Here's an excellent video I saw on C-SPAN on the Georgian-Russian conflict. Very informative.
It features a conference put on by the American Enterprise Institute.
Watch it here. You may beed the RealPlayer to view it.
My take-aways from the video, and points in general:
• The Russians were well prepared BEFORE the hostilities started. They had a huge army mobilized before the attack.
• What complete political and intelligence ineptness by the Bush administration to to not notice this build up, and go public with it, putting a spotlight on the situation before the Russian attack, or even the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali.
• The Russians attack, and constantly spew bald-faced lies the whole time, and the major media use the Russian propaganda as part of their "balanced" coverage. On the face of it, the Russian lies are obvious: Peace-keepers don't attack and take over cities, or bomb civilian targets or oil pipelines, and if they were keeping the peace, they wouldn't allow bands of thugs to burn down houses and kill people
• Why would the Russians intentionally try to bomb the Georgian oil pipeline? Terror and hegemony can be the only answer (Russia has taken over the oil industry in their country, jailed CEO's, and now has a direct interest in high oil prices and being the region's primary provider.)
• Russian citizens, who accord Putin a large favorable rating percentage, apparently would rather be proud of their country rather than be free and civil. The major media in Russia are all state owned and are now propaganda, viable opposition candidates are thrown into insane asslyums, businesses that have valuable assets are taken over.
• Vladimir Putin probably thinks he's achieved a great victory here. But in the long term he has not. He's only creating more trouble for his country.
• quote from the video "There's no doubt now that Russian is an authoritarian state."
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