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Russian forces battle Georgians

Started by Raineyrocks, August 08, 2008, 08:17 PM NHFT

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Raineyrocks

http://www.infowars.com/?p=4015


Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War

F. William Engdahl
Global Research
August 18, 2008
   
Fusion center    
   
Washington plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland coupled with a radar system in the Czech Republic, which it ludicrously claims are intended to counter possible attacks from what it calls "rogue states," including Iran.    
   

The signing on August 14 of an agreement between the governments of the United States and Poland to deploy on Polish soil US 'interceptor missiles' is the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis. Far from a defensive move to protect European NATO states from a Russian nuclear attack, as military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet.

The preliminary deal to place elements of the US global missile defense shield was signed by Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and US chief negotiator John Rood on August 14. Under the terms, Washington plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland coupled with a radar system in the Czech Republic, which it ludicrously claims are intended to counter possible attacks from what it calls "rogue states," including Iran.

To get the agreement Washington agreed to reinforce Poland's air defenses. The deal is still to be approved by the two countries' governments and Poland's parliament. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in televised remarks that "the events in the Caucasus show clearly that such security guarantees are indispensable." The US-Polish missile talks had been dragging for months before recent hostilities in Georgia.

The Bush White House Press spoksperson, Dona Perino stated, officially, "We believe that missile defense is a substantial contribution to NATO's collective security." Officials say the interceptor base in Poland will be opened by 2012. The Czech Republic signed a deal to host a US radar on July 8.

The signing now insures an escalation of tensions between Russia and NATO and a new Cold War arms race in full force. It is important for readers to understand, as I detail painstakingly in my book, to be released this autumn, Full Spectrum Dominance: The National Security State and the Spread of Democracy, the ability of one of two opposing sides to put anti-missile missiles to within 90 miles of the territory of the other in even a primitive first-generation anti-missile missile array gives that side virtual victory in a nuclear balance of power and forces the other to consider unconditional surrender or to pre-emptively react by launching its nuclear strike before 2012. Senior Russian lawmakers said on Friday the agreement would damage security in Europe, and reiterated that Russia would now have to take steps to ensure its security.

Andrei Klimov, deputy head of the Russian State Duma's international affairs committee, said the deal was designed to demonstrate Warsaw's "loyalty to the US and receive material benefits. For the Americans, it is an opportunity to expand its military presence across the world, including closer to Russia. For NATO, this is an additional risk...many NATO countries are unhappy with this, including the Germans and the French."

Klimov called the agreement "a step back" toward the Cold War.

Russian response

The US plans to deploy a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in northern Poland as part of a US-controlled missile shield for Europe and North America, has been officially sold under the ludicrous argument that it is against possible attacks from "rogue states," including Iran. Last Spring then Russian President Vladimir Putin exposed the shallowness of the US propaganda line by offering a startled President Bush that Russia would offer the US use of Russian leased radar facilities in Azerbaijan on the Iran border to far better monitor Iran missile launches. The Bush Administration simply ignored the offer, exposing that their real target is Russia not "rogue states like Iran." Russia rightly views deployment of the US missile shield as a threat to its national security.

The latest Polish agreement advances a Russian response.
   
   
   

Russian officials earlier said Moscow could deploy its Iskander tactical missiles and strategic bombers in Belarus and Russia's westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad if Washington succeeded in its missile shield plans in Europe. Moscow also warned it could target its missiles on Poland.

Russia is also discussing to put in place an orbital ballistic missile system in response to US missile defense plans for Central Europe, according to a senior Russian military expert.

"A program could be implemented to create orbital ballistic missiles capable of reaching US territory via the South Pole, skirting US air defense bases," said Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, now vice president of the Academy of Security, Defense and Law Enforcement Studies.

Previously as part of the post Cold War agreements with the US, agreements which have been ´significantly ignored by Washington as it pushed the borders of NATO ever closer to Moscow's doorstep, the Soviet Union had abandoned such missiles in accordance with the START I Treaty.

Obama backs missile defense too

The deal would further divide European countries into what Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski calls openly, US "vassals" and those pursuing more independent policies.

Any illusions that a Democratic Obama Presidency would mean a rollback of such provocative NATO and US military moves of recent years should be dismissed as dangerous wishful thinking. Obama's foreign policy team in addition to father Zbigniew Brzezinski, includes Brzezinski's son, Ian Brzezinski, current US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs. Ian Brzezinski is a devout backer of US missile defense policy, as well as Kosovo independence and NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia.

Raineyrocks

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7562611.stm

       
Page last updated at 09:08 GMT, Friday, 15 August 2008 10:08 UK
E-mail this to a friend    Printable version
Russians losing propaganda war

By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in Tbilisi on 13 August 2008
Most of the Western media are based in Georgia

The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.

It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation.

Yet the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.

Blame game

The BBC's Sarah Rainsford has reported: "Many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia are furious about what has happened to their city.

"They are very clear who they blame: Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on 13 August 2008
Has Moscow learned yet how to play the media game?

Human Rights Watch concluded after an on-the-ground inspection: "Witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian fire accounting for much of the damage described [in Tskhinvali]."

One problem for the Russians is that they have not yet learned how to play the media game. Their authoritarian government might never do so.

Most of the Western media are based in Georgia. The Russians were slow to give access from their side and this has helped them lose the propaganda war.

Georgia, meanwhile, was comparing this to Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956. Even the massacre at Srebrenica was recalled.

Mud sticks

The comparisons did not fit the facts, but some of the mud has stuck and Russia has been on the international defensive.

The visit by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia is a signal of support for Mr Saakashvili.

Significantly, she is not paying a matching visit to Moscow but will return directly to the United States where she will brief President George W Bush in Texas.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on 13 August 2008
Washington has accused Russia of widening the conflict

She has refused to condemn Georgia and barely acknowledged Russia's point that it had to protect its peacekeeping forces (a battalion-sized unit allowed in South Ossetia along with Georgian and North Ossetian and South Ossetian forces under a 1992 agreement).

Instead she blamed Russia for widening the conflict by bombing beyond what the 1992 deal called the "zone of conflict" in South Ossetia.

She said: "This is something that, had it been about South Ossetia, could have been resolved within certain limits.

"Russian peacekeepers were in the area; that is true. And Russia initially said it needed to act to protect its peacekeepers and its people.

"But what Russia has done is well beyond anything that anyone could say is for the protection of those people and for those peacekeepers."

HAVE YOUR SAY

    Russia's relations with the US may recover. Its relations with the "near abroad" are shattered forever

Stephen Thake, Valletta, Malta
Send us your comments

The Americans have sent in planes full of humanitarian aid, again a symbol of support.

But they have sent no military supplies. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said: "I don't see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation. Is that clear enough?"

US diplomacy is also concentrating on the issue of sovereignty and territorial integrity - which means that South Ossetia and the other restless region, Abkhazia, must remain within Georgian borders. Russian has questioned this.

Moscow's anger

This widens the whole question into one of Russian behaviour generally, which is much surer ground for the Bush administration. The US will continue to press for eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership of Nato.

The Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain also sees in this conflict an opportunity to put Russia in the dock, declaring: "We are all Georgians now."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) and Dmitry Medvedev at G8 in Japan on 9 July 2008
Germany, at least, has been notably reluctant to find fault with Russia

All this is likely to anger Moscow, which will feel that it has a case and that it is being ignored. Right from the start it said that the operation was not an invasion.

The adverse effect on US-Russia relations, about which Mr Gates warned, is going to be a two-way process.

There are signs, though, that there is some sympathy for Russia within the European Union - although not among the Eastern European states who still fear Russia and not in the British government, which has matched the US line about Russian "aggression".

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeing Russian leaders and while she too will urge them not to challenge borders, the German government has been notably reluctant to blame Russia.

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Alex Libman

Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 18, 2008, 10:38 AM NHFT
How do you know I didn't live in the Soviet Union?

My bad.  I meant to say this rhetorically, that is it's difficult to explain to people in countries with more clearly-defined boundaries why Russia was justified in giving its citizenship to whoever wanted it after the USSR break-up.

Where did you live, and when did you get out?  (And is Lex your original name?  ;))

Raineyrocks

 http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/19/georgia.russia.war/index.html

NATO: Russia not honoring cease-fire terms
   

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- NATO has accused Russia of failing to honor the full terms of the cease-fire agreement brokered by the European Union last week aimed at ending the fighting in Georgia.
Russian soldiers tow away a U.S.-built Humvee in the Black Sea port city of Poti on Tuesday.

Russian soldiers tow away a U.S.-built Humvee in the Black Sea port city of Poti on Tuesday.


NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Tuesday that Russian forces were still inside Georgia despite the agreement to withdraw -- and despite Moscow having said they had begun doing so on Monday.

"We do not see signals of this happening," Scheffer said. "There can be no business as usual with Russia under the present circumstances."

Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said NATO's accusations were "biased."

"They blame us as if there were no requirements for the Georgian side in the six points (of the cease-fire agreement)," he said. "I mean the requirements to bring back their troops to the places where they are on a permanent basis."

Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of staff of Russia's armed forces, said Tuesday that some troops remained in place to protect South Ossetia's borders.

The conflict began when Georgian troops entered the breakaway territory to attack pro-Moscow separatists. Russia responded by invading the country on August 8, prompting heavy fighting with Georgian forces that spread to another breakaway territory, Abkhazia.

The fighting has devastated parts of Georgia and South Ossetia, with many casualties reported. The U.N. refugee agency said more than 158,000 people had been displaced by fighting in Georgia, mostly from districts outside the breakaway territories where the fighting began.

Both Russia and Georgia accuse the other of "ethnic cleansing" during the conflict.

Hopes of resolving the crisis had been boosted earlier on Tuesday when Georgia and Russia exchanged soldiers who had been captured during the fighting, then Russia agreed to a beefed-up monitoring mission for Georgia's disputed region of South Ossetia.

Russia also began deploying troops from the strategically key Georgian city of Gori and the troops headed for South Ossetia on Tuesday afternoon, The Associated Press reported.

However, at the same time Russian soldiers took 21 Georgian military police officers prisoner at the key port of Poti in western Georgia and Ap said they seized four American vehicles set to be returned to the U.S. following joint military exercises.

Scheffer's announcement came after foreign ministers from NATO member nations gathered in Belgium for an emergency meeting over the crisis which also involved U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

A statement from the ministers said: "Military action must cease definitively and military forces must return to their positions held prior to the outbreak of hostilities."   

NATO members "remain concerned by Russia's actions," the statement said, calling Russian military action "disproportionate."

Ministers said they were "seriously" considering the implications of Russia's actions on the NATO-Russia relationship

"As long as Russian forces are basically occupying a large part of Georgia, I cannot see a NATO-Russia Council convene at whatever level," Scheffer said.

"I should add that we certainly do not have the intention to close all doors in our communication with Russia, but ... the future will depend on the concrete actions from the Russian side." Video Watch report on what actions West may take against Russia »

Scheffer said NATO would set up a NATO-Georgian Commission to oversee Georgia's relationship with the international alliance, supervise its bid to join the group and assist Tbilisi with support in the wake of the Russian invasion.

He said a team of 50 NATO staff would to go to Georgia to help assess needs of the Georgian military, help with air traffic resumption and assist in the investigation of cyber attacks.

Rice arrived at NATO headquarters on Tuesday a day after saying that Moscow was playing "a dangerous game" by re-asserting its power across the border.

The U.S. claims Russia is trying to undermine the government of Georgia's pro-Western leader, Mikheil Saakashvili.

The Bush administration wants suspension of the whole spectrum of programs of cooperation between NATO and Russia. Britain and several former Soviet republics support this idea, but other countries -- including France and Germany -- are less inclined to isolate Russia that aggressively.

The United States wants Europe to cancel the many exchanges of personnel and postpone an EU-Russia summit scheduled for November, and is also pushing Europe to start lessening its energy dependence on Russia.

Rice will travel to Warsaw to sign a formal agreement with Poland on Wednesday to base ballistic missile interceptors there. That move, along with the eastward expansion of NATO, has angered Moscow. Video Watch report on how Georgians are being affected by the conflict »

Georgia's Interior Ministry reported that the exchange of prisoners took place in the town of Igoeti, located between the capital Tbilisi and the city of Gori, as part of a cease-fire agreement brokered last week by France.

It said Georgian forces handed over five Russians, including two pilots, and the Russians returned 15 Georgian soldiers. Georgia does not hold any more Russian soldiers, while Russia still has 65 Georgian soldiers, Nogovitsyn said.
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The chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that Russia has agreed to allow the immediate dispatch of 20 of its observers to Georgia's capital of Tbilisi to supplement the nine already based in South Ossetia, with the aim of increasing the total to 100.

Finland's Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, speaking on the sidelines of the NATO meeting, said he was still waiting for a green light from Tbilisi to allow the mission into Georgia, AP reported.

Lex

#34
Quote from: Alex Libman on August 16, 2008, 11:06 PM NHFT
(I left Moscow country June 1992).  At that time everyone held Soviet passports no matter what "republic" (i.e. Russia, Georgia, etc) they lived in.  There was a very large migration of people during the 20th century, and when USSR broke up there were (and still are) tens of millions of Russians left in other republics.

I left Ukraine around 1992 with a Ukrainian passport which I still have albeit it is expired and I am now a US citizen. So, what you said above is obviously incorrect regarding the passport situation ;)

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 16, 2008, 11:06 PM NHFT
If USA was to break up, would you want the citizenship of the state you were born in, lived in the longest, live in now, or what?  The newly-formed Russian Federation was very liberal in giving out passports to anyone who requested them - I don't see how it could have done otherwise.

Um, lets see. My step grandfathers mother and father were wealthy Ukrainian land owners and in a matter of a couple of years they died of starvation after the soviet union was in full swing taking away land and food. My great grandfather spent 20 years in a concentration camp in Siberia, he only lived about a year after he was released. Everyone in my family had a difficult time in those years including WWI and WWII.

I personally do not know ANY Ukrainians that would ever want a Russian passport. I have known several people from the other bloc countries and all of them despise the Russians.

Yes, it's probably true that people in Ossetia requested those passports but ONLY because they came with benefits. Life isn't exactly peachy in Ossetia and if Russia offered them freebies I am not surprised they took them.

The question is, why did Russia offer them freebies? What does Russia have to gain from giving Russian passports and benefits to people technically living in a foreign country?

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 16, 2008, 11:06 PM NHFT
The neocons are making it sound as if Russia forced those passports on them as a power-grab, and that's retarded.  (At least within the paradigm that any nation can call any person a "citizen", as opposed to everyone being sovereign individuals, but that's a whole 'nother topic.)

It's not retarded, it's the reality. There is no other explanation. Blaming the Ossetians for accepting the passports doesn't explain why Russia gave them out.

Lex

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 19, 2008, 09:10 AM NHFT
Where did you live

I was born and lived the first 7 years of my life in Kiev, Ukraine.

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 19, 2008, 09:10 AM NHFT
and when did you get out?

92

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 19, 2008, 09:10 AM NHFT
(And is Lex your original name?  ;))

No.

Raineyrocks

Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 19, 2008, 11:33 AM NHFT
Quote from: Alex Libman on August 19, 2008, 09:10 AM NHFT
Where did you live

I was born and lived the first 7 years of my life in Kiev, Ukraine.

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 19, 2008, 09:10 AM NHFT
and when did you get out?

92

Quote from: Alex Libman on August 19, 2008, 09:10 AM NHFT
(And is Lex your original name?  ;))

No.

This is a little wierd, don't you think?  Lex, I felt like you were just interrogated! :o

Lex

#37
Quote from: raineyrocks on August 19, 2008, 12:13 PM NHFT
This is a little wierd, don't you think?  Lex, I felt like you were just interrogated! :o

Maybe Alex works for the FSB. It would explain the interrogation and the blind faith in mother Russia.

Raineyrocks

Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 19, 2008, 01:13 PM NHFT
Quote from: raineyrocks on August 19, 2008, 12:13 PM NHFT
This is a little wierd, don't you think?  Lex, I felt like you were just interrogated! :o

Maybe Alex works for the FSB. It would explain the interrogation and the blind faith in mother Russia.

Holy Zikes, Batman! :o

Alex Libman

#39
Sorry, I just inquired into some information related to your reply, the same info that I've already volunteered about myself.

Congratulations for having had a Ukrainian passport in 1992, and for only keeping company with Western-oriented Ukrainians.  But that doesn't change the fact that most Ossetians still living in South Ossetia chose to hold foreign passports and (regardless of the previous fact) want to secede from Georgia.  And they have a stronger case for secession than, realistically speaking, the Free State Project ever will...

I am as anti-Soviet and anti-Putin as one can get, but that doesn't mean I have blind faith in mother NATO.

David


K. Darien Freeheart

I think I agree with David quite a bit here, though I'm not convinced this is simply "war by proxy".