[Peace-discuss] Cockburn on the Long War against Russia

[C. G. Estabrook]

Myth, Meth and The Georgian Invasion

A year ago, Georgian president Saakashvili sent Georgian troops into South 
Ossetia on a murderous rampage with civilian casualties put by Irina Gagloeva, 
the press minister of S. Ossetia, at 1492. A much lower number – between 300 and 
400, including soldiers, has been by an investigative committee of the Council 
of Europe. Georgian soldiers butchered their victims  with great brutality. 
Kirill Benediktov, in his online book on the invasion 
(http://war080808.ru/book/war080808_book.pdf) reports that these soldiers  were 
equipped – so subsequent searches of bodies and prisoners of war disclosed – not 
only with NATO-supplied food packages but  sachets  of methamphetamine and 
combat stress pills based on MDMA, aka the active ingredient of Ecstasy. The 
meth amps up soldiers to kill without mercy, and the stress pill  frees them of 
subsequent debilitating flashbacks and recurring nightmares. Official use of 
methamphetamine and official testing of MDMA in US armed forces has been 
confirmed in many news reports.

Whatever Vice President Joe Biden may claim, there never was any serious doubt 
that Saakashvili, with covert U.S. encouragement, and military training and 
kindred assistance, started the war. In June of this year, the German news 
magazine Der Spiegel ran a piece,  seemingly  based on a reading of a draft 
report by Heidi Tagliavini, who heads the European Union’s fact-finding 
commission on the Georgian war. Despite the subsequent stentorian denials of a 
much embarrassed Tagliavini, Der Spiegel’s editors stood by their story, that 
“The facts assembled on Tagliavini’s desk refute Saakashvili’s claim that his 
country became the innocent victim of ‘Russian aggression’ that day.”
Large numbers of Russian tanks were nowhere near the border of South Ossetia on 
August 7. According to Tagliavini’s draft report, as cited by Der Spiegel,  “The 
experts found no evidence to support claims by the Georgian president that a 
Russian column of 150 tanks had advanced into South Ossetia on the evening of 
August 7. According to the commission’s findings, the Russian army didn’t enter 
South Ossetia until Aug. 8.  Saakashvili had already amassed 12,000 troops and 
75 tanks on the border with South Ossetia on the morning of Aug. 7.” To avoid 
causing any embarrassment  to the US and its allies on the anniversary, the EU 
report was withheld and will be published in September, shorn – so staffers 
confided to Der Spiegel --  of unpleasing disclosures. Two British monitors from 
the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe corroborated Spiegel’s 
and Russian accounts of Georgia having fired the first shots.

 From the opening minutes of the 5-day war, the BBC, CNN, Fox News and the other 
major networks bellowed in unison that this was a case of Russian aggression. 
Republican candidate John McCain, whose chief foreign policy advisor Randy 
Scheunemann was also a paid advisor of Saakashvili, ladled out vintage Cold War 
rhetoric proclaiming,  “We are all Georgians now.”Candidate Obama was not quite 
so abandoned, at least  in his initial reactions, prompting some to think – 
erroneously -- that this particular Democrat might be more rational and pacific 
in his foreign policy. Voices of sanity in the US Congress were, as usual, 
almost inaudible. Rep Dana Rohrbacher, (R- Ca) was a spirited exception. "The 
Russians were right; we're wrong," Rohrabacher said at a hearing of the House of 
Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee."The Georgians started it; the 
Russians ended it.”

Here we are, a year later, the window panes still rattling from Vice President 
Joe Biden’s speech to the Georgian Parliament on July 23 – whether assisted by a 
combat envelope of methamphetamine we do not know – to the effect that "We, the 
United States, stand by you on your journey to a secure, free and democratic, 
and once again united, Georgia.” In other words, the U.S. remains implacably 
opposed to South Ossetia’s desire for independence and committed to Georgian 
claims:  “Divided, Georgia will not complete its journey. United, Georgia can 
achieve the dreams of your forebears and, maybe more importantly, the hopes of 
your children.”  Thus did Biden express official US policy in linking hands 
across the decades with Stalin who forced unwilling South Ossetia and Abkhazia 
into an enlarged Georgia.

Biden also told the Georgian Parliament that the U.S. would continue helping 
Georgia “to modernize” its military and that Washington “fully supports” 
Georgia’s aspiration to join NATO and would help Tbilisi meet the alliance’s 
standards. This elicited a furious reaction from Moscow, pledging sanctions 
against any power rearming Georgia.  The most nauseating moment in Biden’s 
sortie to Tbilisi, where he repeatedly emphasized he was a spokesman for Obama, 
came when , on accounts in the New York Times and Washington Post he brazenly 
lied to Georgian schoolchildren, claiming Russia had launched the invasion. Not 
two weeks later , on August 4,   Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon 
repeated this lie in testimony  before members of the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee.

We should note here that from Clinton-time forward  Georgia has been regarded by 
the U.S as  strategically vital in controlling the oil pipeline to Azerbaijan 
and Central Asia, bypassing Russia and Iran.   Also,  Georgia could play a 
vital, enabling role in the event that Israel decides to attack Iran’s nuclear 
complex. The flight path from Israel to Iran is diplomatically and 
geographically challenging. On the other hand, Georgia is perfectly situated as 
the take-off point for any such raid. Israel has been heavily involved in 
supplying and training Georgia’s armed forces. The Spiegel story remarked that 
"Georgia had increasingly made headlines as a goldmine for Israeli arms dealers 
and veterans from the military and the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.” 
President Saakashvili has boasted that his Defense Minister, Davit Kezerashvili 
and also Temur Yakobashvili, the minister responsible for negotiations over 
South Ossetia, lived in Israel before moving to Georgia, adding, “Both war and 
peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews."

In light of the foregoing, you think McCain could have been worse, even as the 
war in Afghanistan escalates?

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