US Risks Nuclear War With Russia

[Joanne98]

August 11, 2008 · 2 Comments
NOTE: Giving credit where due it seems Keith Olbermann is the only voice of near-sanity tonight on this issue and he should be commended for being even-handed and noting who really was the aggressor in this fight and also noting that one of McCain’s top advisers is a paid lobbyist for Georgia.

original post:

I cannot in good conscience NOT post articles like this when I see them. As I have written before, if somehow a future generation of humans sifts through our digital detritus, I want them to know that not all of us lost our minds and our judgment.

F. William Engdahl/Market Oracle/ICH

Most in the West are unaware how dangerous the conflict over two tiny provinces in a remote part of Eurasia has become. What is left out of most all media coverage is the strategic military security context of the Caucasus dispute.

In my book, Century of War , I describe the developments by NATO and most directly by Washington since the end of the Cold War to systematically pursue what military strategists call Nuclear Primacy. Put simply, if one of two opposing nuclear powers is able to first develop an operational anti-missile defense, even primitive, that can dramatically weaken a potential counter-strike by the opposing side’s nuclear arsenal, the side with missile defense has “won” the nuclear war.

As mad as this sounds, it has been explicit Pentagon policy through the last three Presidents from father Bush in 1990, to Clinton and most aggressively, George W. Bush. This is the issue where Russia has drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so. The forceful US effort to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present Russia with the spectre of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a military threat that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for Russian national security.

This is what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the size of Luxemburg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger to a new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is not Georgia ’s right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to Russia ’s door.

Bosnia-Serbia 1914. History anyone?

Welcome to the 2008 version of the Guns of August.

Mike Whitney weighs in

What the Georgian Army (under our tutelage) did:

“Much of the city (Tskhinvali) was reportedly in flames Friday. The regional parliament building had burned down, the university was on fire, and the town’s main hospital had been rendered inoperative by the bombardment.”

Vesti radio reported that Georgian forces burned down a church in Tanara in South Ossetia where people were hiding, to the ground, with all the people inside. The Deputy Director of an information agency as an eye witness reported that fragments of cluster bombs of were found in Tskinvali. There have also been reports by a South Ossetian reservist that civilians who were hiding in basements were shot dead by Georgian soldiers.

Wikipedia reports that, “Russian soldiers captured group of American mercenaries on territory of South Ossetia. Group was captured near of Zare village.”

Continued>>>
http://badamerican.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/us-risks-nuclear-war-with-russia/

American Mercenaries. Gee, I wonder who that could be.

[whistle]

1. That will be Cheney's and the neocons wet dream, nuclear exchange

...the evening of the DNC opening broadcast

[Junkdrawer]

2. I'm reading "Century of War" right now...

So far, so good, but I'm only at the beginning of the book. It's a dense read.

[Joanne98]

3. Condi went to Georgia in July. She infuriated Russia...

Rice went to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to try to calm things down in July, but infuriated Russia with a public endorsement of Georgia's "territorial integrity." Saakashvili used the visit to display his close relationship with Washington, the organizing principle for an imperfectly democratic government that has collected millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

U.S. officials say they gave Saakashvili a strong warning not to put a match to the ethnic tinderboxes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, even as Rice and others took Georgia's side in public. Bush backed the Georgian claim when he visited Tbilisi in 2005.

"The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone," Bush said then.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h9x2y1tni3GL6xY-zcw03rUA8xCwD92GCHRG2

So, I wonder what they talked about?

[paparush]

5. Condi doing diplomacy is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

[jimshoes]

4. Good thing we adhere strictly to those Geneva Conventions

but wait, are the mercs POW's or enemy combatants? Hmmm that's some pickle they're in. Good to know we hold the moral high ground. (well, maybe not anymore)