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And it’s bloody long, but if you’re in the least bit interested in the actual truth behind the current Georgian Gruzniyan-Russian conflict, then you owe it to yourselves to read this.
Short version?: All of the remaining pieces fall into place for His Majesty. There were a number of discrepancies that didn’t quite “gel” but, given that you have to work with the intel that you have and given that you can’t set down “I think that it might be possible that…” in stone without corroborating evidence if you want to go beyond speculation and into the territory of actual analysis, I couldn’t quite do anything with it other than saying “yes, that could be true and, if so…” etc.
But Michael Totten’s excellent work provides me with a lot of information that wasn’t previously available to me, and for that he deserves a lot of credit. Particularly because he went to the trouble of asking actual questions rather than just accepting “conventional wisdom” at face value. What he was told could still be bullshit, that’s always a possibility, but the fact that the total of his intel fits perfectly with the facts on the ground and answers a lot of confounding questions at the same time leads me to believe that he may just have caught the tail of the tiger here.
Bottom line: We were all taken in by faulty reporting and we were, once again, reminded that nothing compares to the hard work of a few individuals with the courage to go in and try to find some actual facts, regardless of danger.
Good job, Michael, and everybody please go read the whole thing if you’re at all interested in the conflict in the Caucasus.
It may not be, actually it probably isn’t, The Whole Truth™, nothing rarely ever is, but it certainly fills in a whole lot of gaps.
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It makes sense, in a way that alot of the conventional repeated wisdom about the conflict doesn’t.
If what the man says about the Georgian military running a long shot counterattack in an attempt to halt or at least a slow an advancing Russian armor column, and a paratrooper raid that resulted in a total team wipe and a blown bridge is correct, then those Georgians have some major guts.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:44 AMUsing
Hey Crazylegs - you forgot FIRST :em04:
August 27th, 2008 at 6:52 AMUsing
I am surprised he didn’t mention Adjara…another ’separatist’ part of Georgia that was ruled like a little private empire by Aslan Abashidze. He (speculation, but I am guessing it was with the approval and support of Russia) established the Georgian state of Adjara as an ‘autonomous republic’. This went on with Gamsakhurdia probably unable to do anything about it and Shevardnadze after him probably unwilling to do anything about it (being a fellow kommy sumbitch himself).
When Saakashvili took over, he and Abashidze butted heads; Saakasvhili held that Adjara fell under the control of the central government, and Ass-lan didn’t see it that way. He blocked Adjara off from the rest of Georgia for awhile, and when that didn’t go so well fled to Russia. I went to Batumi a few months after he left and people were still afraid to say anything bad about him.
Even though Russia didn’t directly butt in with Adjara, the fact that his ‘autonomous republic’ was installed essentially with the fall of the Soviet Union and his exile in Moscow tell me that Adjara was on the same Russian divide and conquer game plan as Abkhazia and S. Ossetia.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:19 AMUsing
What I thought was most enlightening was the similarities between how the Russians treat minorities and how liberal Democrats and the race industry do. Of *course* they learned everything from the Motherland. Of *course*.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:42 AMUsing
Declaring first is not required. I stopped after 30 or so.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:59 AMUsing
What cinched it for me after reading Michael’s post is that he was under a DDOS attack from Russia at the time. Since lies are easy to spread but the truth is typically supressed, you know he’s on the right track.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:03 AMUsing
Wow. What a great piece of work. Confirms many suspicions. I said it before:
The cunning and malevolent beast had been working for it all along. :em98:
But this one really got to me:
Tears.
May Valhalla welcome them joyusly.
If this contry, and the wolrd, let such courage and sacrifice come to nothing,
August 27th, 2008 at 11:14 AMthen the curse of God and all good men be upon them. :em12:
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UPDATE
August 27th, 2008 at 11:25 AMNow threats against Moldova.
Russian warns Moldova over separatist region
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My areas of expertise in this part of the world were (once) Chechnya & Azerbaijan - Georgia only by association.
Even with that said, the narrative as it’s been told thus far hasn’t made much sense to me - now I know why.
I’ve read Goltz (on Azerbaijan & Chechnya) & I’ve never found him to be anything but spot-on.
If he’s confirming this to Totten, I’m comfortable taking it as truth.
- MuscleDaddy
August 27th, 2008 at 2:56 PMUsing
sorry Deathknyte - just trying to be funny - still I AM the Imperial Mother YOU KNOW - so :em41:
August 27th, 2008 at 3:26 PMUsing
Here’s another perspective I ran across earlier.
Actually these newly-reported details don’t surprise. Previous claims of unequivocal Georgian provocation weren’t entirely convincing–or obviously reliable.
Maybe it’s about time to introduce those Russkies to the IED.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:46 AMUsing
For me .. the questions began with coincidence of armor and troops just happeining to be in the area at the onset of the engagement. But, not knowing the area or the mil bases within same I wasnt willing to just write off the initial reports. But I did consider the obvious.. which was the intelligence (or lack thereof) of intiating an “attack” against an adversary that had an overwhelming advantage of assets within the sphere of immediate reaction.
But in my mind the real.. question is still .. WHY? The vast majority of conflict revolve around resources.. thats the real bottom line. All else falls under “other motivating factors”. If this is indeed Russia’s attempt at monopolizing the energy interests and exerting “influence” through out europe, all the more reason for US to begin to utilize our own resources as a matter of minimizing our dependance and potentially providing another source to those that are effected (Europe)
But then again …. what do I know? :em93:
August 28th, 2008 at 8:29 AMUsing
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan is the last Caspian oil pipeline to the West (upward of 1MM barrels a day) that they don’t control - for about another week or two at this rate…
Here’s a bit of heart-breaking irony:
I just heard that, under Russian Bombing of villages in South Ossetia (while ‘protecting’ them from Georgia, of course), groups of fleeing children & elderly have been evacuated to…
город Беслан.
- I could cry.
- MuscleDaddy
August 28th, 2008 at 12:30 PMUsing
[...] Thomas Goltz, a well known expert on that region who is not paid by either side. I found it at the the rott and it filled in what has not made sense to me about this [...]
August 29th, 2008 at 3:32 AMUsing