"what does the admin. think it’s playing in Georgia — paint ball?"

[ashling]

Source: Congressional Quarterly


By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

The Defense Department is having a hard time getting its story straight about U.S. military personnel in Georgia.

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But in a repeat performance of the mixed signals the Bush administration has been issuing about U.S. support for Georgia in the past days, weeks and months, Hibner called back an hour later to say the 70 American military personnel now sequestered somewhere in or around Tblisi “are staying in country right now.”

“I can’t tell you what they will be doing,” Hibner said, “but they’re staying.”


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“All U.S. military trainers and contractors in Georgia are safe, consolidated and accounted for,” said another Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, setting the number at “approximately 70.”


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But what does the administration think it’s playing in Georgia — paint ball?

As the astonishingly smooth and swift Russian invasion of Georgia shows, this isn’t a game. If ever the word “flashpoint” was appropriate, it’s in Georgia.

The administration is playing with fire if it thinks it can get away unpunished with more war games in that cockpit of oil and intrigue, hard on the Russian frontier.

Jeff Stein can be reached at [e-mail] .


Read more: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=hsnews-0000...

[bemildred]

1. Link:

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=hsnews-000002938199

You probably ought to fix the thread title to match the story too.