News broadcasts are beginning to address the some key points that the media has been pussyfooting around for the ten days of the Georgia conflict:

* What about the history of ethnic cleansing and oppression against the Ossetians by the Georgians?

* What could Georgia have been thinking, massacring the Ossetians in Tshkhinvali when they knew full well the Russians were lying in wait on the border?

* Are there any ‘good guys’ in this?

Tragically, for the purposes of the media, the question to the latter is “no.”

The Georgians apparently thought because Bush shared hot dogs with their President in the White House rose garden, he could unleash multi-launch rocket systems on civilians and we would back him to the hilt when Russia predictably struck back.

The Russians did, in my estimation, stop an ethnic cleansing, but they have since acted in typical imperialistic fashion, visiting a serious serving of Shock And Awe on the Georgians as they dismantle their infrastructure, consolidate their defense in the separatist provinces, and generally gloat.

The closest to a hero would be the South Ossetians, but if the media paid attention to these people now – a fascinating, exotic ethnic minority with a colorful warrior tradition stretching back to ancient Greek times, of whom only 700,000 remain – it would really mess up the whole “poor Georgia, bad Russia” narrative. Besides, the Ossetians are honoring that warrior tradition by pillaging Georgian villages by all accounts.

The lessons in this conflict are many and tragic: The mainstream media still flat-out lies to turn a bloody buck out of a war. The USA is as impotent, thanks to the Bush military adventures, as was feared. Russia’s strategic capital is seriously on the rise.

One good thing is that, though around 2,000 of the 38,000 South Ossetians were killed, and almost all fled their homes, no more were lost because Russia didn’t check with the UN Security Council, or rely on sanctions, or insist on multi-party talks – but because they rolled in and stopped the massacre.

And this is finally being said – albeit without acknowledgment – on some major media outlets is a good thing indeed.

Cranky wrote me an e-mail regarding the coverage of the Georgia conflict. I post it here, along with my response, because I think hers is a question playing on the minds of many as the media beats the war drum against the ravening Russian bear and all debate is drown:

So why is everyone, including Obama (although he did call for diplomatic resolution), on Georgia’s side? I thought they invaded first!

CW

I replied:

Dear CW,

Georgia counts South Ossetia as part of its territory, even though South Ossetia’s had de facto autonomy since Georgia became Georgia.

So South Ossetia wasn’t invaded, technically – it was just shelled, bombed and assaulted by tanks. That’s why the news often calls it a matter of “Georgia attempted to regain control of the breakaway district of S. Ossetia” – because they were trying to conquer the rebels; not that they ever *had* control.

However, as I note in my writing, “attempted to regain control” means hitting civilians with a day-long bombardment with Multi-Launch Rocket Systems, and then burning alive whatever survivors were left in the basements.

Why is everyone on Georgia’s side? Well, largely because it serves our interests to be. They’re a check against Georgia in the region. Secondly, because the details of the ethnic cleansing have long been ignored, and the story has become more about Russia’s response – and when it will end – than what initiated it.

Considering that the Russians are now either seizing what they’re sitting on, or leaving scorched earth in their lazy wake of withdrawal, expect sympathy for the cause of their intervention to continue sinking.

Gorbachev wrote on the Caucasus crisis for the Washington Post today, and so injected much-needed integrity, honesty and accounting into the dialogue. Given its earnest and measured tone and its succinct history of events, I feel it deserves reading in full.

I recommend you spread the word about it, for the agony of the Ossetians starves for exposure. The media is talking about it as a Russian trap. Whether one chooses to see it that way or not, the bait that the Georgians took was ethnic oppression and genocide.

That needs to be known.

To that end, I’m posting it in entirety here:

MOSCOW — The past week’s events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia’s separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia’s territorial integrity. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force — both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar — it only made the situation worse. New wounds aggravated old injuries.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground.

Through all these years, Russia has continued to recognize Georgia’s territorial integrity. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. Indeed, in a civilized world, there is no other way.

The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.

What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against “small, defenseless Georgia” is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.

Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a “blitzkrieg” in South Ossetia.

In other words, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was expecting unconditional support from the West, and the West had given him reason to think he would have it. Now that the Georgian military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position.

Hostilities must cease as soon as possible, and urgent steps must be taken to help the victims — the humanitarian catastrophe, regretfully, received very little coverage in Western media this weekend — and to rebuild the devastated towns and villages. It is equally important to start thinking about ways to solve the underlying problem, which is among the most painful and challenging issues in the Caucasus — a region that should be approached with the greatest care.

When the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia first flared up, I proposed that they be settled through a federation that would grant broad autonomy to the two republics. This idea was dismissed, particularly by the Georgians. Attitudes gradually shifted, but after last week, it will be much more difficult to strike a deal even on such a basis.

Old grievances are a heavy burden. Healing is a long process that requires patience and dialogue, with non-use of force an indispensable precondition. It took decades to bring to an end similar conflicts in Europe and elsewhere, and other long-standing issues are still smoldering. In addition to patience, this situation requires wisdom.

Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development. Nothing is more important than that.

The region’s political leaders need to realize this. Instead of flexing military muscle, they should devote their efforts to building the groundwork for durable peace.

Over the past few days, some Western nations have taken positions, particularly in the U.N. Security Council, that have been far from balanced. As a result, the Security Council was not able to act effectively from the very start of this conflict. By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its “national interest,” the United States made a serious blunder. Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone’s interest. But it is simply common sense to recognize that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region.

The international community’s long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible. Building this type of system would be challenging and could only be accomplished with the cooperation of the region’s countries themselves. Nations outside the region could perhaps help, too — but only if they take a fair and objective stance. A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus

Moscow has agreed to cease hostilities in Georgia, which means that it’ll stop major offensive action while snatching up the last bits of contested land not under its tank treads, like Abkhazia’s Kodori Gorge. And, as we anticipated, they presented the terms that define their ideal outcome to the conflict:

Russia’s foreign minister called for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to resign and Medvedev said Georgia must pull its troops from South Ossetia and Abkhazia — the two breakaway provinces at the heart of the dispute.

I would imagine that Russia will budge on the former point, but their actions show they’re not giving ground on the latter – literally, in that they have waited until they physically control all the terrain of the breakaway districts. Russians respect real politik in a way that is decidedly old school – their treaties expect and present control in fact, not just handshakes. It’s clear that they neither trust the Georgian government to make good on their political deals with them, nor the Georgian armed forces to restrain themselves from being a threat. So they have put their trust in forced submission and annihilation of Georgia’s arms.

Why shouldn’t they? Georgia has given them – and any objective observer, particularly the Ossetians – no reason to trust.

For those just tuning in to the Caucasus mountains – the factious Big Brother to the Balkans where tribal conflict is concerned – Georgia has a recent history of mafia oligarchy masked as democracy. In ’89 to ’91, Georgia banned Ossetian language, banned Ossetian political opposition, rejected all subsequent attempts for freedom from Georgian control. In ’91 to ’92, it was open season in South Ossetia, with Georgian soldiers going from house to house, killing and burning to drive the people out. Then came actual war, humanitarian crisis, only stopped by the resolve of the South Ossetians, Georgia’s internal fragility and Moscow’s intervention.

The new President of Georgia, Saakashvili, was hailed as a break from that corrupt past, but while he has proposed lovely plans of virtual autonomy and cultural advancement, his actions are to only press the Ossetians harder. He tried a US-backed crackdown-cum-invasion in 2004, failed, offered democratic rights, and then undercut them by running intelligence operations to destabilize Ossetia.

And now, he went with total war. Russia has responded in kind, albeit without seeking actual conquest of all of Georgia. The censure on the West has been considerable, almost universal. But I would ask the West, and you, dear reader, what should have been done otherwise?

Russia is criticized for intervening in this “internal conflict.” But Darfur is an “internal conflict.” Rwandan genocide was an “internal conflict.” Saddam’s incursions into Kurdistan, including the gassing of Halabja, were “internal conflicts.” And in each of those cases, unless military force was used to intervene, genocide was the result.

Now we have a case where a brutal genocide was beginning – Tskhinvali teems with horror stories. And what happened? Russia did not propose sanctions in the UN to spend months of diplomacy trying to effect an economic change that might shift the democratic political climate in Georgia. Those sanctions would have been shot down by the USA anyway. Russia did not waste “harsh words” condemning Georgia’s genocide, as Bush has done with Darfur, leading to an estimated 400,000 dead and climbing.

Russia stopped it. It stopped the threat, right then and there, and made sure that the perpetrator cannot break trust and try again.

So I ask you, what would have been better?

Had Russia stood by, South Ossetia would likely have been cleansed by Georgia. The policy that eradicates their language and bans them from having local political power would have been cast in the rotting bodies of far more than the 2,000 Russia reports.

And believe me, the USA would have done nothing. The UN would have done nothing. It would have just been another “internal conflict” to make a tear-jerking documentary about and then forget.

Instead, whether we like Russia’s political gain from it or not, we have an example of a nation that tried to commit genocide and lost political, military and economic might because of it. I do not celebrate the suffering of the Georgian people. But I laud the lesson learned by the Georgian government.

For it comes down to this: Would we rather have South Ossetia cleansed of its native people by our ally, than see our enemy be the one to prevent it? And what alternative was there, if genocide was to be stopped?

I would urge you to put that question, and the facts of South Ossetia’s history, to any who have been paying attention to or commenting on the conflict.

“2,000 dead” is hard to put into distinct, precious human terms.

This article from the Guardian, reporting from the refugees just fled South Ossetia from the Georgian attack, does just that.

Here are some strands from the people who have survived the efforts of our “good ally, pro-West Georgia” to strangle their nation:

It began with shelling, targetting the places civilians would gather, like hospitals and aid centers.

Luize Dzagoyeva, 36, a hairdresser, said she had left Tskhinvali at dawn in the back of a truck which came under mortar fire as it travelled north. “We sat for four days in a cellar, without food and water,” she said. “When we came out we saw the whole street had burnt down. The city was gone – only ruins were left. It was a slaughter. First they bombed and shelled us. Then the tanks came in and levelled the city to the ground.

“I don’t know what I will do now. My town no longer exists. My brother is still there fighting.”

While billions gaped at the wonder of the world come together in amity and peaceful competition at the Olympic ceremonies, Georgia annihilated an entire city of people:

Sasha Khugayev, 48, said he had left South Ossetia on Friday: “In Tskhinvali you can’t find one brick standing on top of another. The city is still disputed. There are Georgian strong-points on the hills surrounding it.”

Even under threat of Russian intervention, the Georgians came in to the city they had shelled and began taking it out, block by block:

“My relatives told me Georgian soldiers burnt to death a family of seven people in their apartment. An 18-year-old boy who climbed out into the street for a few moments was shot dead by a sniper.”

Those they couldn’t kill, the Georgians succeeded in driving off.

A woman dressed in a nightgown and slippers from Khubis Ubani village said: “I saw our house in flames as we ran. There’s nothing left for us to go back to. Our lives are ruined.”

Then you hear the kind of hyperbolic grotesquery that’s a trope of Eastern warfare – stories so ghastly you doubt their source while at the same time feeling ashamed to do so:

“A 78-year-old woman with an infant under each arm was crushed by a tank!” cried Kazbek, 45, who also claimed Georgia had released hundreds of criminals to fight in the conflict.

Whether it is true or not, the loss and rage, soul-deep, of the Ossetians is true:

Nearby stood Gennady Dzhioyev, 38, unemployed. He said: “My cousin came from Dmenis village last night. He got two bullets in the back. We’re going to go there and slaughter the Georgians like the fascist pigs they are. If the Russians let us we’ll smash them all the way to Tbilisi. We are a warrior race, we know how to fight.

They do, and so do their neighboring tribes. From Dagestan and Chechnya, bandits and rebels who had been customarily aligned against Russia have joined the Ossetians to fight off Georgia.

Fighters from other warlike north Caucasus republics, such as Chechnya and Dagestan, are though to have crossed mountain passes to join regular Russian troops battling Georgian forces.

Whatever arrogance and sadism drove Georgia to start this cleansing, despite surety of Russian response, now stands to visit a fierce price against it.

Georgia has, by any standard, been invaded, as Russia has lanced out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – the parts of Georgia that claimed autonomy and fought for their freedom – into the country.

The reported capture of the key Georgian city of Gori and the towns of Senaki, Zugdidi and Kurga came despite a top Russian general’s claim earlier Monday that Russia had no plans to enter Georgian territory. By taking Gori, which sits on Georgia’s only east-west highway, Russia can cut off eastern Georgia from the country’s western Black Sea coast.

This is, I should note, according to the Georgians. The Russians deny it. But Russian denials of troop deployments are about as reliable as, well, Georgian offers of peace.

Russia also claims that its state-wide air blitz of Georgia’s infrastructure and its operations on the ground are all necessary steps to win the war. The West denounces this as “disproportionate,” which is pretty laughable considering the spine of our offensive strategy is “Shock and Awe.” Since World War II, we’ve made a religion of what’s called “asymmetrical warfare” – hitting the enemy by smashing local targets that would diminish his strength, rather than just hitting him square in the nose.

What would be disproportionate would be if Russia does what Bush, the media and many in the West – breathing hard and hankering for another four-color melodrama to distract the American public from the complexities here at home – say they will: Russia has no call to continue sitting on what all the world agrees is Georgian soil.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are one thing. And in my opinion, no matter how the White House wants to veil the excretitious actions of their ally, Georgia, they should pay for their aggression such that they can no longer threaten the people who wanted to be free of their tyranny. They fired the first shots – and at civilians no less, under pretense of peace – and they deserve to be denied what they sought to gain through violence.

Putin’s retort to the West’s accusations of his aggression puts it eloquently:

“Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages,” Putin said in Moscow. “And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds – these leaders must be taken under protection.”

I agree. I admit a bit of bias on the behalf of the Ossetians, but after having their rights stripped, their homes burned and their trust betrayed for almost 20 years by the Georgian government, I agree they need justice.

Where I disagree is the implication that regime change is necessary, or that Georgia’s actions demand more punishment than it’s already getting, being trounced out of Ossetia. If Russia acts out of defense of Ossetia, that’s one thing; conquering official Georgian territory and usurping Georgian power is, indeed, just a land grab.

What Russia will do remains a mystery. How the West will respond in that worst-case scenario of Russian tri-colors over Tblisi, Georgia’s capitol, is more certain. It’s positive we’ll be well and truly steamed, but it will likely not be “World War III”.

The irony is that it won’t be war with the USA because the USA lacks the strength to do anything significant about it, that strength having been squandered by the very people who think our enemies will not dare challenge our deterrence because we’re too strong.

At the risk of starting a rant against the Neo-Conservatives, I feel I should note that Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and the whole Neo-Con gang who planned and arrogantly, heedlessly executed Afghanistan and Iraq always brush off warnings of blowback by saying that our enemies won’t dare fight back – be they Iran or some pimply Algerian flown in by a shady Saudi for the purpose of Mesopotamian jihad. “Couldn’t happen,” they say, and yet it almost always does.

In this instance, we really can’t do anything against Russia, largely because our high-cost, low-supply military adventurism has left us drained. We could bomb them, but that degree of force projection against an air force like Russias would not only be largely ineffectual, it would cost us some blood and treasure. The bear doesn’t just lie down like Saddam’s two-bit fleet of burnt out MiGs. We’d get hurt.

Our land forces are even less of an option. We could, potentially, fly into Georgia or, if Georgia is crushed by then, into Azerbaijian. But who would we fly in? Any force sizable enough to blunt the Russians is either engaged, exhausted or both thanks to our seven years of constant high-intensity war.

So the USA finds itself in the uneviable position of possibly having to show what kind of ally it is. It will likely be little to bring much to the table.

Considering the vile actions of that ally, that doesn’t bother me much. Its tragic to find our country unable to help a sworn friend. Then again, this could be taken as another lesson in what kinds of friends we should make.

The war in Georgia has been on my mind of late. I find its moral complexities enthralling, its human tragedy humbling and its implications for the West unsettling. It deserves this kind of consideration, deserves some print space, and so I’m spending this sultry Sunday covering each of these points in a rant about a struggle I know only in jarring, fragmented glimpses.

On the first point – its complexity – I have a strong visceral reaction to some of the core components of the conflict.

Foremost is the Ossetian desire for national statehood. I am an admirer and avid scholar of the Ossetian culture, and fully support their efforts for autonomy. In this, I recognize I’m admitting a degree of bias. However, I think it to be well founded.

Beyond an ingrained, Liberal-Democratic desire to see people who crave freedom and self-representation have it, I think the Ossetians exhausted all other avenues available to them. While still part of the USSR, the district governments of South Ossetia expressed interest in autonomy from the nascent nation of Georgia through several democratic means – voting, referendum and demonstration.

The response from Georgia was, first, to establish Georgian as the lawful, principal language, then to ban regional political parties, then to revoke South Ossetia’s autonomy. When that didn’t work to quash Ossetia’s aspirations, the Georgians responded with some low-intensity genocide: A terror campaign in South Ossetia that left around a thousand South Ossetians dead and over a hundred thousand fleeing their centuries-old homes for their lives. It was textbook ethnic cleansing.

Things didn’t get better come the fall of the USSR. Only Russian intervention stopped Georgia from cleansing all of South Ossetia in 1992. South Ossetia’s rebel militias and parties have since developed thick ties to Moscow, becoming a cat’s paw for Russian ambition.

The cease-fire and respect for South Ossetia’s de facto autonomy continued, until Georgia got an anabolic shot in the arm from the West in the form of the War on Terror. It devoted troops to Iraq, worked with our forces and, in 2004, decided to roll the dice and crack down on smuggling in South Ossetia. The pot has been risking boiling over since.

Which brings me to my last emotional impression of this complex situation. That is, though I know many Georgians and Ossetians are intermarried in South Ossetia; though I know Georgia claims the territory even though the territory has denied their rule since before Georgia’s independence; and though I know Russia clearly hankers for a land grab in the Caucasus with Ossetian secession as excuse for its appetite, I come back to one glaring factor – one point that shatters the lucidity of any parallel with historic examples of an empire exploiting a local turf war to expand its margins on the map:

The Georgians took advantage of other nations’ good faith and amity to back stab Ossetia.

I’ll recount events:

On August 7th, after a week of suspicious, bloody probes into South Ossetia by the Georgian military, the Georgian government reached out its hands in peace:

[President] Saakashvili ordered a unilateral ceasefire. Saakashvili called for talks “in any format”; reaffirmed the long-standing offer of full autonomy for South Ossetia; proposed that Russia should guarantee that solution; offered a general amnesty; and pleaded for international intercession to stop the hostilities (Rustavi-2 TV, August 7).

Russia and the world went to the Olympics. The South Ossetian rebels went back to their homes and families. It looked like life would go on peacefully, with diplomacy prevailing.

Then the Georgians began shelling South Ossetia – especially its civilian centers. They rolled in tanks and APCs. This was due, they claimed, to shelling hitting outlying Georgian villages. But if that was so, why did they just happen to have a full-scale offensive ready to absorb, in their own estimation, “two-thirds” of South Ossetia in less than 24-hours? Why did they kill 2,000 South Ossetians?

Why attack in the first place?

The response from Russia was devastating. As I noted in my previous article, Russia had to win that war by thrashing Georgia so that it couldn’t get forces into South Ossetia to dig in. It did so by blasting almost every major part of the Georgian infrastructure – pipelines, ports, roads – and inflicting some vicious casualties.

The photography work of a friend of mine, currently in country recording the conflict, shows some of the suffering and carnage the Georgians are enduring.

That is the humbling human tragedy I refer to – the sickening notion that for the sake of the vying ambitions of governments, so many people can suffer so horribly.

Still, for all that complexity – for the “Great Game” aspect played by Moscow’s strategic planners and Georgia’s West-dependent defense department gamblers; for the nationalist ideologies in conflict here and the inordinately brutal damage so casually inflicted by Georgia and Russia’s governments – this catastrophe elicits a clean, clear emotional response from me.

The Ossetians want and deserve a homeland – Georgia is slaughtering them by the hundreds, shredding their rights, conniving to look like the victim in this – and so I am outraged. Russia’s cold-hearted imperialism, the pro-West polish of Georgia; those matter little.

As much as many in the West might want to paint this as Russia snatching back the fragments of its empire, the fact is that they would not have had the opportunity had not Georgia launched a very large, very, very bloody campaign against the Ossetians.

The murderous ambition I see here – despite what CNN may say and try to slant – is that of Georgia.

And that brings us to the final point. It’s an old saw I’ve played, and so lest you suffer from rust poisoning, I’ll get right to the mettle of the matter:

The media is entirely painting this as Russian aggression – another “Anschluss”, another conquest masked as humanitarian intervention. The article that lists 2,000 South Ossetians dead is headlined, “RUSSIAN WARPLANES TARGET GEORGIA”, and no effort to make clear that most – if not all – of those 2,000 were massacred by Georgian shelling.

It mentions international calls for Russia to stand down, but not that Georgia had been assaulting an enclave of civilians, technically its own save for that they have less rights, in an effort to disembowel their nearly two decade-long fight for freedom.

It could invest the qualities and mantle of our own Founding Fathers – ignored and antagonized by English oppression past endurance – in the Ossetians; it could talk of the efforts they made, the sorry infiltration of their desperate ranks by Russian control; the horrible fate that its people face under Georgian occupation that succeeds, a second Chechnya.

It does not. It talks of Russian aggression, plucking the old strains of the Tom Clancy novel reality Americans best understand, keeping as much blood off of the USA’s regional buddy as it can manage.

It proves, once again, that the press is worse than just biased. The media – the very tenor and tune of the information we are given – is bought and sold.

Not all voices are, not initially. Obviously, I can read between the lines and follow the trail well enough to discern a picture of events with depth and clarity. But the message being yelled loudest, the one easiest to digest, is one manufactured for the sake of dumbing down the conflict – keeping the Russians in their black hats and the Georgians tucked close under our arm.

And that is almost as disturbing as the thought of another raw, brutal Caucasus War. Almost.

The country of Georgia has launched a new offensive to seize the breakaway republic of South Ossetia – territory that just happens to be part of Russia.

Yes, Russia: That great, terrible ogre of an empire that happens to have most of Asia – not to mention the silver medal in Most Vicious And Plentiful Weapons Systems – in its sprawling grasp. Georgia, a nation more famed for its history as being the last haven of the redoubtable “Chalybes” – the tribes that helped introduce steel and iron to the west – than for its current exports – namely mobsters – has attacked it.

…the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was devastated.

“I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars,” said Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia. “It’s impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged.”

They did so by shelling a civilian population center that had been largely unaware. Apparently the Georgians counted on surprise to carry the day. The rag-tag defenders of South Ossetia, used to be hit from behind by the likes of al-Qaeda, dug in quickly:

Russia responded by rolling tanks into the region and slamming Georgian air bases with aerial bombardment. Georgia has since been focusing on breaking up any Russian forward elements – read, “scouts” – by shelling the villages on either side of the border.

Ten Russian peacekeepers were killed and 30 wounded when their barracks were hit in Georgian shelling, said Russian Ground Forces spokesman Col. Igor Konashenkov. Russia has soldiers in South Ossetia as peacekeeping forces but Georgia alleges they back the separatists.

Civilians, allegedly in the hundreds, have been killed. Because Georgia deliberately waited until the world’s attention was on the Olympics, there was no warning for people – Georgians and Ossetians alike.

“I saw them (the Georgians) shelling my village,” said Maria, who gave only her first name. She said she and other villagers spent the night in a field and then fled toward the Russian border as the fighting escalated.

The Georgian offensive has since expanded to include aircraft and armor. The South Ossetian capital is, I reckon, as good as gone. This next phase will be the most crucial, as this is the kind of war that gets decided fast, but drags on a long time: Air Supremacy.

If Russian can get Air Supremacy, it can interdict Georgia’s build up in the Ossetian territories that it’s seized. That would allow Russian armor and infantry to shatter any Georgian gains and send them toppling back toward their border. Already there have been clashes, suggesting that Georgia’s going to have a tough time digging in before the Bear charges.

If the Russians do get their act together quickly, dominate the skies and cruise in soon, they could dislodge Georgia. Otherwise, this stands to be a long and very bloody war. Georgia apparently has a massive hankering for Ossetia, and Russia for sure does – it’s the gateway in Chechnya, and Russia’s not about to give that up any time soon.

What’s our stake, you ask? This isn’t just another fly-swept sob story to gather dust on your end table like those magazine pieces on Darfur or Myanmar. Even though most Americans think it’s only the name of just another Red State, the US is up to our knees in Georgia.

First off, they are the third largest contributor of combat forces to Iraq. We’re just as invested in them, too – a thousand Marines are in Georgia, training them in counter-terrorism. Just recently, Georgia was considered for NATO membership.

Naturally, the White House is trying to tamp down the fires in the Caucasus Mountains – we don’t want to be on the wrong side of this conflict, and it’s hard to say which is the wrong one. But if this war continues like the dust-ups in that region usually do, it will be a barbaric affair that goes on far, far longer than it should.

That in mind, my best wishes for safety go out to a friend of mine doing peacekeeping work in the region – Cliff Volpe. Take care, Cliff.