Posted on 08/16/2008 3:17:06 AM PDT by edpc
TBILISI, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Georgia's Interior Ministry said on Saturday that Russian troops had blown up a railway bridge about 45 km (30 miles) from the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said troops had destroyed the bridge in the Kaspi region west of Tbilisi, "paralysing the Georgian railway network". Reuters could not independently verify the report.
A Reuters correspondent saw Russian armoured personnel carriers and soldiers advance to the area on Friday from the Russian-occupied town of Gori near breakaway South Ossetia.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
You are making general assumption here. I am affiliated with no political party. Why does everything revolve around politics? Politicians and their lies gain no merit in my book.
The scenario is complete and utter non-sense. It only exists in minds still stuck in the old mindset of the Soviet Empire. A road network between the North Caucasus and Iran would be an utter disaster to maintain and all for the purpose of arms transfers. It would tie down thousand of Russian forces for years to supress the Georgian people alone let alone any others nations in the way.
The supply route to Iran is via the Caspian Sea port to Caspian Sea port. There is also flight routes down the Caspian sea straight into Iran. Russia with its strategic airlift and civil transport aircraft can fly in all the arms and troops it wanted into Iran. It needs no other supply route.
For those that believed in a huge build up of Russian forces before the invasion.
‘US military surprised by speed, timing of Russia military action’
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gj_jyRnqBYekXz2MyszBj6k_ZMtw
‘The US defense official said about 8,000 to 10,000 Russian troops have moved into South Ossetia. They also have flown SU-25, SU-24, SU-27 and TU-22 fighters and bombers during the campaign.
But the official said there was no obvious buildup of Russian forces along the border that signaled an intention to invade.
“Once it did happen they were able to get the forces quickly and it was just a matter of taking the roads in. So it’s not as though they were building up forces on the border, waiting,” the official said.’
Er, you’re probably not aware that the Russians had also been conducting war games in this same area. That means that they already had their forces (legitimately) in place. We were also conducting wargames there, but we withdrew most of ours, while they waited until we were gone to strike.
I was in Europe during the start of this, and even the European press mentioned disturbances in the area. It never got reported here, of course.
There was nothing that the West could do apart from actually confronting directly Russian forces. As I’ve stated on Freepers before the Pentagon knew already the disposition of Russian forces. It knew that this was no mass invasion or mass mobilisation by Russia. It would have been the first brief that President Bush would have received. No mass mobilisation and no mobilisation of any strategic Russian reserve.
With the intel supporting it gave President Bush the breathing space not to make a rash decision. When he confronted Putin he knew the disposition of Russian forces. I know how the system works as I worked in it for 22 years.
‘US military surprised by speed, timing of Russia military action’
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gj_jyRnqBYekXz2MyszBj6k_ZMtw
‘The US defense official said about 8,000 to 10,000 Russian troops have moved into South Ossetia. They also have flown SU-25, SU-24, SU-27 and TU-22 fighters and bombers during the campaign.
But the official said there was no obvious buildup of Russian forces along the border that signaled an intention to invade.
“Once it did happen they were able to get the forces quickly and it was just a matter of taking the roads in. So it’s not as though they were building up forces on the border, waiting,” the official said.’
It was bad, yes, but not the disaster it would have been if President Bush had made a rash decision. Remember that the U.S. pre-announced to Russia that humanitarian aid would be flown in. The Russians could have simply stopped all that aid by destroying the runways with airstrikes before the C-17s arrived.
Yes, I was aware of it. The active part of it took place on 15th July. What you don’t realise is that the North Caucausus Military District is 100,000 strong. A very small part of that force entered South Ossetia. It is a volatile region and standing forces are kept on alert. Far too many people are still thinking that Russian forces are all drunk and incompetent. To get a small element of that force moving doesn’t take weeks or months to prepare. The close air support is also readily available in the NCMD. Again sterotypical views is that the entire Russian Air Force is all grounded and that they are rusting away. It isn’t. The force used, even on two fronts, was small.
Analysis from a serving U.S. intel analyst on the conflict. All derived from open source material.
http://geimint.blogspot.com/2008/08/russia-georgia-disinformation.html
Russian 58th Army was approaching the Roki tunnel on August 4th.
I post it here on the 15th, from original source BBC Monitoring via TOL (Czech) on Aug 6th.
Thanks for posting the link.
A cursory glance seems to indicate it has some interesting information. Looking forward to reading it!
This may be one of the other reasons for Russian troop movement is the Kaspi region. It was in a Georgian controlled part of South Ossetia.
As I said, when I was in Europe (during this time), there were press reports of Russian activity in that area.
I think the Russians knew that sooner or later there would be a Georgian reaction to their provocations. They had the good luck that it occurred during the Olympics - or maybe they had accelerated their provocations to ensure this - but it was, in any case, a plan that had been set up some time before.
We must have known something about it or we wouldn’t have been wargaming there. But on the whole, I’d say we need an entirely new intelligence service. Or maybe we need an entirely new group of people interpreting intelligence reports? Something didn’t go right here, with the result that we were caught flat-footed.
Also, as somebody else suggested, we need a rapid response force that will simply go out and zap the bad guys and go away. We don’t need to get into nation building again. We snuff out the bad guys and leave.
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