As an aside, Michael Totten was in Georgia and has published an essay on his website -- www.michaeltotten.com This guy has a habit of going to stress points around the world (he has written from Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan, Bosnia, and lived in Lebanon for a while).
I'm not sure why, but I get the sense that he is over dramatizing some things. The road looks like a typical mountain road in the Caucuses, where you drive two miles an hour at best. I had a distant cousin takes us out in his jeep in the mountains near Abkhazya on a road worse than that. Then the hotel, which he makes sound horrible, looks like at typical low budget hotel you see everywhere. To give fair credit, his interviews were worthwhile to read.
"A car bomb in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on Friday killed seven Russian peacekeepers and wounded three others, raising tensions in the separatist enclave days before a scheduled pullback of Russian troops from Georgian territory" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/world/europe/04georgia.html?ref=world reading on... "According to the South Ossetian government, the car had been confiscated in an ethnic Georgian village, Disevi, which lies in the Russian-patrolled buffer zone outside South Ossetia. The South Ossetian government reported that the car was confiscated for moving violations and illegal possession of arms, and that they believe the bomb was detonated by remote control. Shota Utiashvili, head of the analysis department for Georgia’s Interior Ministry, said Georgia was not involved. “It’s completely unclear how it could have been done by the Georgians, as Kokoity has said,” Mr. Utiashvili said. “There is no way we can know where this car came from and why it was taken to a Russian military base.” Mr. Utiashvili said the explosion was part of a strategy to delay the planned withdrawal. “They have tried to create tensions several times by killing Georgian policemen, and we didn’t respond to any of the actions. They just did it themselves,” he said. " so they took a random car off the street and brought it inside the Russian base for it to explode? didn't they ever read the Illiad? is this gonna turn out to be one of those 'terrorist' attacks against Russia that strangely serves to further Kremlin's policies and for which no guilty party is found?
European Union blames Georgia for the start of the conflict. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_georgia Wonder if this is going to have an effect on other countries recognizing independence of South Ossetia.
This is why Georgia cannot be allowed to join NATO. Had Georgia been a member of NATO, there would have been a requirement to shoot first and ask questions later. Considering that there was a poll showing something like only 1/3 of citizens of NATO countries would go to war to defend another NATO country, Georgia's application must be denied. This leaves aside the question why NATO still exists, considering the enemy it was formed to defend against itself no longer exists, but I'll stop here!
Modovans wouldn't know what an ass is. Oh, if you only knew how many jokes in former USSR had to do with Moldovans.
How many more countries can UEFA handle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_of_the_Caucasus "There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caucasus-ethnic_en.svg http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/100262/Caucasian-peoples "the Romans carried on their business there through 80 interpreters. Arab geographers called the Caucasus Jabal al-Alsine, Mountain of Languages"