Posted on 08/16/2008 1:28:50 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
TBILISI, Georgia — As the conflict between Russia and Georgia enters its second week, there is growing evidence of looting and “ethnic cleansing” in a number of villages throughout the area of conflict.
The attacks — some witnessed by reporters or documented by a human rights group — include stealing, the burning of villages and possibly even killings. Some are ethnically motivated, while at least some of the looting appears to be the work of profiteers in areas from which the authorities have fled.
The identities of the attackers vary, but a pattern of violence by ethnic Ossetians against ethnic Georgians is emerging and has been confirmed by some Russian authorities. “Now Ossetians are running around and killing poor Georgians in their enclaves,” said Maj. Gen. Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Borisov, the commander in charge of the city of Gori, occupied by the Russians.
A lieutenant from an armored transport division that was previously in Chechnya said: “We have to be honest. The Ossetians are marauding.”
The hostilities between Russia and Georgia started last week when the Georgian military marched into the disputed territory of South Ossetia, and the Russians responded by sending troops into the pro-Russia, separatist enclave and then into Georgia proper.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Also see the link below for one story on the Buchanan/Putin peacekeepers robbing a bank.
http://www.timesnow.tv/NewsDtls.aspx?NewsID=13690
"Almost all schools and colleges and some shops and other buildings in Tbilisi have been filled with people who fled the fighting, mainly from Gori."
"Georgian TV stations have begun broadcasting reports which state that Russian soldiers have started marauding in Gori, Tskhinvali and the surrounding villages. They are breaking into houses, robbing everything. “They steal everything they can reach; cars, minibuses, and kill anyone who tries to prevent them. The residents have been living in basements for several days and won’t dare come out. Ossetian separatists are extremely aggressive towards Georgians and kill them without even speaking. They killed a wife and husband by a knife to their throat before my eyes” Gori resident Paata Tarielashvili said.
Russian “peacekeepers” have already occupied police stations and other state buildings in Zugdidi region. According to a Rustavi 2 news report, they have stolen computers and other things from the stations and conveyed them to unknown places. A middle–aged man stranded in the open air told Rustavi2 by telephone that one Russian soldier stole a minibus, called someone and told him he had young captives."
Buchanan isn’t defending the Russians, he has been predicting how the Russians would respond. And it’s undeniable that PJB was - once again - correct. It was completely foreseeable, and the West’s impotent response was foreseeable, too. Not one Western soldier will be sent to defend Gori or Tbilsi, or wherever.
Here’s PJB’s prescient analysis from earlier this year. It is instructive how far people will go to smear Pat. His was a sober warning:
From PJB’s January 4, 2008 article entitled
Should Americans Die for South Ossetia?
....
...to persuade Europe to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which means a U.S. commitment to treat any Russian attack on Kiev or Tbilisi like an attack on Kansas or Texas.
...
Can any sane man believe the United States should go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Stalin’s birthplace, Georgia?
Two provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have seceded, with the backing of Russia.
...
To bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO would put America in the middle of these quarrels. We could be dragged into a confrontation with Russia over Abkhazia, or South Ossetia, or over who owns Sebastopol. To bring these ex-republics of the Soviet Union into NATO would be an affront to Moscow not unlike 19th century Britain bringing the Confederate state of South Carolina under the protection of the British Empire.
How would Lincoln’s Union have reacted to that?
With a weary army and no NATO ally willing to fight beside us, how could we defend Georgia if Tbilisi, once in NATO, defied Moscow and invaded Abkhazia and South Ossetia – and Russia bombed the Georgian army and capital? Would we declare war? Would we send the 82nd Airborne into the Pankisi Gorge?
...
As Anatol Lieven writes in the Financial Times, McCain supports a restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. He wants to throw Russia out of the G-8 – and talks flippantly of bombing Iran.
Says McCain, “I would institute a policy called ‘rogue state rollback.’ I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.”
Wonderful. A Second Crusade for Global Democracy. But with the Joint Chiefs warning of a war-weary Army and Marine Corps, who will fight all the new wars the neocons and their new champion have in store for us?
Nutball Pat’s harshest criticism has been towards the US for taking out that b*stard Hussein.
Now he readily excuses the invasion of Georgia as “oh well, shouldn’t mess with Russia.”
Which side is he on again?
I can confidently predict you won't "fight" for Georgia either, unless typing on the internet counts as "fighting."
You are exactly right.
But what is certain is I won't be politically and morally neutral like Buchanan, your hero. I won't blame the victims, like Buchanan does of the Poles in WWII or the Georgians today. Why is he always sucking up to evil men, rationalizing their evil, and showing contempt for the innocent victims? Hmmmm?
Buchanan’s foreign policy views are based on protecting the vital interests of this America. Those do not include the question of who controls South Ossetia. Getting into unnecessary wars is a sure path to national ruin.
Please put me on your ping! thanks for gettinga Georgia ping started!
Will do.
You are right.
Little Estonia has sent in troops...we can’t get our aid in.
and Merkel is a weenie that will see her day coming.
And we are fighting with each other on the Freeper site STILL whether Georgia is worth it. And ‘we don’t have a dog in this fight.” Not much conservative values about freedom and democracy and national sovereignty...lets just leave this silly little country ‘way over there” alone.
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