war in the middle east. Although i do not respect the fact that Georgia has the nerve to launch such an attack in South Ossetia and not to expect such a stern response from Russia. I would rather have Russia roll into the capital of Georgia today and show the rest of the world that the United States does not rule the world through these small democratic break away countries, and that countries such as Georgia can not launch offensive and ignorant attacks and expect assistence from U.S. Unfortunetly this has happened already. Russia has the right to fight Georgians untill they feel that there is no more threat from them. I am an American and I support the actions Russia has responded with to the threat. The United States needs to step back and stop saying Russia needs to stop bullying Georgia, but rather look at Georgia and find out why they have acted in such ignorant fassion towards Russia. AS far as i know Georgia acted on its own and rather than the U.S. threat Georgia like some little kid being pushed around, we should punish or at least condem them for their stupid hostile actions. Other world powers and other goverments do not share the same views as us and i hope Russia will show that this is true.

LR is now using Mr. Johnson's highly trafficked site as a platform for his/her slanders of real people using their real names. LR is basically a troll site that exists to slander people, and has all the hallmarks of a black PR operation funded by someone, but I will not speculate as to whom. The Lizardoids are now speculating that DI is part of some vast global theocratic conspiracy with the Russian Orthodox Church. Next they'll say the Vatican is in on it because they invited some Russian Orthodox singers to Rome last year and this Pope has been seeking to go to Moscow (something his predecessor John Paul II was unable to do) for years.

I would love for some of these people to actually reveal themselves. Better yet, why not have a real debate between Mr. Mamchur and Mr. Johnson on TV? Alas, they are far too cowardly for that.

@Steve Nelson

rense.com and other websites has links to Israeli news websites talking in detail of Israels involvement.
What about the five dancing Israelis and the Urban moving spy ring discovered in New York months prior to 9/11.

I have lived in Russia, and I spoke to many people in Russia that don't have a clue where I live (Washington State) to make fun of these teenage girls is not professional and typical of the xenophobia and arrogance found in Russia. We live is a small world and it is high time Russia joins the 21st century and learns to play well with others.

Global politics. Business as usual. This country wants power, that country wants power. Uninvolved people get killed, but not the instigators. Onlookers watch and say, "Too bad. Someone ought to do something." Others say, "Glad it isn't us." The news blathers on giving inadequate information, if any decent information at all. I look at it all and wonder how I can stop the world and get off.

OK OK those “teenage girls” must have been the Hiltons but Russian has their share of Hiltons now to.
Anyway, I just hope Russia gets out of Georgia, Neutral peacekeepers take the mission in Odessa and Abkahazia. This will make everyone happy. If Russia does not like this then it shows their true intent, the return of the Soviet Block.
If that is the case I hope the owner of this Blog is not in Russia. Because they will eventually come knockin

Yse , we need the facts, but that said NATO and Georgia should send Russia a bill for the cost of the reconstruction. For sure they will not pay, but that should be part and partial of the reaction to them.

Perhaps his will assist Europe and he US to become more energy independent.