Word: georgians
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...criticize their aggression and belligerence when the U.S. under Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney acted similarly with respect to Iraq? I do hope Barack Obama and John McCain follow Brzezinski's advice, and I hope NATO and the rest of the international community can persuade Russia to leave Georgian territory or make the political and economic consequences as painful as possible. Andy Paquet, Uniontown, Ohio...
...That is not to say, however, that Washington is a disinterested party, since it has maintained especially close relations with the government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili graduated from Columbia University School of Law and worked briefly for a New York City law firm before taking up opposition politics back home in the 1990s. As has been widely reported, some of the groups that helped organize the 2003 Rose Revolution that ousted his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, received funding from the U.S. government. Since Saakashvili took office in 2004, his government has continued to receive strong U.S. funding...
...What remains unclear is which one of them moved first. Russia contends that on the night the war began, Aug. 7, they were simply responding to a Georgian attack on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali and the threat to the lives of Russian and Ossetian civilians there. But that scenario does not explain the widely documented buildup since the spring of Russian forces just across the border from South Ossetia, which made it possible for up to 150 tanks to cross into South Ossetia within hours of the Russian order to attack...
...Georgia's claim that Russia started the war is not completely convincing either. In an interview with TIME, Saakashvili said he ordered his troops to attack the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali only after Russia launched its invasion into Georgian territory; his professed aim was to slow Russia's advance by 48 hours in order to give the international community time to act. But on the night of Aug. 7, and for three to four days afterward, Georgian officials did not say that Russia had launched its invasion first but only that their forces were responding to stepped-up attacks...
...provoking a Russian response; indeed, a mistaken belief that Western allies could intervene diplomatically to restrain Russia might have encouraged him in that calculation. For its part, Russia could well have sought to provoke Georgia into such a response (by urging the South Ossetians to step up attacks on Georgian positions) in order to provide them with a pretext to invade...