1. Russia can now interrupt Georgia's oil conduits at will, so once again it has exclusive control over the lucrative and politically influential flow of energy to Western Europe along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline.
2. Russia is a military power again...proud of its independence from world opinion...able to take decisive actions...a world leader. The balance of power in the world has moved away from America which has no cards left to play. (Moreover, NATO is useless in European affairs. Europe can solve its own problems).
3. The Beijing Olympics are a trivial sideshow. There is only gold medal for 2008 belongs to Russia: Misha Saakashvili, NATO and George W. Bush are all Vladimir Putin's fools.
US did not lose anything, Washington reality readjustment is long overdue. The question is who Georgian people are more unhappy with Russia or USA or Saakashvili? Their dream of quick and easy life provided by American side Saakashili was trying to sell is probably over, but who knows for how long delusions may last.
Our army is pinned down in Iraq after the US invaded a country without provocation. Russia and everyone else knows this. Another stunning reminder of neocon delusion and incompetence in the real world.
We've squandered the promise held out at the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War -- a stable and creative relationship with Russia. For what? Sp Bush can play cowboy in a region where Russian forces can't be defeated and without risking a nuclear exchange?
George and Barbara Bush owe the world public penance, say, sackcloth and ashes, for spawning and supporting this reckless, feckless and intellectually non-operational offspring, W, who's turned America into the world's most powerful rogue state.
They were probably the last country in the world to actually believe the United States was still a world player and someone they could count on. It's hard to fathom how they'd even want to be our allies after this. We now literally don't have a friend in the world.
Game, match, Putin.
"There is only one gold medal in 2008 and it belongs to Russia: Misha Saakashvili, NATO and George W. Bush are all Vladimir Putin's fools."