The following posting on The Standard blog is dating back exactly one year: 15th August 2007.
Little did we know when we published our first post a few days ago on the subject of the rape of Georgia and titled it "Caught Sleeping in Tbilisi," that our misguided politicians and diplomats were actually long-term struck by a malignant form of catatonic coma!
Saakashvili may be a hot-head (the MSM's favorite qualification), but as it turns out, he was right all along!
As the Russians are playing word games over the French cheese ceasefire agreement they never intended to keep, and the relativized MSM are incorrigibly fixated on the Russia-was-provoked myth because that neatly covers their moral agnostics (they have already moved on to the resignation of President Musharraf of Pakistan), 160.000 refugees have descended on the Georgian capital Tbilisi. And now this ... dated 15th August 2007 ... read and weep:
The Standard: "The New Russia: Georgia Alleges Second Attack in Four Months - Missile Lands in Georgian Village"
Georgia has accused Russia of an "undisguised aggression," claiming two Russian Su24 jets entered Georgian airspace on August 7 and fired (or "ditched", according to other reports) a missile that landed near a house in the village of Tsitelubani.
The missile did not explode. (See The New York Times and the BBC for August 7 coverage.)
Georgia has called for an emergency UN meeting. Russia has denied all allegations.
The United States has called the act a "provocation" and the European Union has urged all sides to show restraint.
Meanwhile, the good people at The Economist have put the incident in context.
But there's much more context.
Well... A Second Missile Attack
As The Wall Street Journal notes, this was the second time in four months that Georgia has lodged a complaint with the international community regarding a Russian attack.
On March 11, two helicopters flew over the mountains into Georgia's Kodori Valley and fired a missile into a Georgian government building. This missile, as it happens, exploded.
Again from WSJ: "The sheer sophistication of a helicopter attack in high mountain passes at night would point to Russian authorship. Its military is the only one in the region known to have the equipment and training needed to pull it off."
The Russian government, not so unexpectedly, denied the allegations.
When asked by the UN to provide radar records, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the Russian military records "only flights by aviation of the Russian armed forces." As there were no Russian aircraft in the area that evening, the Ministry letter went on to explain, there were no records to provide.
At this point, let's all pause for three seconds and reflect on the purpose and uses of a military radar system.
Good.
It's should be clear now that Russian helicopters entered the airspace of a free, sovereign nation, staged a military attack, and the UN, the United States, and the European Union have offered no measured diplomatic response.
Now as the same free, sovereign nation makes a second accusation, the United States government has managed a whisper, while the European Union has taken upon itself the supreme responsibility of playing the role of kindergarten teacher.
Probably nothing to worry about...
An ultra-nationalist state that has changed its school textbooks to present Great Britain and the United States as its 'totalitarian' adversaries and stated directly that oil and gas supplies ought be used as geopolitical weapons (See previous post).
Cooler heads...
Here's the map of oil and gas pipelines (in French) from Russia to Europe, in case you were wondering...
The last half year has seen the Russian government take aggressive new stances in the international game of power and indoctrinate its new generation with belligerent nationalist ideology that lauds the glories of the Soviet past. It has also seen the Russian military accused of various acts of aggression. This above post is only a part of the whole. >>>
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