Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out at me as a former intel officer: Bearded irregulars riding atop Russian-built armored vehicles (old BMPs, for the military-hardware buffs). The vehicles had been splashed with white lettering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What did the scrawls announce to the world? These thugs proudly proclaimed that they’re Chechens serving in the Vostok (“East”) Battalion commanded by Badrudin Yamadaev – who shares a reputation for gangland violence with his brother, Ruslan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Read the piece for the background on this “unit”. Summary: It’s as if the Mafia or the Crips or Los Reyes <\/em>were given machine guns and tanks (or BMP MICVs, for the equipment buffs).<\/p>\nEven in Russia, people have demanded this “unit” be disbanded. Yet it never happened. Why? (emphasis added by me):<\/p>\n
Two reasons: First, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Georgians to suffer<\/strong> – to really suffer. And Chechens are the world’s subject-matter experts in atrocities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nSecond, this gives the Russian army itself a veil of deniability<\/strong>: When Putin’s spokesmen insist that the Russian military isn’t involved in the worst savagery in Georgia, they’re technically telling the truth (if we don’t count air attacks and artillery bombardments), since the Chechen thugs on their payroll are on the job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nTalk of getting Georgia into NATO was far-fetched; they were “a nation too far” for NATO. But we obviously need a new approach to dealing with Russia. Because Morris is right:<\/p>\n
And there’s plenty else to be outraged about – not all of it Russia’s fault. Images of dead and disfigured Georgian soldiers show them wearing US-surplus canteens, boots and helmets, or equipped with antique US anti-tank weapons. After the Georgians did all their tiny country could to support us in Iraq, all we gave them was cast-off junk – thanks to Congress and the State Department.<\/p>\n
Our military was only allowed to train the Georgians for peacekeeping, anti-terrorism and small-unit tactics. The Georgians gave us all they had, and we gave them crap. The Bush administration should hang its wobbly head in shame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Perhaps the west, should it intend to get serious about containing Russian aggression, needs a new organization, formed from nations who are less than a generation removed from Russian domination. Call it the Eastern Europe Treaty Organization, or the Borscht Bloc for all I care. Get the Baltics, Poland, the Czechs and Slovaks and Ukrainians and Romanians and Bulgarians and whatever’s left of Georgia when this is over. Nations that, unlike the (West) Germans and Dutch and Spanish remember what they’re fighting against.<\/p>\n
Rhetorically, in most cases.<\/p>\n
(Via Fingers)<\/p>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How badly are the Russians behaving in Georgia? Oh, yes – it’s much worse than the Mainstream Media would tell you even if they did a proper job of covering this war. Ralph Peters in the NYPost: Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}