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Russia invades Georgia

RIA Novosti said:
Over 1,000 civilians have been killed as the result of an attack by Georgia on the capital of its breakaway republic of South Ossetia, the North Ossetian nationalities minister said Friday. [...]

The statement also said that most of the city had been devastated by the Georgian military attack, which left the hospital destroyed and the republic's university on fire.

source
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:(
 
I'd expect that George Bush would want to help- he believes the country is named after him, right?
 
geni said:
Not really Georgia may not last long enough. This is turning into a real ground war fast.
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But politically, don't you think Bush has to take a stand for Georgia, since it's one of his few allies he gathered in the Iraq invasion?
 
Pardalis said:
But politically, don't you think Bush has to take a stand for Georgia, since it's one of his few allies he gathered in the Iraq invasion?
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So Georgia bombs the capital of South-Ossetia, killing at least 1000 civilians (20 minutes ago german radio said 1400 are dead) and you want Dubya to help them because of "political reasons"? You are a very disturbed individual, Pardalis.

Please be civil and attack the argument. Thank you.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LibraryLady
 
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Childlike Empress said:
So Georgia bombs the capital of South-Ossetia, killing at least 1000 civilians (20 minutes ago german radio said 1400 are dead) and you want Dubya to help them? You are a very disturbed individual, Pardalis.
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Reported for personal attack.

I didn't say I wanted Bush to help Georgia, I was merely pointing out what sticky situation this puts him in.
 
As the resident anarcho-capitalist nut-job, I've gotta advocate the impossible scenario of complete secession and formation of a Free Ossetia.

It's not gonna happen, obviously, and that's not what the South Ossetians want - they've probably been bribed by Russia (the GDP-per-capita of which is currently three times that of Georgia, and thanks to its natural resources will probably remain so for the near future). Another reason it won't happen is because South Ossetia is a tiny war-torn patch of land with population of 70,000 and GDP of just $15 million - Russia probably spent 10x as much on bombs there already. If given sovereignty, only 1-2 semi-sovereign tiny island micro-nations could challenge it's status as the world's smallest economy. For comparison, North Ossetia has roughly 500,000 Ossetians and 200,000 persons of other nationalities.
 
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Indeed it would have probably been cheaper for Russia to buy S Ossetis from Georgia than take this route - although I appreciate that the Georgians probably wouldn't sell to the Russians at any price.
 
Nogbad said:
Indeed it would have probably been cheaper for Russia to buy S Ossetis from Georgia than take this route - although I appreciate that the Georgians probably wouldn't sell to the Russians at any price.
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That would be like Scotland selling the Lowlands to England. Ain't gonna happen, particularly in a small country like Georgia.

(Okay, maybe that's a bad examples, since we all remember the following dialogue:
"What's in it fer me?"
"Enough cash to buy the Outer Hebrides."
"Five pounds, eight shillings? That's a mighty temptin' offer!")
 
It's strange the same source that said that 1,000 Ossetians died are talking about 1,000 people who have been evacuated.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080805/115765615.html

The UN says the same thing:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=27639&Cr=Georgia&Cr1=
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday voiced serious concern about the mounting violence in South Ossetia, where nearly two dozen people have reportedly been wounded or killed in recent clashes and over 1,000 have been uprooted in the past few days.
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No mention of a thousand killed.

Could this be a mix-up?
 
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It could get ugly. In a stand up battle no contest...Russia has better weapons and more of them....but if goes guerilla it could get very,very,costly for Russia.
 
Cleon said:
Possibly. It's more likely that nobody knows what the **** is going on or how many people have been killed, and right now everything's pure guesswork at best.
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Doesn't the american media have correspondants in Tskhinvali? Maybe the numbers are not THAT high but what german TV showed was a quite destroyed city with people hiding in (improvised) bunkers.
 
Childlike Empress said:
So Georgia bombs the capital of South-Ossetia, killing at least 1000 civilians (20 minutes ago german radio said 1400 are dead) and you want Dubya to help them because of "political reasons"? You are a very disturbed individual, Pardalis.
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And you support people like Putin (de facto dictator of Russia) and Chavez just because they are Anti Bush. Talk about disturbed.
 
Cleon said:
"Turning into?"

It's an invasion - what else would you call it other than a "real ground war?" The LARP version of Risk?
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I hadn't realised the Georgians had avanced quite as far as they had so I was expecting the russian advance would be met with a withdrawal to defenceable positions which happened to align with the de-facto boarder.
 
Alex Libman said:
As the resident anarcho-capitalist nut-job, I've gotta advocate the impossible scenario of complete secession and formation of a Free Ossetia.
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:) Thanks for giving a good laugh with your apt analysis.

I tried to read up a couple of wiki pages where this conflict comes from and I'm left with a couple of questions:
  • has Ossetia always been divided into a northern part belonging to Russia and a southern part belonging to Georgia? Or is this a creation stemming from the 1920-1922 civil war?
  • do the South Ossetians want independence as South Ossetia, have independence in a united Ossetia, or be part of Russia?
  • how come most South Ossetians now have Russian passports?
  • how come the enmity between South Ossetians and Georgians? Wiki says:
    The tensions in the region began to rise amid the rising nationalism among both Georgians and Ossetians in 1989. Prior to this, the two communities of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast of Georgian SSR had been living in peace with each other except for the 1918-1920 events. Both ethnicities have had a high level of interaction and high rates of intermarriages.
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    which suggests it comes out of the blue, contrary to the Yugoslav case where enmities always existed but were suppressed.

BTW, Darth, your cynicism is well appreciated.
 
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