"/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The U.S. is planning to deploy some 5000 troops in Georgia. For the purpose, Georgia can sign a military-political agreement like the one Russia concluded with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, KavkazCenter reports."

"U.S. navy bases will be deployed in the ports of Batumi and Poti while air forces will be deployed near Gori and Marneuli. The details of the agreement will be discussed during Saakashvili’s the impending visit to the United States."

If the above report from Armenian sources is correct then the US has lost its marbles and will have lit the fuse.

Just the highlights, from National Post:

Georgia’s crisis looks a lot like Kosovo’s (Aug 13)

On Tuesday, the European Union’s Javier Solana called upon Russia to do what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) didn’t do nine years ago: Respect another country’s territorial integrity. Instead of replying: “We’ll respect Georgia’s territorial integrity as much as the Western powers respected Serbia’s territorial integrity in 1999,” the Russians responded politely. According to a news agency report, President Dmitry Medvedev “in a telephone conversation confirmed to Mr. Solana he has given the order to stop military operations.”
…
U.S. President George W. Bush’s televised remark…from the White House: “Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.”

One wishes. The words lose much of their ring coming from a President who has just given despotic China the seal of good housekeeping by his benign presence at the Olympics, and whose own country has bombed and invaded sovereign countries, not only potential threats like Iraq or Afghanistan, but countries that couldn’t threaten America or its allies by any stretch of the imagination — such, for instance, as Serbia.

We’re seeing a replay of Kosovo, except in a more dangerous setting…Look at the parallels. The world community recognizes South Ossetia as being part of Georgia, just as it recognized Kosovo as being part of Serbia. The Ossetian majority in South Ossetia wants to secede from Georgia to become independent, or join North Ossetia (in other words, Russia) just as a majority in Kosovo wanted the break away from Serbia, as it eventually did, to become independent or join Muslim Albania. So far, the conflicts seem identical.
…
Will Saakashvili end up before an international tribunal as an accused war criminal for resisting the disintegration of his country by sending troops into rebellious South Ossetia? I doubt it. Should he? No, not if you ask me — I’m just not sure why, if Milosevic did.

Is sending troops into South Ossetia to prevent its secession from Georgia, which is what Saakashvili did, different from sending troops into Kosovo to prevent its secession from Serbia, which is what Milosevic tried to do? Why? And how does bombing Georgia to get rid of Saakashvili’s troops in South Ossetia, as Putin has been doing, differ from bombing Serbia, as NATO did between March and June in 1999, to get rid of Milosevic’s troops in Kosovo?

To prevent the ethnic cleansings of Albanians in Kosovo, NATO presided over the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs. Is Putin to be condemned for preventing Georgia from defending its territorial integrity when Clinton and Blair escape censure for preventing Serbia’s defence of its territorial integrity? Again, why? They’re either both war crimes or neither is.

When Hitler dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1938, an act subsequently treated as a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials, in addition to his own ambitions, he was responding to the desire of the ethnic German inhabitants of the Sudetenland to unite their region with the German Reich. It may have been a war crime all right, but it was also an attempt to give effect to the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. Putin seems ready to pull a Sudetenland in Georgia. I’m afraid NATO may have empowered him by pulling one in 1999 in Kosovo.

I had a good responce for 64Lucius & 65Bill Wilder.

Is this censorship at Chronicles.

Bill Wilder & Co.

Ramifications of Russia's Diplomatic Move in the Caucasus http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/72954

http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=1580

..."What exactly the so-called Georgian territories are is not such an easy question. Quite a few of the scholars studying the Caucasus contest the broad interpretation of the term “Georgian” pointing to the fact that at least two Kartvelian peoples – the Mingrelians and the Svans – have languages distinct from that spoken by other groups of Georgians and differ from the overall Georgian population culturally. In the political sense, the Mingrelians and the Svans are also fairly distanced from the Georgian central authority. The Svans are a mountain people which has always lived in a de facto autonomy from Tbilisi. Their relations with Georgia have been strained in the recent years when the Svan-populated Kodor region was occupied on Saakashvili's order and their local leader Emzar Kvitsiani was expelled. As for the Svans' neighbors – the Abkhazians - the relations between them have for the most part been complicated rather than marked by downright hostility. The Svans typically adopted a friendly-neutral stance during the conflict between Abkhazia and Georgia which unfolded in the post-Soviet period...."

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has described his Georgian counterpart as a 'political corpse', saying Moscow does not recognise him as president."

===============

Dumb approach. Now Medvedev taints any Georgian opposition who may wish to take steps to unseat (or demand new elections) Saakashvili. (An entirely appropriate response from the Georgian electorate given his disastrous and incompetent decision to launch the attack on South Ossetia.)

Staying in office became easier for Saakashvili. He'd already severed diplomatic relations with Russia (a tactic that Russia did not initially retaliate against but sought to characterize as counterproductive.) Now Medvedev relieves Saakashvili of having to show breaking ties was a good idea; and gives him the license to paint any opponent as a tool of Moscow.

Overplaying one's hand is an international sport.

The Ossetians and Georgians lived in peace with one another except from 1918-1920, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, precisely when the Russians needed there to be trouble.

Who does Medvedev think he is warning Moldava? The territory doesn't even border on Russia.

Georgia has been fomenting the conflict for years not Russia.

Every Georgian leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union has tried to retake the areas by force stripping them of there decades long autonomous status despite internationally recognised agreements.

Georgia wants to Georgify the regions starting the first president under the slogan Georgia for Georgians.

They are given the ultimatum you do what we say and do what we tell you to do or you’re a non entity.

The recent assault on South Ossetia shows what they think of Ossetians.

Medvedev warned Moldova not to think it has the green light to use force against Transnistria with western assistance and support of Georgian aggression. He’s not working any magic.