[Sigurdrifta]

Somewhere I saw that there were something like 1,000 US Marines and maybe soldiers as well in Georgia on some sort of joint training exercise with the Georgians.

Anyone know if they are still there. That is a “flashpoint” I would not like to see.

[mathluv]

F&F said this am that they had left earlier in the week.

[Hexenhammer]

Somewhere I saw that there were something like 1,000 US Marines and maybe soldiers as well in Georgia on some sort of joint training exercise with the Georgians. Anyone know if they are still there. That is a “flashpoint” I would not like to see.

Georgia Army National Guard, which confused the hell out of me when reading the headline the first time.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2008/07/13/georgia_national_guard_.html

[iThinkBig]

Leave the toys behind for our allies and get them the hell out if that is true.

[Candor7]

Operation Immediate Response 2008 was held from July 15-July 30, with U.S. personnel training about 600 troops at a former Soviet base near Tbilisi, the largest city and capital of Georgia.

OIR should have been over 30 July and the U.S. Marines are out of there.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/08/ap_georgia_080808/

Good article from the Military Times.

[givemELL]

This site, excerpted, has a report from today:

“Early Saturday, Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the Vaziani military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital was bombed by warplanes during the night and that bombs fell in the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. He also said two other Georgian military bases were hit and that warplanes bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil shipment facility.

Utiashvili said there apparently were significant casualties and damage in the attacks, but that further details would not be known until the morning.”

Also, another site reported that 1200 US special ops forces were present at the Vaizani base for training exercises with Georgias forces...they arrived on TUESDAY. I hope they are ok, the base having come under Russian air attack. ALso, earlier sources mentioned as many as 1000 US Marines were previously in the country.

Georgia is the third biggest contributor of forces in Iraq, with 2500 there. They have been recalled to Georgia because of the emergency.

[church16]

Yep, they were supposedly at Vaziani, which was hit yesterday or Friday. Supposedly they went out for “Field Exercise” on Thursday so hopefully they weren’t (or most of them weren’t) around when the bombings started. That was on open sources last week. Hope no Marines got hurt. The Russians are tubing this but will probably win anyway. Not a very subtle strategy and will make the Euro-weenies reassess their alliances and friendships.