Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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meanwhile, back in the world in which, despite its self-serving side, what putin is saying about the americans might be true:
Quote:
September 5, 2008
Cheney Backs NATO Membership for Georgia
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ALAN COWELL
TBILISI, Georgia — One day after the United States proposed $1 billion in humanitarian and economic assistance to help rebuild Georgia after its war with Russia, Vice President Dick Cheney flew here to reaffirm Washington’s support for this country’s eventual NATO membership and to issue a powerful condemnation of Moscow.
Standing alongside President Mikheil Saakashvili at a joint news conference, Mr. Cheney declared: “After your nation won its freedom in the Rose Revolution, America came to the aid of this courageous young democracy. We are doing so again, as you work to overcome an invasion of your sovereign territory, and an illegitimate, unilateral attempt to change your country’s borders by force that has been universally condemned by the free world.”
He said he had assured the Georgian leader that he “can count on continued support and assistance from the United States.”
“I assured the president as well of my country’s strong commitment to Georgia’s territorial integrity. Georgia has that right, just as it has the right to build stronger ties to friends in Europe and across the Atlantic.”
“Russia’s actions have cast grave doubts on Russia’s intentions and on its reliability as an international partner, not just in Georgia, but across this region and indeed throughout the international system,” Mr. Cheney said.
“Georgia will be in our alliance. NATO is a defensive alliance. It is a threat to no one.”
His words of support for Mr. Saakashvili placed him on a direct collision course with Russia’s leaders who have labeled the Georgian president a “political corpse” and who have made clear that they see Georgia’s membership of NATO as intolerable.
Mr. Cheney’s remarks about Georgia’s territorial integrity also contradicted Russia’s recognition of the independence of two areas of the country -_ South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The vice president was speaking on the second leg of a tour of the region which he began in Azerbaijan Wednesday. He planned to fly later Thursday to Ukraine.
After a one-hour meeting — 30 minutes longer than planned — Mr. Cheney and Mr. Saakashvili visited the military section of Tbilisi’s international airport where they met with American airmen unloading a shipment of blankets that arrived earlier in the day from Italy on an American C-130 military transport plane. “Appreciate everything you’re doing for us,” Mr. Cheney said in sight of an aircraft construction factory bombed by the Russians in the first days of the war last month. Earlier, Mr. Cheney described his visit to the region as a demonstration that the United States had “a deep and abiding interest” in keeping Georgia and other neighboring states free from a new era of Russian domination.
The combination of new American aid and Mr. Cheney’s high-profile visit to a region the Russians call “the near abroad” is sure to inflame tensions further. Russia’s leaders have openly accused the United States of having provoked last month’s conflict by providing Georgia with weapons and training for its armed forces, while encouraging its aspirations to join NATO.
The aid package proposed Wednesday in Washington, which requires approval from Congress, significantly expands assistance to a country that has become ardently pro-American in recent years, though at the cost of the worst relations between the United States and Russia since the collapse of communism.
The aid would dwarf the $63 million the United States provided to Georgia last year, roughly a third of it for training its soldiers, police officers and border guards. Excluding Iraq, the infusion would make Georgia one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid after Israel and Egypt. The United States has provided about $1.8 billion over all in the 17 years since Georgia gained independence from the collapsing Soviet Union.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appearing in Washington, said that $570 million of the aid would be made available this year, while the rest would depend on approval by a new administration and a new Congress. It does not include any military aid, she and other administration officials said.
The initial money, President Bush said in a statement, would be used to feed and shelter tens of thousands of Georgians displaced during the fighting that began on the night of Aug. 7 when Georgia tried to establish control over a breakaway region, South Ossetia, only to be driven back by Russian forces. Mr. Bush also pledged to support its transition to a democratic market economy.
“Georgia has a strong economic foundation and leaders with an impressive record of reform,” Mr. Bush said in his statement. “Our additional economic assistance will help the people of Georgia recover from the assault on their country and continue to build a prosperous and competitive economy.”
President Dmitri A. Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin have already complained that humanitarian supplies delivered by the American Navy and Air Force were a disguise for delivering new weapons, accusations that administration officials have dismissed as baseless.
The American military has so far delivered $30 million in emergency aid, including 1,200 tons of food and relief supplies like tents, delivered by 61 Air Force jets and two Navy ships plying the Black Sea. Mr. Bush also ordered federal agencies to expand trading opportunities between the United States and Georgia and to provide maritime insurance for ships docking in Georgia.
“The free world cannot allow the destiny of a small independent country to be determined by the aggression of a larger neighbor,” Ms. Rice said in Washington.
Still, there seemed to be little pressure the United States and European countries could exert to persuade Russia to back down in its confrontation with Mr. Saakashvili’s government. Many administration officials worry that overthrowing Mr. Saakashvili’s government is Russia’s unwavering intention.
While the administration has made its political, diplomatic and economic support for Georgia abundantly clear, however, it has yet to settle on what steps, if any, it will take to punish Russia. It has failed to do so even as American and European officials vehemently protest that Russia continues to violate a French-brokered agreement to end the fighting and withdraw Russian troops from Georgian territory.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/wo...hp&oref=slogin
so there's a contingent of nato ships floating around the black sea, a bunch of materials arriving from the us and then the administration sends everyone's favorite guy to tell not only georgia but everyone else that georgia should, so far as the administration is concerned, be part of nato.
tell me this is not about the oil.
Georgia's oil pipeline is key to U.S. support
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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