I don’t know if this is an added bonus of Obama’s election, but it appears the State Department is now attempting to tell some of the truth about what really happened in Georgia in August. Of course, they are still trying to hedge acknowledging they had spun the story for months now.
In its most specific comments on the subject to date, the State Department says Georgian leaders made a mistake when they attacked the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, in August.
Voice of America
The comments follow a New York Times report Friday, which quoted independent military observers as saying Georgian forces indiscriminately shelled Tskhinvali in the early-morning attack August 7, endangering civilians, OSCE monitors and Russian peacekeepers.
The United States has credited Moscow with adhering to cease-fire commitments to remove troops and checkpoints from Georgian territory beyond the South Ossetia and Abkhazia enclaves, though officials say Russia does not appear to have reduced troop levels in the two areas to pre-conflict numbers.
I'm not sure why the State Department thinks Russia should reduce its forces when its peacekeepers had previously been attacked.
A few days ago Saakashvili fired his General, Gorgava, hoping to place the blame for the fiasco on him instead of himself, but few are buying it. Today thousands of Georgian citizens took to the streets in their first major protest against President Saakashvili, who I predict will not last much longer.
The role of the US in this will probably never come out – did we encourage Saakashvili to attack or did we really try to prevent the idiot from doing it? What is truly embarrassing, however, is the Bush administration's attempt to make Russia out the villain in the war until now.