Georgia war is a neocon election ploy
VTR
Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage
issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear
was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years
a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government, ending his official lobbying connection only in
March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's senior
foreign policy adviser.
Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in
Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who,
after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation
of Iraq, which championed the U.S. Iraq invasion.
There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else
to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which clearly
was expected to produce a Russian counter-reaction. It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would
have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he
trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided
McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain's
presidential campaign.
In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to
draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia's membership in NATO. A year later, while
still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where
they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Scheunemann is at the center of the neoconservative cabal that has come to dominate the
Republican candidate's foreign policy stance in a replay of the run-up to the war against Iraq.
These folks are always looking for a foreign enemy on which to base a new Cold War, and with
the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, it was Putin's Russia that came increasingly to fit
the bill.
Yes, it sounds diabolical, but that may be the most accurate way to assess the designs of the
McCain campaign in matters of war and peace. There is every indication that the candidate's
demonization of Putin is an even grander plan than the previous use of Hussein to fuel American
militarism with the fearsome enemy that it desperately needs.
McCain gets to look tough with a new Cold War to fight while Democratic presidential candidate
Sen. Barack Obama, scrambling to make sense of a more measured foreign policy posture, will
seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, the dire consequences of the Bush legacy McCain has
inherited, from the disaster of Iraq to the economic meltdown, conveniently will be ignored.
But it will provide the military-industrial complex, which has helped bankroll the
neoconservatives, with an excuse for ramping up a military budget that is already bigger than
that of the rest of the world combined.
What is at work here is a neoconservative, self-fulfilling prophecy in which Russia is turned
into an enemy that ramps up its largely reduced military, and Putin is cast as the new Joseph
Stalin bogeyman, evoking images of the old Soviet Union. McCain has condemned a "revanchist
Russia" that should once again be contained. Although Putin has been the enormously popular
elected leader of post-Communist Russia, it is assumed that imperialism is always lurking, not
only in his DNA but in that of the Russian people.
How convenient to forget that Stalin was a Georgian, and indeed if Russian troops had occupied
the threatened Georgian town of Gori, they would have found a museum still honoring their local
boy, who made good by seizing control of the Russian revolution. Indeed five Russian bombs were
allegedly dropped on Gori's Stalin Square on Tuesday.
It should also be mentioned that the post-Communist Georgians have imperial designs on South
Ossetia and Abkhazia. What a stark contradiction that the United States, which championed
Kosovo's independence from Serbia, now is ignoring Georgia's invasion of its ethnically
rebellious provinces.
For McCain to so fervently embrace Scheunemann's neoconservative line of demonizing Russia in
the interest of appearing tough during an election is a reminder that a senator can be old and
yet wildly irresponsible.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/13/EDCD129NI4.DTL
The_Endeavor
are fighting to influence the US presidential election?
VTR
> Read this complete fool quote that the Georgian and Russian governments
> are fighting to influence the US presidential election?
Georgian minister: Israel should be proud
"The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by
the Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday.
Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. "We are now in a fight against the great
Russia," he said, "and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia
cannot survive on its own.
"It's important that the entire world understands that what is happening in Georgia now will
affect the entire world order. It's not just Georgia's business, but the entire world's business."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3580136,00.html
Lazarus Cain
>
> - Show quoted text -
You are a fool to believe that it does not have anything to do with US
election politics.
You are also a fool to believe that Mr Bush did not instigate the
conflict with his style of foreign diplomacy.
The geopolitics of the conflict is becoming self evident, and McCain
will use the conflict to his advantage.
It is more fear mongering by the Republicans which has been caused by
MrBush's international provocations.
You are also a fool that you can make peace by playing the fool.
Mr Bush does not know how to end conflicts. He only knows how to start
them.
I am sort of hoping McCain can get elected so the US can be starved of
oil and get nuked. I suppose it is a death wish of sorts.
The fire and brimstone we will get from a McCain Presidency will be
more entertaining and a quicker death than the long and painful
economic recovery struggle that Obama will bring upon the US while US
tackles its own problems and ceases to covet the oil of others..
Doesn't one of the Ten Commandments which Bush "honors" so much ban
coveting thy neigbors oil?
It is so easy for McCain to capitalize on common US prejudices.
Using the anticommy card is nothing new, but it is old...just like the
Fossil McCain.
He wants to bring us back to the Vietnam era of hating communists.
What a joke. but that is US poltics for you.
Some politicians appeal to the base side of the poplulatiuon and not
the better side, and this is the Republican tactic this year.
Democrats dare not speak up in support of the russians, yet we can say
the people really do not care any more about Republican motivated wars
for the control of oil.
I knowi it is all about oil and that is what is important as far as I
am concerned....and I can simply say I am tired of US lies.
However anyone voting Republican in Novemebr should be ready to
volunteer for the Russina front.
Won;t see any blacks on the Russian front, They want Obama and peace,
brother!
Won't see the blacks going to Nigeria to steal African oil and gas
either for the US.
The_Endeavor
Georgia is designed to influence the US presidential elections?
> Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage
> issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear
> was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
>
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
Gary Renzetti
The_Endeavor top-posted like an asshole:
> How do these fools come up with such crackpot ideas, like the war in
> Georgia is designed to influence the US presidential elections?
>
Forced to agree with you on this one, Dipshit.
It's about *oil* *pipelines* and attempts to bypass Russia for export
routes for Caspian oil exports.