Posted on 08/10/2008 7:05:36 PM PDT by janetjanet998
The UN has estimated that 20,000 civilians have been forced to flee their homes since fighting began in Georgia. The BBC's Gavin Hewitt reports from the frontline near the town of Gori, where Russian planes have been in action. As he reported on the fate of civilians in Georgia, his team came under attack from Russian fire.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Very, Very close call for the BBC. The SU-25 strafed their camera position.
ping
check out the video, right around the 45 second mark
Thanks for posting.
Close the Roki Tunnel. Cut off the Russians. Put a Fighter Squadron from Turkey over Georgia to defend Georgias airspace, and send Airborne Troops to contain Russsians in Georgia. The Russians are out on a limb here. Lets chop it off.
Toooo Close !!!...
The Russians are going out of their way to prove they have ceased to be decent civilized people.
worked in Afghanistan!
Yes.
How fast were those guys driving? LOL its hard to estimate but it looks like they were going over 100mph. They kept the camera rolling though.
Know what that is?
That was old style warfare, no surgical laser guided air strikes just iron bombs and rockets aimed through a prismatic sight.
American forces thrown into that mix would crush the Russians in weeks if not days.
They do seem to be fighting WW2 style, using conventional aircraft.
If not for "MAD" Nukes, America would destroy Russia!
I was in Russia in January and March of 2002.
We got to watch the war in Chechnya on the local TV station in St. Petersburg.
Definitely WWII.
The Russians surrounded a village with tanks and artillery.
They leafleted the town, giving people 48 hours to evacuate through the checkpoints the Russians had set up. People were warned in the leaflets that they would be shot if they tried to avoid the checkpoints, and that their “papers” had to be in order, or they would be “detained”.
After 48 hours, the Russians launched the attack with aerial bombing and shelling.
They bombed everything, indescriminately.
Apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, municipal buildings, everything.
Then they sent the big earth moving equipment to bulldoze everything to the ground and moved on to the next town.
They did not look for survivors.
We were stunned as we watched this.
We have no sympathy for the Chechyan mahometan lunatics, and they did bring this upon themselves by bombing Moscow subways and apartment buildings, killing over 300 Russians, besides public beheadings of Russian Orthodox priests in the streets of Chechnya.
But the scope and intensity of the Russian war machine upon the civilian population was breathtaking.
Meanwhile, all the EUroweenie TV news outlets were decrying the barbaric American surgical bombing in Afghanistan.
Not one word, not ONE WORD, on the Euroweenie TV about the savagery of the Russian campaign in Chechnya.
Do we really want to go to war with Russia? It’s one thing to arm and assist allies who are fighting Russia’s proxies, but it is entirely different to have US forces fighting Russian forces.
It really stinks, but stepping in on Georgia’s side would be “all in.”
Would you prefer to watch the Russians slaughter hundreds of thousands?
The average Russian conscript spend two years in the army basically staying out of the way of everyone that can shaft him.
Our forces have been engaged around the world since 2002 and have weapons Most Russians would crap themselves if they knew how deadly they were.
Do I want us to fight them? No but I recognize that we must support those we have said we will protect.
Do you mean like Russian pilots flying MIGS against US forces in Korea?
Or like them flying MIGS against US Pilots in Vietnam?
Or like them manning the air defenses over Hanoi?
Russia is going for control of the pipelines. It wants to have it's hands at Europe's throat.
Just like always.
It is possible to assist the Georgians short of all in. I think we should do everything we can to blunt the Russians. Otherwise they will keep going.
History shows this.
Let's not make the same mistakes made seventy years ago.
Once the US and Russia become engaged in military conflict, the logic of war could cause the war to escalate beyond Georgia.
Should the US strike bases in Russia? What happens if Russia strikes US bases in Turkey or Iraq? If they strike our carriers in the Med or the Persian Gulf? ...or bases in the CONUS?
If we roll up Russian forces in Georgia, do the Russians up the ante? They have always had a much lower threshold for the use of tactical nukes.
I don’t believe we have a treaty obligation with Georgia. If we did, the Russians would have attacked knowing that the US would respond with force.
Like I said, the situation stinks, but heading into war with the one nation in the world that could devastate the continental US is not something we should do lightly.
Keep in mind that Belgrade is inside Serbia itself, not in Kosovo.
The direct fights between US and Russian forces always had a veneer of deniability. Even when the Russians had pilots flying in Korea and Vietnam, it was still a black op.
The nature of US - Russian relations needs to change in light of these events. We have maintained the fiction of an open, democratic Russia as they have reverted to autocracy.
This is a failure of diplomacy. We didn’t move to truly ally ourselves with Georgia and created a situation where the Russians had a window to act before NATO guaranteed Georgia’s borders and sovereignty.
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