[ExI] who attack who

[Aleksei Riikonen]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 1:23 AM, Jeff Davis <jrd1415 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Aleksei Riikonen <aleksei at iki.fi> wrote:
>
>>  ... as far as I'm  aware, the Russians rather actively and intelligently manipulated president Saakashvili into making this mistake...
>
> Show me some facts, please.
>
> I would suggest an alterative explanation: that Saakishvili was
> stupidly manipulated by his neocon/shrub/Cheney imperial patrons, and
> that he drank the Kool-aid.

You mean that you feel Cheney&co gained something from the events that
took place? On the contrary, they've been worried for a long time
about Saakashvili's behaviour of the kind that lead to what happened.
Quoting from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saakashvili):

*****
Relations with the United States are good, but are complicated by
Saakashvili's "volatile" behaviour. Former and current U.S. officials
characterize the Georgian president as "difficult to manage". They
criticize his "risky moves", moves that have often "caught the U.S.
unprepared" while leaving it "exposed diplomatically". [...] Scott
Horton, the lawyer at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler who hired
Saakashvili as an intern, states: "It was like the U.S. was slamming
the brakes all the time. .... The U.S. was always trying to calm him
down." Washington's 2004 ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, feared
that Saakashvili would destabilize Georgia. Carlos Pascual, head of
the State Department's financial-assistance team for Georgia, states
that Saakashvili's "rapid push" into the breakaway republic of Adjara
in March 2004 surprised not only the U.S. but also the prime minister
of Georgia, Zurab Zhvania. Emboldened by the successful move into
Adjara, Saakashvili, in June 2004, used military force against South
Ossetia. Saakashvili surprised the U.S. again in November 2007, when
he shut down opposition tv stations and used tear gas and rubber
bullets against protesters.
*****

> Your caveat, on the other hand, seems a predictably conventional
> element of the larger "blame Russia/Putin" narrative.  Certainly a
> possibility, but issuing as it does from the neocon/shrub/Cheney
> baloney machine, it is presumptively "spin"(you know, the lie of the
> week),  utterly devoid of credibility, an instant candidate for
> derision.

I don't really follow the American media, which I presume is mostly
what you're referring to as the baloney machine. But I've seen e.g. a
recent BBC documentary extensively interviewing Georgians, and the
common folk over there are getting pretty annoyed at Saakashvili's
incompetence leading to the wrecking of their country, and were saying
the same thing I was here. That the Russians intelligently took
advantage of his hot temper.

Russia has been the winner in this. A significant step closer to
unseating Saakashvili the incompetent ally of the west.

-- 
Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei