Re:Russia's ressponse was reasonable and justified (Score 1)

Has the death of the 1500+ civilians been carefully and independently verified & confirmed as having been directly caused by the georgians? I'd like to think that the georgian president was not dumb enough to blindly fire into the region at the very least so as to not jeopardize his relationship with the west and with his term (& with the georgian history books).

The US airlifting georgian trops was completely justified. Georgia was a key ally in Iraq and facing an invasion from Russia into a sovereign and non-aggressive (against other sovereign states, unlike Iraq) that is Georgia, the US would have fucked itself diplomatically had it not obliged to georgia's formal request.

I find it funny when I see people (80% of which are russians) justifying Russia's invasion by which means it plays god and murders innocent georgians (the killing of innocent s. ossetians does not justify the killing of innocent georgians), and destruction of georgian economic infrastructure. And it continues as we speak (eg. currently russia has broken the truce and is ravaging the city of Gori in Georgia. Most unfortunate is the fact that the west cant do anything tangible to punish russaia short of invading it, because Russia is not a normal country.

It need not be stated that the russians are going to suffer from this over the long-term, while Putin & friends will benefit. Unsuprisingly, the russians seem to be very happy about the state of things. Unfortunately for them, many people outside of Russia aren't, being that Russia has a sizeable army and a working nuclear arm stockpile.

Russia's actions over the past week have justified the US and Europe's focus on expanding and improving their NATO infrastructure over the past few years. While I previously was under the belief that the west was overdoing it, I have now understood that Russia is in effect dangerous to the stability of the western world and must be contained in which ever way possible.

And yes, I do agree that Georgia is not completely innocent. But again, this does not in any way justify what Russia has done and has been doing in that region for the last decade.