12th August, 2008
by Mosheh Oinounou
TEANECK, NJ — During his introductory remarks at a McCain Garden State fundraiser tonight Sen. Joe Lieberman ripped Barack Obama for exhibiting “inexperience” when it comes to the conflict in Georgia.
“The last few days, four or five days, we’ve seen one of the most unexpected crises in the world as the Russians moved into Georgia as aggressors. And if you read the statements from the beginning, Senator McCain and Senator Obama, one had kind of moral neutrality to it that comes I think from inexperience,” Lieberman said. “The other, Senator McCain, was strong and clear and principled and put America where America always wants to be.”
Lieberman was referring to Obama’s first statement about the conflict Friday in which the IL Senator called on both the Russians and Georgians to “show restraint.”
“I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected,” Obama said in a written statement. “All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis….”
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/08/12/lieberman-blasts-obama-on-georgia/
US Plans Billion-Dollar Aid Package For Georgia
3 September 2008
MISHA DZHINDZHIKHA SHVILI
TBILISI, Georgia — A U.S. Navy flagship loaded with aid steamed through the Dardanelles on Wednesday en route to Georgia, as the Bush administration prepared to roll out a $1 billion economic aid package for the former Soviet republic.
In Azerbaijan, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States had a “deep and abiding interest” in the region’s stability. It was the first stop on a tour of three ex-Soviet republics that are wary of Russia’s intentions after its war with Georgia last month.
The multiyear U.S. aid proposal calls for spending about half of the money in the Bush administration’s remaining five months in office and recommending that the incoming president keep funding the project when he takes over in January, a senior U.S. official said…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/us-plans-billion-dollar-a_n_123475.html
Enemies won’t test me, McCain says
23 October 2008
…”And the thing that probably may encourage them a little is that Sen. Obama has been wrong,” McCain said in an interview aired on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Wednesday.
“He was wrong about the surge in Iraq. He still fails to acknowledge that he was wrong. I mean, remarkable,” the Republican presidential nominee continued.
“He was wrong when he said Georgia should show restraint. He was wrong when he said he would sit down across the table from Ahmadinejad, Chavez and the Castro brothers. He was wrong about those. So I can understand why the American people might be concerned…”
Georgia’s PM fired by president
27 October 2008
President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia has announced that he is replacing his prime minister.
“We took a joint decision with Lado Gurgenidze that he will no longer serve as prime minister,” the president told a meeting of MPs.
He did not say why the decision was made. It is not clear if it was linked to Georgia’s war with Russia in August…
Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question – NYTimes.com
6 November 2008
Georgian forces fired rockets at South Ossetia in August.
By C. J. CHIVERS and ELLEN BARRY
TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.
Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.
The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of …
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/europe/07georgia.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Georgians rally against president
7 November 2008
Thousands of opposition activists have demonstrated in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi – their first major protest since the conflict with Russia.
Critics have accused President Mikhail Saakashvili of starting a war with Russia that Georgia could not win.
“We are starting a new wave of civil confrontation, and we will not give up until new elections are called,” opposition leader Kakha Kukava said.
A year ago opposition rallies were broken up by police…
The age of `neocons’
… The neocons also have contempt for dialogue and negotiation – for the minutiae of politics. Henry Kissinger came in for special reproach. Kissinger believed that the U.S. should ally with anyone if it enhanced U.S. power. Such realism was anathema to the neocons. Their foreign policy agenda is simple: to enhance greatly the U.S. military, and to use this military power to reshape the world in the image of capitalist democracy. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and his adviser Richard Perle and such neocon organisations as the Committee on the Present Danger and the Committee for the Free World helped scuttle detente in 1974. Once they forced the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) off the discussion table, they fought for an astronomical increase in the U.S. military budget, and they fuelled an arms race that crippled the economies of both the USSR and the U.S…
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2102/stories/20040130000506400.htm
Tags: russian, mccain, Obama, georgia, fundraiser, lieberman, neutrality, aid package, aid, billion dollars, restraint
