Free Ossetia?

Let 'em join North Ossetia (pop 500K Ossetians, 300K others) as part of Russia

6 (30%)

Force them to stay in Georgia (and Bush just might help)

3 (15%)

Make South Ossetia sovereign (current GDP $15 mil, world's smallest)

7 (35%)

Free Ossetia?  Isn't that where Stalin is from??  LOLZ

3 (15%)

I buun drivin' I-285 fo days, I dun't seen no Assetias!

1 (5%)

Total Members Voted: 10

[Alex Libman]

[youtube=425,350]l-lCS3FK0X4[/youtube]

...

[atomiccat]

They have a 15 million dollar economy ? they probably spent more then 15 million just bombing them... oooo the idiocy of governments

[Taors]

They should do what they want.

[Alex Libman]

The screwed up thing is that Russia is the good guys here, joining them is what South Ossetia wants.  No wonder, Russia's GDP per capita is currently three times Georgia's, and thanks to Russia's natural resources that won't change very soon.  I'm sure Putin has bribed those poor and desperate people with stability and jobs...

[hellbilly]

If they want to join Russia, let them join Russia.

[Russell Griswold]

This reminds me of the 1990's situation in Abkhazia. At the time I was visiting my relatives in Gagra and I remember leaving with tanks rolling behind our bus. Seems like nothing had changed with that scummy Georgia.

[Alex Libman]

From the UK Telegraph -- Georgia: Russia enters into 'war' in South Ossetia --

Over 1,300 people are reported dead after Russian forces responded to a Georgian attack on rebels in the breakaway province of South Ossetia by mounting a full scale invasion.

[Visit the actual article for embedded video, etc.]

Columns of Russian tanks plunged the two neighbours [sic] into war as they filed into South Ossetia, marking the Kremlin's first military assault on foreign soil since the Soviet Union's Afghanistan intevention [sic], which ended in 1989.

Russian tanks rolled towards the capital of South Ossetia and fighters bombed Georgian air bases after Georgia launched attacks on rebels in the breakaway region. South Ossetia won de-facto independence in a war which ended in 1992 but has been a source of tension ever since, along with Abkhazia, another separatist region.

Russian peacekeepers have suffered 12 dead and 150 wounded, the peacekeeping forces were quoted as saying by Russian news agencies, while over 1300 civilians are reported to have been killed.

"Now our peacekeepers are waging a fierce battle with regular forces from the Georgian army in the southern region of Tskhinvali," a representative of the Russian force was quoted as saying by Interfax.

Reports last night claimed that Russia had started to bomb civil and economic infrastructure, including the Black Sea port of Poti and the military base at Senaki. Between 8 and 11 Russian jets reportedly hit container tanks and a shipbuilding plant at the port.

"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."

The confrontation between the two countries deepened in April when Nato promised that Georgia would be allowed to join - although no clear timetable was offered.

The European Union was trying to secure a ceasefire in the pro-Russian enclave. The United States and the EU sent a joint delegation to the region in a bid to halt the fighting, while Nato called for an immediate end to the clashes and for direct talks between Russia and Georgia.

Any ceasefire would be unlikely to hold. Hours after President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, a devoutly pro-Western leader, declared a unilateral ceasefire on Thursday night, his forces began an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.

The fighting broke out as much of the world's attention was focused on the start of the Olympic Games. Many leaders, including Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President George W Bush, were in Beijing watching the opening ceremony.

Mr Putin declared: "War has started." Victor Dolidze, Georgia's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said: "If this is not war, then I wonder what it is."

Mr Dolidze told the OSCE's permanent council in Vienna that Russian forces had been bombing Georgian territory since the morning, according to a diplomat who attended the 45-minute meeting.  Vladimir Voronkov, Russia's representative, told the assembly that "the true story is very different." He accused the Georgian side of launching a massive attack in defiance of diplomatic efforts.

As the roar of warplanes and the explosion of heavy shells sounded outside Tskhinvali, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, accused the Georgians of driving people from their homes.

"We are receiving reports that a policy of ethnic cleansing was being conducted in villages in South Ossetia, the number of refugees is climbing, the panic is growing, people are trying to save their lives," he said in televised remarks from the ministry.

Georgia, which would be hugely outnumbered in an all-out confrontation with Russia, said that it had control of the capital, but there were reports of Russian tanks on the outskirts and that Georgian forces had started to retreat.

Georgia will withdraw 1,000 soldiers from its military contingent of around 2,000 troops in Iraq to help in the fighting against South Ossetian separatist rebels, a top Georgian official said.

Georgia has asked the US military to provide aircraft to move Georgian troops home from Iraq as fighting rages in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, a US military official said Friday.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia.

"The United States calls for an immediate ceasefire to the armed conflict in Georgia's region of South Ossetia," Rice said in a statement.

"We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia's territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil," she said.

The United States is working actively with its European allies to launch international mediation to end the crisis and senior US officials have spoken with the parties in the conflict, she added.

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana: "We repeat our message to all parties to immediately stop the violence."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said the US was sending an envoy to the region "to engage with the parties in the conflict".

[hellbilly]

The US has been called in for help?

Oh great.

[mikehz]

Just what we need--get drawn into another war over some place no one has ever heard of. 

[Alex Libman]

There's no good resolution of this.  It would be best if the conflict didn't escalate and Russia got its way...

[hellbilly]

Agreed. What sort of moron must the leader of Georgia be? Unless he knew he might get back up from the US..

Georgia, the size of a thimble compared to Russia, wants to wage war against the behemoth? Yeah. That makes sense.

[Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)]

The US won't mobilize troops against Russia.

[Alex Libman]

Is the I-285 joke not funny?  I loved it...  (It's a ring road around Atlanta.)

[AntonLee]

oh Georgia. . . Ray Charles would have been all for ya

[Alex Libman]

Here's more food for thought:

NATO's yearly military expenditures: $850 billion.  Russia's: $45 billion (3% of world's share).  As percent of GDP:  Russia is 4.58% (about same as USA), Georgia is 15.90% - that's a mind-bending figure given that Russia's per-capita GDP is 3x higher!  Georgia's listed defense chunk of the budget is second only to North Korea!  And in reality it's much higher, since they're buying some stuff at deep discount and that data is a year old - it went up by like 30x over the past few years!

According to the 2008 Forbes tax misery index:  If I make a million euros in Russia, I get to keep 870,000 - and that's with a lot of people to raise from poverty.  If I make the same million Euros in Denmark, I keep 381,400.  So.... who are the blood-sucking commies again?