Georgia at War: What I Saw

The first thing that strikes me as soon as we are out of Tbilisi is the strange absence of military force. I had read that the Georgian army, defeated in Ossetia, then routed in Gori, had withdrawn to the capital to defend it. I reach the outskirts of the city, moving forty kilometers on the highway that slices through the country from east to west. But I see almost no trace of the army which has supposedly regrouped in order to fiercely resist the Russian invasion. Here we see a police station. A little farther on, a handful of soldiers, their uniforms still too new. But no combat units. No anti-aircraft weaponry. Not even the trenches and zigzagging fortifications which, in all the besieged cities of the world, are set up to at least slightly impede the enemy's advance. A dispatch received while we are driving announces that Russian tanks are now approaching the capital. The information is relayed by various radio stations and then finally denied, creating unspeakable chaos and making the few cars which had ventured outside the city turn back immediately. But the authorities, the powers that be, seem strangely to have given up.

Is the Georgian army there, but hiding? Ready to intervene but also invisible? Are we perhaps in the middle of one of those wars in which the supreme ruse is to let yourself be seen as little as possible, the way they did in the forgotten wars of Africa? Or has President Saakashvili deliberately chosen non-combat as a way to force us, the Europeans and Americans, to accept our responsibilities ("You claim to be our friends? You have said a hundred times that with our democratic institutions, our wish to become part of Europe, our government composed of -- unique in the annals of history -- an Anglo-Georgian Prime Minister, American-Georgian cabinet ministers, an Israelo-Georgian Minister of Defense - is the first in its Western class? Well, now is the time to step up and prove it."). I don't know. The fact is that the first significant military presence we run into is a long Russian convoy, at least one hundred vehicles long, headed in the direction of Tbilisi, casually waiting to get gas. Then, forty kilometers outside the city, around Okami, we see a battalion, as usual Russian, attached to a unit of armored vehicles whose role is to stop journalists from going one direction and refugees from going the other.

One of them, a peasant, wounded in the forehead, still dazed and terrified, tells me the story of fleeing his village in Ossetia on foot, three days ago. The Russians arrived, and in their wake, Cossack and Ossetian gangs pillaged, raped and murdered. As they did in Chechnya, they rounded up the young men and drove them away in trucks, to unknown destinations. Fathers were killed in front of their sons. Sons were killed in front of their fathers. In the basement of a house which they blew up with propane cylinders they had collected, they came upon a family and stripped them of everything they had tried to hide and then forced the adults to kneel down and executed them with a single shot to the head. The Russian officer in charge at the check point listens to the story.

But he doesn't care. In any case he looks like he has been drinking too much and he just doesn't care. For him, the war is over. No scrap of paper, a ceasefire, a five or six-point agreement- will change his victory. And this pathetic refugee can say whatever he wants.

II

As we approach Gori, the situation is different, the tension is suddenly palpable. Georgian jeeps are sprawled in the ditches on the sides of the road. Farther along is a burnt-out tank. Even farther along is a more important check point which completely blocks the group of journalists we have joined. And it is here that we are clearly told that we are no longer welcome, "You are in Russian territory now," barks an officer puffed up with importance. "Only those with Russian accreditation may go farther." Fortunately a car with diplomatic flags comes up. It belongs to the Estonian Ambassador, and is carrying the Ambassador and Alexander Lomaia, the Secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, who is authorized to go behind the Russian lines to look for the wounded. He agrees to take me with him, as well as the European deputy Marie-Anne Isler-Béguin and Tara Bahrampour from the Washington Post. "I cannot guarantee anyone's safety, is that clear?" Lomaia asks. Yes. It is clear. And we all pile into the Audi and head toward Gori.

After crossing through six new check points, one of which consists of a tree trunk hoisted up and down by a winch commanded by a group of paramilitaries, we arrive in Gori. We are not in the center of the city. But from where Lomaia has dropped us, before taking off in the Audi to collect his wounded, from this intersection dominated by an enormous tank as big as a rolling bunker, we can see fires burning everywhere. Rockets lighting up the sky at regular intervals, followed by short detonations. The emptiness. The slight odor of putrefaction and death. Most of all, the incessant rumbling of armored vehicles. Almost every other car is an unmarked car jammed with militia, recognizable because of their white armbands and their headbands. Gori does not belong to the Ossetia which the Russians claim they have come to "liberate." It is a Georgian town. And they have burned it down, pillaged it, reduced it to a ghost town. Emptied.

"It's logical," explains General Vyachislav Borisov, as we stand in the stench and the night waiting for Lomaia to return. "We are here because the Georgians are incompetent, because their administration collapsed and the town was being looted. Look at this," showing me on his cell phone photographs of weapons of Israeli origin, which he emphasizes heavily, "Do you think we could leave all this lying around without supervision? And let me tell you," he struts around, striking a match to light a cigarette, startling the little blond tank gunner who had fallen asleep in his turret, "We summoned the Israeli Foreign Minister to Moscow. And he was told that if he continues to supply arms to the Georgians we would continue to supply Hezbollah and Hamas." We would continue? What an admission! Two hours go by. Two hours of bragging and threats. Sometimes a passing car would slow, but it would change its mind after noticing the tank and speed off. Finally Lomaia came back, bringing with him an old woman and the pregnant woman he had pulled from hell, and asked us to take them back to Tbilisi.

III

President Saakashvili, accompanied by his counselor Daniel Kunnin, listens to my story. We are in the Presidential residence of Avlabari. It is two AM but the noria of his counselors is working as it would during business hours. He is young. Very young. With a youthfulness which can be seen in the impatience of his movements, the intensity of his gaze, his abrupt laughter, even the way he guzzles cans of Red Bull as if it were Coca-Cola. All of these people in fact are very young. All these ministers and counselors were students sponsored by various Soros-type foundations, whose studies at Yale, Princeton and Chicago were interrupted by the Rose Revolution. He is a francophile and speaks French. Keen on philosophy. A democrat. A European. A liberal in both the American and European senses of the word. Of all the great resistance fighters I have met in my life, of all the Massouds and Izetbegovics I have had occasion to defend, he is the one who is the most unfamiliar with war, its rites, its emblems, its culture - but he is dealing with it.

"Let me make one thing clear," he interrupts me, with a sudden gravity. "We cannot let them say that we started this war ... It was early August. My ministers were on vacation, as I was too, in Italy, at a weight-loss spa, getting ready to go to Beijing. Then in the Italian press I read, "War preparations are under way in Georgia." You understand me. Here I was just hanging out in Italy and I read in the paper that my own country is preparing for a war! Realizing that something was wrong, I rushed back to Tbilisi. And what did my intelligence services tell me?" He makes the face of someone who has posed a difficult riddle and is waiting for you to find the answer, "That the Russians at the exact moment they are showering the press corps with this garbage are also emptying Shrinvali of its inhabitants, they're massing troops and troop transports, positioning fuel trucks on Georgian soil, and finally, sending columns of tanks through the Roky tunnel which separates the two Ossetias. Now, suppose you are the leader of the country and you hear this, what do you do?" He gets up to answer two cell phones which are ringing at the same time on his desk, comes back, stretching out his long legs ... "After the hundred and fiftieth tank lines itself up facing your cities, you are forced to admit that the war has begun, and despite the disproportion in the forces opposing us, you no longer have a choice."

"With the agreement of your allies?" I asked. "With the members of NATO who have more or less slammed the door in your face?" "The real problem," he says, sidestepping, "is the stakes involved in this war. Putin and Medvedev were looking for a pretext to invade. Why?" He begins counting on his fingers, "Number one, we are a democracy and incarnate an alternative to Putinism as an exit from communism. Two, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan [oil] pipeline goes through our country, such that if we fall, if Moscow replaces me with an employee of Gazprom, you, the Europeans, would be 100% dependent on the Russians for your energy supply. "And number three," as he takes a peach from the fruit basket which is brought to him by his assistant--"She's Ossentian, mind you!"--and then resumes, "Number three, look at the map. Russia is an ally of Iran. Our Armenian neighbors are also not far from Iran. Now imagine a pro-Russian government installed in Tbilisi. You would have a geostrategic continuum stretching from Moscow to Tehran which I seriously doubt would be doing business with the free world. I hope NATO understands this."

IV

Friday morning. I, along with Raphaël Gluksmann, Gilles Hertzog and Marie-Anne Isler-Béguin, the European deputy, decided to return to Gori which, according to the ceasefire agreement written by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the Russians would have begun evacuating, and where we are supposed to meet with the Orthodox Patriarch of Tbilisi who is himself on his way to an Ossetian village where hundreds of Georgian corpses have reportedly been left for the dogs and pigs. But the Patriarch is nowhere to be found. And the Russians have not evacuated Gori. And this time we are blocked twenty kilometers short of Gori when a car is held up in front of us by a squadron of irregulars, who, under the placid gaze of a Russian officer, haul the journalists out of the car and take their cameras, money, personal objects, and finally even their car. So it was a false report, part of that habitual ballet of false reports at which the artisans of Russian propaganda seem to be past masters. So off we go toward Kaspi, halfway between Gori and Tbilisi, where the interpreter for the deputy has family, and where the situation is in theory calmer - but two other surprises await us there.

First, there is the destruction. Here too. But this time it is destruction which has apparently targeted neither houses nor people. What have they destroyed instead? The bridge. The train station. The train tracks, which are already being repaired by a team of logisticians who are being supervised by the head mechanic from his room because of a severe hip wound. And the electronic command system of the Heidelberg cement factory, built with German capital, which was hit by a laser-guided missile. "There were 650 workers here," the factory director, Levan Baramatze, tells me. "Only 120 were able to come in today. Our production machine is broken." In Poti, the Russians sank the Georgian war ships. They even hit the BTC pipeline at three different points. Here in Kaspi, they deliberately took out the vital centers upon which the region and the country both depend. In other words, targeted terrorism. The will to bring this country to its knees.

Then there is the second surprise, the tanks. I repeat, we are standing at the outskirts of the capital. Condoleezza Rice is at this exact moment giving her press conference. Yet out of the blue comes one of those combat helicopters whose appearance always signals the worst, flying at low altitude just above the treetops. And suddenly the few people still in Kaspi find themselves in the street, first in their own doorways, then jammed ten at a time into old Lada cars, screaming at everyone and especially at our drivers that the Russians are coming and we must get out. At first we don't believe it. We figure it's like the false rumor we heard the day before yesterday. But no, the tanks are there. Five of them. And a field engineering unit digging trenches. The message is clear. With or without Condoleezza Rice, the Russians have moved in. They move around Georgian lands as if it were conquered terrain. This isn't exactly like Prague in 1968, it's the 21st century version of the coup, slow, bit by bit, with blows of humiliation, intimidation, panic.

V

This time the meeting is at four AM. Saakashvili has spent the end of the day with Rice, the day before with Sarkozy. He is grateful to both for their efforts, for the trouble they took and the friendship they demonstrated, which no one can doubt - didn't he call "Nicolas" "tu"? And the Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain, "close to Ms. Rice," - hasn't he been calling three times a day since the beginning of this crisis? But this time, I find he has a melancholy air unlike that first night. Maybe it's fatigue, so many sleepless nights, the continuing setbacks, the grumbling which he can feel rising in the country and which we, alas, must to confirm: "What if Misha is incapable of protecting us? And if our ebullient young President only attracts more of the same? What if in order to survive we will have to accept the wishes of Putin and his puppet?" All of that must figure in the melancholy of the President. Plus something else on top of it, something cloudier and that applies to, how to say, his friends' strange attitude.

For example, the ceasefire agreement which his friend Sarkozy brought and which had been written by four hands in Moscow with Medvedev. He recalls the French President, here in this same office, impatient for him to sign it, raising his voice, almost yelling, "You have no other choice, Misha. Be realistic, you don't have a choice. When the Russians come to overthrow you, not one of your friends will lift a finger to save you." And finally what a strange reaction when he, Misha Saakashvili, got them to call Medvedev but Medvedev sent word that he was asleep - it was only nine o'clock, but apparently he was already asleep, and would be unreachable until the following morning at 9 AM - here the French President got antsy again; his French friend yet again didn't want to wait--in a rush to go home? too sure that signing was what mattered, regardless of what was being signed? This is not how you negotiate, thinks Misha. This is also not how you act with your friends.

I have seen the document. I have seen the written annotations by the two Presidents, the Georgian and the French. I saw the second document, again signed by Sarkozy and given to Condoleeza Rice in Brégançon, for her to give to Saakashvili. And finally I saw the memorandum of remarks, written during the evening by the Georgians, a vital piece in their eyes. They managed to cross out - and this is by no means negligible - all allusions to the future "status" of Ossetia. They also got to be specified - again, not a small detail - that the "reasonable perimeter" in which the Russian troops would be authorized to patrol to protect the security of the Russian-speaking population of Georgia be a perimeter of a "few kilometers." The territorial integrity of Georgia, however, is mentioned nowhere in either document. As for the argument of legitimate aid for the Russian-speaking people - we tremble to think what could happen if we consider the Russian-speakers in the Ukraine, the Baltic countries or in Poland, who may one day decide that they too have been threatened by a "genocidal" will.

The last word will belong to the American Richard Holbrooke, a ranking diplomat close to Barack Obama whom I meet in the bar of our hotel at the tail end of the night: "There is floating in this affair a bad smell of appeasement." He is right. Either we are capable of raising our voice and saying STOP to Putin in Georgia. Or the man who went, in his own words, "down into the toilets" to kill the civilians in Chechnya will feel he has the right to do the same thing to any one of his neighbors.

Is this how we will build Europe, peace and the world of tomorrow?

Translated from the French by Sara Sugihara

(Photos courtesy of Régis Fourrer)

Comments

[celticsailor]

We all know that Stalin was a Georgian . . . . so what? He was supported by many Russians in the Communist Party, who also, actively and willingly, supported the collectivization process.
It is one of the idiocies of our "sound-bite" age that we have been collectively indoctrinated by propaganda which says, in effect, that the side which has been successfully PORTRAYED in the media as having fired the "first shot" . . . . in ANY war . . . . is the side which "started" the war. It ain't necessarily so.
At least make some reasonable attempt to research the history of the changing demographics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as Russia's attempts to change those demographics in the 18th and 19th centuries . . . . . not to mention the activities and crimes of present-day separatists in those two regions . . . . . before you make any categorical opinions about "facts".
The claim, that Georgian forces in South Ossetia deliberately killed 2,000 civilians, was a Russian claim that has NEVER been INDEPENDENTLY verified by neutral and unbiased investigators. Even Human Rights Watch, which is certainly NOT a fan of the Bush administration, said, in their investigative reports that I have read, that they could not verify the claims that the number of deaths of unarmed ethnic Ossetian CIVILIANS were anywhere near as large as 2,000. Practically nowhere has there been ANY mention of the reality that South Ossetian separtists were long

[research]

Yeah those great reports saying that the destruction in Ossietia was not nearly as bad as they said " for every destroyed building, there was another that was untouched"

WOW

Only half the buildings destroyed!

You are being spun!

McCain and BushCo orchestrated this attack on Ossetia by Georgia to help McCain win, or start a world war to prevent the elections.

WAKE UP!

[steona]

That is absolutely not true. The damage was minor compared to the reports Russia was giving to SPIN their intervention. Georgians would not risk dying for McCain to win, sorry that is RIDICULOUS. you need to wake up and do RESEARCH.

[GhiaccioPronto]

Photos: Cameramen capture anti-Democratic "dead-enders" and would be slaves in the act of fleeing to aggressor nation during the prelude to their popular President's Democratic get the votes out of South Ossetia drive.

http://osinform.ru/foto/7447-jevakuacija-ljudejj-iz-juzhnojj-osetii.html

http://osinform.ru/foto/7719-bezhavshie-ot-gruzinskikh-fashistov.html

Photos: Democratic Tank Brigade represented President Mikheil Saakashvili in a campaign for South Ossetia. Saakashvili was unfortunately occupied elsewhere. The sacred will of the Georgian person, President Mikheil Saakashvili was suppressed by an aggressor nation.

http://osinform.ru/foto/7747-podbitaja-gruzinskaja-tekhnika.html

Photos: Pluckish, irrepressible, Georgian Ally Mikheil Saakashvili's Initiative for Democracy and drive to get the votes out of South Ossetia had "Short lived" Campaign season in Tshinvali

http://osinform.ru/foto/7877-foto-ckhinvala-za-18-avgusta.html

http://osinform.ru/foto/7766-foto-razrushennogo-goroda-geroja.html

[SaintMTraveler]

This is an informative article

[republicratfascists]

More like a dis-informative article. It should be remembered that in international law aggressors have no rights, only responsibilities. Georgia are the aggressors and are responsible for the consequences of their attack on the region of South Ossetia.

[steona]

How is Georgia an aggresor? It is thei OWN land. There are Gerogians who live in Ossetia, not anymore because it was emptied by Ossetians. The article made a compelling story, scared you didn't it? trying to smear it?

[Jimmyboyo]

Georgia shouldn't have attacked south ossetia.

No sympathy for invaders

[chicitalianjob]

I couldn't agree more! They started it and Russia finished it. If they're going to be that stupid to taunt the bear then they deserve to get bitten...sad but true...

[steona]

They deserved to get bitten? The Georgian cities outiside of Ossetia deserve to get blown up when the people had no clue what was happening? Really? Who is they? The president? or the people? So what you are saying is 9/11 is justified becasue the US government actions in the mIddle East? Ok. Good Logic.

[Justtellthetruth]

I'm not surprised that this story, like many others similar to it, does not start with the immutable fact that makes the rest of the events that follow make a great deal more sense; Georgia waged a bombing campaign on the helpless Ossetians, and killed 2000 of them. It was ONLY AFTER this act of nearly genocidal proportions (there are only about 65000 Ossetians in the region, so 3 percent of the population was murdered.) that the Russians acted to safe guard the rest of the population from further war crimes.

The Ossetians posed absolutely no threat to Georgia. The Russians, in contrast, acted responsibly and with great care in order to neutralize the immanent threat that Georgia posed to the Ossetians. There were only about 150 Georgian Casualties, and Russia's forces acted ONLY to remove Georgian Military assets and installations, while very carefully preserving civilian lives and other non military infrastructure. They did it carefully, effectively and QUICKLY with minimum collateral damage

Contrast this with Israels attack on Lebanon, which was sparked by the kidnapping of two soldiers (an event which usually is worked out with a prisoner swap). Israel killed THOUSANDS of Lebanese civilians, destroyed a staggering large percentage of the nations infrastructure, displaced hundreds of thousands, and nearly toppled the US friendly government there, while also greatly empowering Hamas, the very group that they sought to destroy. The Neocons militarily, financially and diplomatically supported this debacle.

Face it. Russiadidt­herightthi­ng, andGeorgia­spresident isa war criminal. End of story.

[BookDesigner]

Thank you for saying this so I don't need to.

[steona]

Your figures are way wrong. There were LESS than 150 Ossetians that died (check Moscow's recent figures if you don;t believe me). 150 people not genocide, but the Ossetians cleaning out the Georgian villages in Ossetia saying "we want to make sure they never return that is why we burn their houses" is ethnic cleansing (human Rights Watch). There were Russian Sodleirs alreasy deployed BEFORE anything happened. Wonder why? The Russian peackeepers (well documented) were selling arms to the separatists, hence forfeiting their civilian status. The Georgian casulites is much higher.
I diagreed with Israel over Lebanon, and I condemn Russia now. Funny though, your name is Justtellthetruth and yet here you are lying (at best misinformed. Ironic, eh?

[gevan]

Your Russian puppet masters congratulate you on your efforts at disinformation.

[Bluehart007]

http://www.thestar.com/ has two journalists who on a regular basis slam Washington. Haroon Siddiqui is one of them. and this is a quote from his most recent post: "Russia wants regime change in Georgia, just as the U.S. wanted and engineered a regime change in Iraq and is now actively working on regime change in Iran. We need the rule of law, internationally and at home." Siddiqui seems to get a lot of e-mails, many of which are not civil. he also gets some excellent posts which are related to his articles-r­egistratio­n is easy. Many of the challenges expose the Siddiqui agenda, while others try to support his anti-American position. The other ant-American, anti capitalist, anti-conservative Star journalist is Linda McQuaig. She likes to be listened to, but has such incredible sensitive thin skin, that she hates to be challenged. Just yesterday, Kathy English, the Star public editor, wrote an article in which she complained how awful some people have been in responding to poor Haroon. Here's a quote: "Last month, columnist and editor emeritus Haroon Siddiqui and national security reporter Michelle Shephard were targeted with nasty emails from a reader opposed to their coverage of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen accused of war crimes and held in a Guantanamo Bay prison for six years" Whomever te e-mailer was, clearly was out of line. One has to ask, what type of bias would promt such a response and similar responses?

[sisyphusredux]

OK. That's it. I've just sent a whopping big contribution to McCain's campaign.

I don't care about Biden. The Vice-President is utterly powerless. What matters is what Obama will do. And I think the comments about this story are definitely illustrative of his mindset.

I'm one of those much sought after waffling independents. And, today, I'm for McCain.

As the wife of a Croat survivor of Bosnia, and the mother of half-Palestinian kids, I can do no other.

[research]

So you want McCain to start more wars all over the world?

Does "Georgia Attacked" somehow not get through to you?

[guajiro]

There is NO WAY in the world you are the mother of ANY Palestinian kid. NO WAY ! ! The entire world knows the story of the suffering the Palestinians have gone through since the 50's and are going through today. I say to you, THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS the Palestinians suffer these killings at the direct hands of Israel who receives military, agricultural, educational, etc., support from the U.S. in the billions of dollars every year. The killings, the bombings, the destruction of their homes and means of sustenance, the destruction of their means of obtaining water, food, sanitary medicines, is a move the U.S. does nothing about and in fact encourages by sending billions to Israel. For you to support a Party, the Republican Party, which is a hawkish Party in favor of war, is to support war against the Palestinians, a move that puts you at odds with your position of sympathy for the "half-Palestinian kids".

[sisyphusredux]

Clueless wonders never cease to amaze me. I spent 20 years living with Palestinians-here and there. My kids are proud of their heritage-both sides, oddly enough. My sonspends time visiting his relations in the West Bank periodically, interacts well with both Israelis and Arabs, is an Islamic fundamentalist, but still manages to take enormous pride in hte extensive American military heritage of my family. He, BTW, plans to vote for Obama.

My oldest daughter is married to a Captain in the Army Rangers. My youngest has just started college, has never been to the Mideast but has spent a lot of time in Europe with the Arab side of her family. Both girls plan to vote for McCain.

I have several Iraqi and Bosnian friends, BTW, who plan to vote for McCain.

You see, you can't take people for granted by assuming that they will think a certain way. We'll surprise you every time.

Because, you see, we KNOW.

[jcgrim]

What? You think McCain's vacuous and meaningless bluster is effective against Putin? He & his entire foreign policy team are as incompent and delusional as Bush/Cheney. One of the reasons the Georgia situation got out of control was this administration's disastrous foreign policy. They have been absolutely reckless promoting NATO membership for the former soviet sattelite countries- a DIRECT threat to Russian influence. If Russia decided to put missals in Mexico we would have invaded that country from the Texas boarder and marched to Central America.There as been NO effective diplomacy and a total lack of understanding of the historical context of the Ossetian, Georgian, Russian conflagration. Putin has outplayed us on every hand in the middle east, pakistan, iran, & the "stans".

Richard Holebrooke was on TV talking about what a disaster the Bush team has been in dealing with this issue. Putin was waiting for us to be bogged down in Iraq & Afganistan to make his move. It helped that Bush was unengaged at the olympics and Cheney was at a fundraiser- first things first for this crowd.
The McCain's neocon policies will only make us LESS safe here & abroad. We can't afford another brainless neocon as president. I want someone who is WISE. It's not McCain.

[Swerinjer]

Pffft. Lame dude. We can see right through your false flag post. Get a life.

[debrouillard]

To understand This conflict,the world has to start by question Saaskvilli What was his reason for attacking Ossertia?

The last time we saw this kind of a situation was in the golf in 1990 and then the entire world gathhered to pound on Iraq for attacking Kuwait. I would have thought the entire world should be gathering to pound on Georgia now. Or what is the difference here?

[MagisterLudi]

"Of all the great resistance fighters I have met in my life...."
Saakashvilli a great resistance fighter??????? This is THE most outlandish claim of the year.
Behold:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkJAbo31_e4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyNocJFUloA&feature=related

[GOP4MoreTears]

This article by Bernard-Henri Levy serves as proof for the old adage...

"In war, truth is the first casualty." - Aeschylus

[YesWeCanada]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kid379OjuC0

Saakashvili eats his tie

[research]

Why didn't you start you tour where the war started: Ossetia, where the Georgians attacked and killed over 2000 people and the invited Russian Peace keepers.

[Paralogos]

I thought that Levy's article from Le Monde, though beautifully translated, seemed a bit exaggerated, but now, in the French press, it's coming out that a lot of the key details were fabricated. Most notably, his descriptions of Gori are imaginary, as he never got closer than 1 mile from the town. This is based on direct, attributed quotes from diplomats who accompanied him at the time. I don't have time to translate everything, but if you read French, or want to really confuse an automatic translator, check out.

http://www.rue89.com/2008/08/22/bhl-na-pas-vu-toutes-ses-choses-vues-en-georgie

BHL, as he's known in France, is a shameless self-promoter and provocateur. On one hand, I think it's great that on French talking heads programs, they ask a philosopher instead of a film star what to think about the great issues of the day. On the other hand, he *is* something of a jerk.

[GGeorges]

What’s the matter with you? And what are you claiming? Levy is a very well-respected author whose reports on wars, especially forgotten wars in Africa and elsewhere, have been published for decades in the most serious European newspapers. The website Rue 89, on the contrary, is a tiny gossipy radical leftist site desperately trying to promote itself at the expense of well-known people.
About Gori: Levy explicitly says: "I am NOT in the centre of Gori" - so where is the problem?
As for the rest, the unfairness of the French Rue 89, its intellectual dishonesty, its way of distorting the statements of the "witnesses" it questioned was so blatant that one of them, Raphael Glucksmann, had to demand a "right of reply" that is currently online http://www.rue89.com/2008/08/23/droit-de-reponse-de-raphael-glucksmann.

In any case, as Levy says in the two lines of commentary on this affair (which hardly deserves more): "Rue 89 was not in Georgia; I was."

[Paralogos]

You clearly didn't bother reading the entire article. Rue 89 may not have been in Georgia, but they did interview several people who were with Levy in Georgia, and they contradicted Levy's article on a number of key points. Levy never said that he was in the center of Gori, but he did say that he was in Gori, and made several statements about the state of the city - that it was burning, abandoned, pilliaged by the Russians. Not only was he not in the center of the city, he wasn't in the city at all. He was stopped at a Russian checkpoint a mile outside of the city limits, from which the city itself could not be seen because it was night and because the roadway was below the level of the surrounding terrain. If you go back to the Rue 89 web site, you'll see that Levy, in a telephone follow-up with Rue 89, retracted his statement that he saw the town burning.

His article is a lovely piece of writing. Unfortunately, according to the European Pariliament's special delagate to the South Caucasus and journalists who accompanied Levy on his trip, it's something of a docu-fiction.

[GhiaccioPronto]

"They even hit the BTC pipeline at three different points."

pathetic

A BP (nyse: BP - news - people ) spokesman told Agence France-Presse: 'We've seen reports attributed to a Georgian minister saying that the Russians have bombed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. 'We are not aware of that and I think we probably would be if it were true"

[ZenCrusader]

When you don't like the message you attack the messenger. Levy is a widely respected intellectual and his is an eye witness account. HOW DIFFERENT ARE YOU FROM CONSERVATIVES WHO CLOSE THEIR EYES AND EARS TO SOME TRUTH TELLING ? ? ?

[AlexChaihorsky]

When a message is a one-sided account artfully ignoring known facts, yes we do question the journalistic nature of the message and ethics of its author.
Levi is a neocon writer and he sees the world the way he wants it to be. The "intellectual" component to his writing is just an embellishment for simpletons.

[MagisterLudi]

Monseur Levy: I see it when I believe it....
Mon Dieu, as if there not enough Bible thumping moralizers in U.S. We need to listen to the French ones also.