For the first time ever, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has admitted that his country started the military conflict in South Ossetia in August. But the Georgian leader is adamant the action was justified. He was testifying before a parliamentary commission investigating the five-day war.
According to Saakashvili, the attack on the South Ossetian capital, which involved night shelling of residential areas with multiple rocket launcher systems, was aimed at protecting Georgian citizens. He said it was a response to Russia’s “intervention” in the region.
“We did start military action to take control of Tskhinvali and other unruly areas. But we took this difficult decision to fend off our territory from intervention and save the people who were dying. It was inevitable,” Saakavili said.
The Georgian President claims Russia moved tanks into South Ossetian territory before Georgia launched its attack.
He said: “The issue is not about why Georgia started military action – we admit we started it. The issue is about whether there was another chance when our citizens were being killed? We tried to prevent the intervention and fought on our own territory.”
The New York Times on Friday carried a front-page article headlined “Accounts Undercut Claims by Georgia on Russia War.” The article cited a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a multinational association of 56 member states whose monitors were in Georgia when the fighting broke out, which demolishes the official US account of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war, according to which the war was an act of Russian aggression.
The OSCE concluded that the conflict began on August 7 when US-trained Georgian troops shelled Russian peacekeepers and civilians in the capital of Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali.
Saakashvili’s splendid little war in early August was accompanied by a lot of propaganda. But it still it was obvious to most people that Saakashvili started the war with an artillery barrage against civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Only some 12-15 hours later Russian troops from outside South Ossetia arrived to help their besieged comrades. After two days the outcome was obvious. Georgian troops were beaten and the Russian Federation forces had won the fight.
NATO analysis, the OECD observers and ‘western’ intelligence agencies confirm this view of the events. The Georgians attacked in mass first, then the Russian Federation moved troops and beat them.
But on August 26 a new Georgian version crept up. The Georgian government started to assert that regular Russian troops rushed into South Ossetia before the Georgians attacked.
The following is an exclusive Press TV interview with Russian State Duma Deputy Sergey Markov.
Press TV: The Russian president says Moscow is against military action and new sanctions against Iran. Will Russia veto any possible US attempt against Iran at the UN Security Council?
Markov: Yes. First of all, I think it is the general Russian strategy that the United Nations should not impose sanctions against Iran but to give Iran a sense of security and the major threat to the security of Iran is coming from the United States.
The United States warns of sanctions and other forms of pressure and threatens the country. We believe that this threat has not decreased Iran’s willingness to get nuclear power but, on the contrary, has increased its willingness because Iran is afraid of a possible attack against it. This is one reason.
The second reason has come after this war in South Ossetia. We understood that US policies are too provocative and rely too much on force and violence. We think it is a big mistake by the United States. That’s why we don’t support such policies.
Prior to entering WW II, US strategists had a clear aim in mind at its conclusion – to hold unchallengeable power in a new post-war global system: military, economic and political in a “Grand Area” encompassing the West and Far East. Essentially most parts outside the communist bloc and exploiting it under disarming rhetoric like being “selfless advocates of freedom for colonial peoples (and an) enemy of imperialism.” Championing “world peace (also) through multinational control.”
Today, the facade is gone, and no pretense remains about much “grander” plans – over an “Area” comprising planet earth with “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any potential challengers with all weapons in our arsenal, including nuclear and others of mass destruction.
One nation above others is an obstacle – Russia. It’s powerful and can’t be intimidated like most others. It’s also dominant where Washington wants control – the Eurasian vastness with its huge oil, gas and other resources. For years, American sought dominance over it. Saw an opening when the Soviet Union dissolved. And one way or other seeks to get it. Russia has other plans, so therein lies the root of the current conflict using Georgia as a US proxy to instigate it.
In an interview with CNN Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict may have been staged to secure a victory for one of the presidential candidates in the U.S. He says preliminary reports show that U.S. citizens may have been present in the combat zone.
“We have serious reasons to believe that American citizens were right at the heart of the military action. This would have implications for American domestic policy. If this is confirmed, we will have grounds to suspect that somebody in the U.S. has created this conflict to aggravate the situation and create a competitive advantage for one of the presidential candidates”.
Russia’s Prime Minister also commented on the media coverage of the recent events.
“As far as the perception of these events by the general public goes, it depends not only on politicians, but also on how artful they are in controlling the mass media. And our American colleagues do this much better than we do and there’s a lot we can learn from them”.
The Bush administration appears to have pulled off its latest military fiasco in the Caucasus. What was supposed to have been a swift and painless takeover of rebellious South Ossetia by America’s favorite new ally, Georgia, has turned into a disaster that left Georgia battered, Russia enraged, and NATO badly demoralized. Not bad for two days work.
Equally important, Russia’s Vladimir Putin swiftly and decisively checkmated the Bush administration’s clumsy attempt last week to expand US influence into the Caucasus, and made the Americans and their Georgian satraps look like fools.
We are not facing a return to the Cold War – yet. But the current US-Russian crisis over Georgia, a tiny nation of only 4.6 million, and its linkage to a US anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, is deeply worrying and increasingly dangerous.
“I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings and in cars. It’s impossible to count them now. There’s hardly a single building left undamaged.”
Lyudmila Ostayeva, resident of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia
Washington’s bloody fingerprints are all over the invasion of South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili would never dream of launching a massive military attack unless he got explicit orders from his bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After all, Saakashvili owes his entire political career to American power-brokers and US intelligence agencies. If he disobeyed them, he’d be gone in a fortnight. Besides an operation like this takes months of planning and logistical support; especially if it’s perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympic games. (another petty neocon touch) That means Pentagon planners must have been working hand in hand with Georgian generals for months in advance. Nothing was left to chance.
Another tell-tale sign of US complicity is the way President Bush has avoided ordering Georgian troops to withdraw from a province that has been under the protection of international peacekeepers. Remember how quickly Bush ordered Sharon to withdraw from his rampage in Jenin? Apparently it’s different when the aggression serves US interests.
Georgia wouldn’t have attacked South Ossetia without the green light from the U.S, believes Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary to the treasury in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
“War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.”
“War…is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.”
“To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.”
“The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.” (Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
There are people in charge who think that provocation and aggression can be acceptable government policy. The sudden conflict between the former Soviet republic of Georgia and Russia in the Caucasus in Eurasia is a good case in point.
What’s behind this conflict that erupted last Friday at the outset of the Beijing Olympic Games? First and foremost, let us keep in mind that the real and first aggressors in this conflict is the belligerent government of Georgia, led by an impulsive politician named Mikhail Saakashvili, who is openly supported by the governments of the U.S. and of Israel. Early Friday, August 8, Georgian tanks and infantry, assisted by American and Israeli military advisers, launched an early morning massive artillery and rocket barrage on the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, thus directly provoking Russia, which had soldiers in that province.
