Russia close to war

Russia and Georgia Clash Over Separatist Region

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, ANNE BARNARD and C. J. CHIVERS
Published: August 8, 2008

GORI, Georgia — Russia conducted airstrikes on Georgian targets on Friday evening, escalating the conflict in a separatist area of Georgia that is shaping into a test of the power and military reach of an emboldened Kremlin. Earlier in the day, Russian troops and armored vehicles had rolled into South Ossetia, supporting the breakaway region in its bitter conflict with Georgia.

The United States and other Western nations, joined by NATO, condemned the violence and demanded a cease-fire. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went a step further, calling on Russia to withdraw its forces. But the Russian soldiers remained, and Georgian officials reported at least one airstrike, on the Black Sea port of Poti, late on Friday night.

Russian military units — including tank, artillery and reconnaissance — arrived in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on Saturday to help Russian peacekeepers there, in response to overnight shelling by Georgian forces, state television in Russia reported, citing the Ministry of Defense. Ground assault aircraft were also mobilized, the Ministry said.

Also on Saturday a senior Georgian official said by telephone that Russian bombers were flying over Georgia and that the presidential offices and residence in Tbilisi had been evacuated. The official added that Georgian forces still had control of Tskhinvali.

Neither side showed any indication of backing down. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared that “war has started,” and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia accused Russia of a “well-planned invasion” and mobilized Georgia’s military reserves. There were signs as well of a cyberwarfare campaign, as Georgian government Web sites were crashing intermittently during the day.

The escalation risked igniting a renewed and sustained conflict in the Caucasus region, an important conduit for the flow of oil from the Caspian Sea to world markets and an area where conflict has flared for years along Russia’s borders, most recently in Chechnya.

The military incursion into Georgia marked a fresh sign of Kremlin confidence and resolve, and also provided a test of the capacities of the Russian military, which Mr. Putin had tried to modernize and re-equip during his two presidential terms.

Frictions between Georgia and South Ossetia, which has declared de facto independence, have simmered for years, but intensified when Mr. Saakashvili came to power in Georgia and made national unification a centerpiece of his agenda. Mr. Saakashvili, a close American ally who has sought NATO membership for Georgia, is loathed at the Kremlin in part because he had positioned himself as a spokesman for democracy movements and alignment with the West.

Earlier this year Russia announced that it was expanding support for the separatist regions. Georgia labeled the new support an act of annexation.

The conflict in Georgia also appeared to suggest the limits of the power of President Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin’s hand-picked successor. During the day, it was Mr. Putin’s stern statements from China, where he was visiting the opening of the Olympic Games, that appeared to define Russia’s position.

But Mr. Medvedev made a public statement as well, making it unclear who was directing Russia’s military operations. Officially, that authority rests with Mr. Medvedev, and foreign policy is outside Mr. Putin’s portfolio.

“The war in Ossetia instantly showed the idiocy of our state management,” said a commentator on the liberal radio station, Ekho Moskvy. “Who is in charge — Putin or Medvedev?”

The war between Georgia and South Ossetia, until recently labeled a “frozen conflict,” stretches back to the early 1990s, when South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia, gained de facto independence from Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The region settled into a tenuous peace monitored by Russian peacekeepers, but frictions with Georgia increased sharply in 2004, when Mr. Saakashvili was elected.

Reports conflicted throughout Friday about whether Georgian or Russian forces had won control of Tskhinvali, the capital of the mountainous rebel province. It was unclear late on Friday whether ground combat had taken place between Russian and Georgian soldiers, or had been limited to fighting between separatists and Georgian forces.

Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in Tskhinvali, said early on Saturday that South Ossetian separatists still held most of the city and that Georgian forces were only present on its southern edge.

That report aligned with a statement by Georgia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania, who said that Georgian military units held eight villages at the capital’s edge. Georgian officials asserted that Russian warplanes had attacked Georgian forces and civilians in Tskhinvali, and that airports in four Georgian cities had been hit. Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Georgian Interior Ministry, said they included the Vaziany military base outside of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, a military base in Marneuli, and airports in the cities of Delisi and Kutaisi.

Late in the night, George Arveladze, an adviser to Mr. Saakashvili, said that Russian planes had bombed the commercial seaport of Poti, where one worker was missing and several others were wounded. Poti is an export point for oil from the Caspian Sea; Mr. Arveladze said the initial reports indicated that the oil terminal had not been struck.

Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, said in a statement on a government Web site that hundreds of civilians had been killed in fighting in the capital. Russian peacekeepers stationed in South Ossetia said that 12 peacekeeping soldiers were killed Friday and that 50 were wounded. The claims of casualties by all sides could not be independently verified.

Analysts said that either Georgia or Russia could be trying to seize an opportune moment — with world leaders focused on the start of the 2008 Olympics this week — to reclaim the territory, and to settle the dispute before a new American presidential administration comes to office.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, said that Russia’s aims were clear. “They have two goals,” he said. “To do a creeping annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and, secondly, to overthrow Saakashvili, who is a tremendous thorn in their side.”

A spokesman for Mr. Medvedev declined to comment.

The United States State Department issued a press release late Friday saying that John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, had summoned the Russian chargé d’affairs to press for a de-escalation of force. “We deplore today’s Russian attacks by strategic bombers and missiles, which are threatening civilian lives,” the statement said.

The United States also said Friday that it would send an envoy to the region to try to broker an end to the fighting.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany issued a statement calling on both sides “to halt the use of force immediately.” Germany has taken a leading role in trying to ease the tensions over Abkhazia.

The trigger for the fresh escalation began last weekend, when South Ossetia accused Georgia of firing mortars into the enclave after six Georgian policemen were killed in the border area by a roadside bomb. As tensions grew, South Ossetia began sending women and children out of the enclave. The refugee crisis intensified Friday as relief groups said thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, were streaming across the border into the North Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz in Russia.

Early on Friday, Russia’s Channel One television showed Russian tanks entering South Ossetia and reported that two battalions reinforced by tanks and armored personnel carriers were approaching its capital.

There were unconfirmed reports that Georgian forces had shot down two Russian planes and that its aircraft had bombed a convoy of Russian tanks. Russian state television showed what it said was a destroyed Georgian tank in Tskhinvali, its turret smoldering.

Women and children in Tskhinvali were hiding in basements while men had fled to the woods, said a woman reached by telephone in the neighboring Russian region of North Ossetia, who said she had been in phone contact with relatives there. She declined to give her name.

In Gori, a city outside South Ossetia and about 12 miles from Tskhinvali, residents said there had been sporadic bombing all day. The city was shaken by numerous vibrations from the impact of bombs on Friday evening. One Russian bomb exploded in Gori near a textile factory and a cellphone tower, leaving a crater.

At the United Nations on Friday, diplomats continued to wrangle over the text of a statement after attempts to agree to compromise language collapsed Friday afternoon, after nearly three hours of consultations.

The Russians, who had called the emergency session, proposed a short, three-paragraph statement that expressed concern about the escalating violence, and singled out Georgia and South Ossetia as needing to cease hostilities and return to the negotiating table.

But one phrase calling on all parties to “renounce the use of force” met with opposition, particularly from the United States, France and Britain. The three countries argued that the statement was unbalanced, one European diplomat said, because that language would have undermined Georgia’s ability to defend itself. Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, circulated a revised draft calling for an immediate cessation of hostility and for “all parties” to return to the negotiating table. By dropping the specific reference to Georgia and South Ossetia, the compromise statement would also encompass Russia.

The Security Council was scheduled to meet Saturday to resume deliberations. China, in its statement during the early morning debate, had asked for a traditional cease-fire out of respect for the opening of the Olympics.

President Bush discussed the conflict by telephone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, for about an hour after attending the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, the White House press secretary, Dana M. Perino said. Mr. Bush held another conference with Mr. Hadley and his deputy, James Jeffery, on Saturday morning before attending beach volleyball practice.

There are over 2,000 American citizens in Georgia, Pentagon officials said. Among them are about 130 trainers — mostly American military personnel but with about 30 Defense Department civilians —assisting the Georgian military with preparations for deployments to Iraq.

The American military was taking no actions regarding the outbreak of violence, according to Pentagon and military officials. While there has been some contact with the Georgian authorities, the Defense Department had received no requests for assistance, the officials said.

Cheney Provoking war with Iran

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Confirmed: Our government were the Purps of the Anthrax mailing

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#25978240

Iraq withdraw timetable set

American troops could only be in Iraq so long as the Iraq government was allowing them, otherwise the US would be considered (more so) an occupying force, legally, by the UN. Initially when Iraq stated that they no longer wanted the US there it was rejected by the United States. Then, quietly, Bush rescinded.

Unpublished by much of the mainstream media I finally found a lone article on this written by the NY times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html

Bush, in a Shift, Accepts Concept of Iraq Timeline
Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

Soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division patrolled the town of Nasr Wa Salam, between Baghdad and Falluja, on Friday.


Article Tools Sponsored By
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: July 19, 2008

HOUSTON — President Bush agreed to “a general time horizon” for withdrawing American troops in Iraq, the White House announced Friday, in a concession that reflected both progress in stabilizing Iraq and the depth of political opposition to an open-ended military presence in Iraq and at home.

Mr. Bush, who has long derided timetables for troop withdrawals as dangerous, agreed to at least a notional one as part of the administration’s efforts to negotiate the terms for an American military presence in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year.

The agreement, announced in coordinated statements released Friday by the White House and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government, reflected a significant shift in the war in Iraq. More than five years after the conflict began with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the American military presence now depends significantly, if not completely, on Iraqi acquiescence.

The White House offered no specifics about how far off any “time horizon” would be, with officials saying details remained to be negotiated. Any dates cited in an agreement would be cast as goals for handing responsibility to Iraqis, and not specifically for reducing American troops, said a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe.

But the White House statement said that the two leaders “agreed that improving conditions should allow for the agreements now under negotiation to include a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals such as the resumption of Iraqi security control in their cities and provinces and the further reduction of U.S. combat forces from Iraq.”

The announcement could alter the American political debate over the war in Iraq and how best to end it now that even Mr. Bush is willing to speak of an end to the American presence. It came on the eve of a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, who has vowed to pursue a strict phased timetable for withdrawing most combat troops from Iraq over 16 months beginning next year. He has cited Iraq’s eagerness for a timetable as support for his strategy.

A spokesman for Mr. Obama, Bill Burton, called the announcement “a step in the right direction,” but derided what he called the vagueness of the White House commitment. Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, praised the agreement as evidence that Mr. Bush’s strategy of sending additional forces last year had worked and he sought to use it as a cudgel against Mr. Obama.

“An artificial timetable based on political expediency would have led to disaster and could still turn success into defeat,” Mr. McCain said.

Mr. Bush and his aides, traveling in Tucson and Houston to attend Republican fund-raisers, insisted again that the administration was not accepting any timetable for withdrawing American forces, which now total roughly 140,000. But the administration has faced increasing resistance from a newly confident Iraq, where some officials have said publicly that Iraq can take charge of much of its security by 2009, and be able to operate without American help by 2012.

Under pressure from political parties wanting a diminishing American role, Mr. Maliki began demanding something in the agreement that would make it clear that American troops were on the way out. Iraq’s statement on Friday, reflecting those internal sensitivities, referred more specifically than the American version to “a time frame for the complete transfer of the security responsibilities to the hands of the Iraqi security as preface to decrease the number of the American forces and withdraw them later from Iraq.”

In Baghdad, a member of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party, Ali al-Adeeb, said the withdrawal of American and other foreign forces was fundamental to an accord. “The Iraqi government considers the determination of a specific date for the withdrawal of foreign forces an important issue to deal with,” he said. “I don’t know what the American side thinks, but we consider it the core of the subject.”

Mr. Adeeb suggested that a final agreement was not imminent, but White House aides said they were confident one would be reached by the end of the month. “We’re converging on an agreement,” an administration official said, noting that negotiators continued to hammer out provisions involving security matters. Those include command of military operations, legal immunities for civilian contractors and the authority to detain prisoners.

On the prospect of dates for American withdrawals, Mr. Johndroe, the White House spokesman, said that the agreement would not prescribe American troop levels over time, but rather reflect a transition to Iraqi command. “The agreement will look at goal dates for transition of responsibilities and missions,” Mr. Johndroe said in an e-mail message. “The focus is on the Iraqi assumption of missions, not on what troop levels will be.”

The agreement that American and Iraqi negotiators are now completing is more modest than the long-term strategic pact that Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki pledged last November to negotiate to replace the United Nations mandate at the end of this year.

The administration dropped a promise in that initial agreement to provide long-term security for Iraq, something that would require a treaty and Congressional approval. It has also backed off other demands for sweeping powers to continue military operations there indefinitely.

The negotiations have been bogged down by issues involving the laws governing American troops, diplomats and civilian contractors, as well as details like customs duties and drivers’ licenses for American soldiers.

Administration officials now say that they are negotiating an agreement that would establish the legal authority for American commanders to conduct combat operations, control airspace and detain Iraqi prisoners, while deferring the more complicated details of a “status of forces agreement” to the next administration. The United States has such agreements that govern its military presence in Germany, South Korea and some other nations. Some Bush administration officials had envisioned concluding a similar accord with Iraq before Mr. Bush left office.

Friday’s statements noted the gradual handover of security to Iraqi forces, now complete in 10 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, though not in the most volatile ones, where American and Iraqi troops continue to wage war with insurgents. The statements suggested that the final agreement could link the complete transition of control in the remaining provinces to the withdrawal of American forces — a timetable, though, without specific dates.

The statements also referred to the withdrawal this month of the last of five additional combat brigades that Mr. Bush ordered to Iraq last year. The American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is now reviewing the possibility of withdrawing more beginning in September.

On Wednesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said that he hoped that more brigades could come out; some administration and military officials have previously indicated that as many as 3 of the remaining 15 brigades could begin to withdraw by next year.

In Congress, even a more modest agreement with the Iraqis over the American military presence still faces opposition.

Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts who has held hearings on the legality of the agreement the administration is seeking, said that “a timetable with specific dates is critical,” calling the White House’s time horizon “very vague and nebulous.”

He welcomed the pending agreement as “far less grandiose than what was initially articulated,” but said he remained concerned about the legal authority allowing American military operations in Iraq once the United Nations mandate expired on Dec. 31 of this year.

Well... Not the way that I expected us to withdraw, but happy news none the less.

They're our brothers, they're our sisters, we support the war resisters.

During Vietnam 50,000 US draft dodgers and deserters fled to Canada, making it the largest upwards immigration of the US since the Revolutionary war. During the war Canada had one of the most open immigration policies in the world. Showing up with a job offer in Canada would grant a landed immigrant status on the spot. In addition people could also apply for immigrant status after arriving. In 1969, Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, instructed immigration authorities were not to discriminate against applicants who may not have fulfilled their military obligations in other countries, allowing both US war resisters and Czechoslovakian deserters to find refuge.

Over time the job market tightened and immigration is much more restricted. Immigrants need to apply and wait outside of Canada, encumbering those running from military service.

Refugee status, the other alternative, is unlikely to be granted to US residents because Canada considers it a democracy and closest ally. That said, war objectors who come to Canada will automatically receive protection, and will be allowed to stay until the claim is heard (months to years).

Canada was crucial in the effort to resist the war during Vietnam, and has never sent back a war resister until now. This case changes that.

The lawsuit filed calls into question the legality of the war, the crimes committed by the administration in charge, and the lies that lead the US into war.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080714.wwardeserter0714/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080714.wwardeserter0714&67

Troops with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder used as Guinea Pigs

Testing drugs on military personnel or prisoners without their knowledge or consent is nothing new by the United States, or really most governments. There's just something too alluring about having thousands of healthy individuals in peak physical condition between the ages of 18 and 30 that makes certain individuals in either power or influence weak in the knees at the prospect of shooting them full of untested drugs.

They were told it was an anti smoking drug - but the military sought out PDSD survivors because it acts as an inhibitor and they wanted to test it as an anti depressant. The troops who volunteered were not informed of this.

Veterans with Post traumatic Stress Disorder are being used as guinea pigs for untested neural inhibitors, which, like all anti depressants carry the increased risk of suicide and psychosis (the reason that more people don't kill themselves when depressed is because they lack motivation, which is what a neural inhibitor brings back first).

This is supporting our troops?

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/17/va-testing-drugs-on-war-veterans/?page=1

Love your country always and your government when it deserves it

War has a price, one that is paid for in lives. Lives taken, lives mangled, lives displaced, lives destroyed. War's price is too high to be taken into because of lies.

This was originally displayed by someone re posting and crediting the original contributor as someone with the screen name "The Ukrainian."

When I found it on Fark it had already lost connection with it's original poster, although my heart goes out to their friend's family.