Yup, and dependance on oil from other countries can be a bad thing. Drill here Drill now sounds like a better idea than get it from your enemies. Europe is truly screwed because it gets oil from Russia and Saudi for the bulk of thier energy needs. They can't afford to piss off either one without causing great hardship on their own citizens. A lesson we had better learn fast.

Both sides overreacted/are in the wrong in my opinion. The attempts by the US to criticise Russia for what it has done though are fairly laughable given their own actions concerning Iraq. The georgians started the final escalation with their military action, which itself was an overreaction. In response to this, the russians responded with their very own overreaction, which resulted in the invasion of Georgia. Attempts to place the blame for the conflict fully on one of the sides are IMO flawed, so the reason for many western countries doing this with Russia is likely an attempt to increase pressure on them (since admitting they did at least have justification for less extreme measures would in turn lessen any international pressure).

So Russia went to the UN & waited 10-12 years for compliance with the UN's decrees before publicly warning S. Ossetia that an invasion was about to be launched, then did so with the media in tow to fully report what was going on.  I suppose Russia is going to keep troops on the ground in only S. Ossetia to suppress rebel attacks on civilians and civilian facilities, spend a few billion dollars rebuilding S. Ossetian infrastructure and facilitate free democratic elections.

In that case, 'You go, Russia!'

Since you have been asleep the last decade or so I can understand why you would make this statement. If you were not asleep then you need to do this radical thing called research.

Good point. Too bad only people that can read and think will understand it.

More a matter of knee-jerk conditioning:  America = BAD/WRONG/EVIL/OIL/HALLIBURTON/YADA/YADA/YADA

Why think?

Nope, that's not what Georgia did. That's what Russia SAID they did. The South Ossetian hosptial has only recorded 133 civilians dead since Georgia attacked the city.

133, not 2000. 133 dead REALLY warrants a Russian invasion and clusterbombing campaign, doesn't it?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/84ae42fc-6f17-11dd-a80a-0000779fd18c.html

I don't think that Putin would have attacked Georgia if it were a NATO member. Just look at Kosovo as the model. When Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, (something I didn't agree with), it infuriated Putin, but there was no invasion or occupation. If Putin sent his tanks into Pristina, they would have found themselves in direct confrontation with KFOR. So Putin didn't seem to want that kind of war, at least for now, he'd rather crush a tiny neighbor.

Evidendly it is you that has been asleep. The US launched an invasion of a sovereign nation, without UN approval (they tried to get it, but when they failed they just went ahead and invaded anyway). The pretext for the invasion, or at least the reason they tried to sell to the public (and the UN) was that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction, and hence they were justified in invading on a pre-emptive basis to protect themselves. To my knowledge no such weapons have been found, and it is generally acknowledged that both the US and UK governments 'sexed up' the case [wrt wmd] for going to war. With the wmd theories widely acknowledged as weak the governments then shifted tack and tried to claim the reason was because Saddam was a terrible dictator who killed lots of innocent people - interesting that the same concern is not shown towards other rulers who have committed far worse crimes against their country, suggesting that again this wasn't the real reason.

So we are talking about similar circumstances - a country that invaded another sovereign country is now telling off a different country for doing the same thing. The difference is that although the Russians didn't wait as long as the US, they did at least have more justification for a military response to the Georgians attack.

I don't think it's the same. Bush went to war against a dictatorship, while Putin attacked a Democracy.

Wow, this is new! oh wait not so much new as rehashed democrat talking points that have been disproved for the last 6 years.

First let me start with the gulf war.

When we stopped shooting Iraq signed an armistice, look up the word for yourself, it means that the war is not over we just agreed to stop shooting as long as Iraq complied with our demands. If they fail the war resumes. No further permission, or agreements from the UN are needed. The same armistice was signed with North Korea so don’t be surprised if we have to go in there and clean house as well some time in the future.

Back to my point, until peace treaty is signed the war is just on hold, no treaty was signed until the last attack and Saddam was hanged.

Again it is time to wake up and smell what people are trying to feed you.

 That was one in a long list of violations that Iraq was charged with. Senator Gore made the case for WMD when he was running for president. Vice-President Gore made the case for WMD. President Clinton made the case for WMD. The UN declared Iraq in violation of the cease fire agreement many times. The democrat leadership of house and senate both made the case for WMD.

It was actually proven that your statement was untrue. Several investigations have proven this on both sides of the pond. So you knowledge on this subject covers everything except the last 6 years.

500 tons of WMD have been recovered to date, and it was published in the world press and ignored by liberal democrats that wish to obscure the facts. Another 500 chemical weapons shells were discovered and ruled ineffective.

This is because we are not at war with the other nations, we were at war with Iraq. That is a large difference that no one on the dishonest left cares to acknowledge.

When was Russia at war with Georgia? Since when is Georgia prohibited from stopping ethnic cleansing within its borders? The world court has a case before it where Russia is being charged with ethnic cleansing in Georgia from 1990 to 2008. Is America under such charges for going into Iraq? The situation is not the same, unless you use selective reasoning.

Perhaps you need to look up approval. The US and Britain attempted to get the UN to approve their military action against Iraq. The UN didn't, so they decided to go ahead anyway. Regardless of whether you're going to try and point to existing requirements, treaties, etc. etc. that you feel justified the invasion, it doesn't get around the fact that the US and UK failed to get the approval they wanted from the UN. It's why instead of a UN force in Iraq atm you have a coalition of governments (predominantly the US) who decided to go ahead with the invasion, while others such as France chose not to.

Well it depends if you accept everything you hear from government as gospel or not. For example the 'sexed up' part for the UK is referring to a bbc reporter who claimed the government "sexed up" the case for war in a now infamous dossier they produced which included a 45 minute claim (something like 'saddam can launch a wmd in 45 minutes!!!'. If you go through the various stages this document went through, and in particular the advice the government received from the intelligence community, you wouldn't be seeing this claim. It was included+phrased in order to make it easier to sell the idea (IIRC it might have in reality been that there was some unreliable intel that suggested certain short-range missiles could be launched within 45 minutes or something like that, but it's so long ago now I can't remember the full details). The government went and launched an inquiry that whitewashed them and found the journalist guilty of some offense or other, but given the information that came out both then and over the following years, it's become blindingly obvious to everyone save those who remain oblivious to the truth that yes, the government did overstate the case. The UK government even tried another enquiry, only this time the enquiry ended up basically saying that on the very technical point they were asked to look into by the government, the government wasn't at fault, but they were unable to actually look into the wider issue of whether the government did 'sex up' the case for war, which is as close as you can come to saying 'the governments guilty but doesn't want to admit it' as you can really.

Nice circular logic there - we're justified in going to war with this country due to their inhumanity because we're at war with them! So if we're at war with zimbabwe it'd be ok to justify that war based on their human rights record because we're at war with them, but if we're not at war with them then we can't justify being at war with them based on their human rights record because we're not at war?!

Um...just now! Been following the news lately, what with the russian invasion of georgia? I don't know about you, but if one country invades another, to me that means they're at war.

The only reason the US went to the UN was to appease people like you.  The UN's approval wasn't needed (Iraq had repeatedly violated the armistice) and the US could have justifiably launched OIF long before it did, without asking a soul.  That substantially differentiates OIF from Russia's invasion of Georgia - there was no armistice between Russia & Georgia; Russia used a pretext of its liking in an attempt to invade & retake a small chunk of land on its border (Georgia) before it could sign an agreement with NATO.  It's not surprising that those predisposed to thinking the US was wrong to launch OIF would attempt to equate the two out of intellectual laziness.

You write like I think thanks!

Perhaps you need to look up rules of engagement, rules of land warfare, and international conventions for the prosecution of war. Without that context you can’t hope to understand what happened. Instead you rely on political talking points as if they are facts. Those talking points are designed to muddy the waters so the opposition can have a chance at election and have nothing to do with what actually happened.

The point remains that we should not be so obsessed with he expansion of NATO and missiles if we want to be a tolerant leader of the world.

And still you blithely seem to refuse what is irrefutable - the US and UK went to the UN to get approval for their war. They failed to do so, but went ahead with it anyway. They claimed it was for WMD, but such 'intelligence' has since emerged to have been heavily politicised. Neither germany or russia, who you mentioned, seem to have provided intel that confirmed the existence of WMD. You had hans blix (sp?) and the weapon inspectors saying they could find no evidence of WMD, and still had the US etc. clamouring for a war. You then had post-invasion reports also mentioning that the WMD programs had ended over a decade prior to the invasion. Far more damning, you have had numerous people point to examples of where those in power have deliberately sought to ignore or hide the intelligence that was saying Iraq didn't have WMD, so that they could press ahead with their war. As one british meeting put it IIRC, the war was the goal, and so all 'facts' and intelligence were built around this (i.e. those that could be used in some way to support a war would be used, those which wouldn't would be ignored/discarded). Despite all this, you're trying to claim it is all "democratic talking points". Talk about living in denial...

It's hardly one report, and it's not exactly from people with no knowledge of classified information. You've had people from all over the intelligence community come out and say the government ignored their intel, or selectively chose parts of it which they then sexed up, etc., and numerous reports, memos, meetings etc.. Unfortunately the feeble argument of 'well you haven't seen what they saw, so you can't say they're wrong' doesn't work when you've had so many different sources contradicting what has been said. It also shows a disturbing level of blind faith in the government.

As with the case of UN approval (where you tried changing the argument to be about the justification for war once you realised you couldn't hope to argue that the UN fully sanctioned the invasion of Iraq by the US+coalition), you seem desperate to try and twist the argument. I'm not arguing that the situation with russia+georgia is identical to that of the US+Iraq, simply that there are similarities - such as invading another country (without UN approval) - The US went ahead and ignored the UN and invaded Iraq, and then lecture russia when they go ahead+invade georgia. It's hilariously hypocritical really, and shows just one of the many problems that invading Iraq has caused for the US.