He mispronounced Saakashvili. No surprise. He mispronounced Sarkozy. Duh. He's sending Condi to France (to eat cheese and discuss surrender?). He mispronounced Tbilisi. He's sending the Secretary of Defense to head humanitarian aid?
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CNN's coverage here.
- Transcript (not including goofs, mispronounciations, and comical outtakes).
Humanitarian aid to Georgia is apparently to be delivered by US army and navy. What does this smell of?
Also, very strange delivery. Slurred speech, flat affect.
Took no questions.
On the diplomatic front, this looks like a total surrender to the French (how's that for a meme to spin?) The speech also recycles an already-debunked (by BBC, no less) hoax about Russian troop movements in Georgia. The appointment of Gates to take charge of the "humanitarian aid" is very suspicious, and looks like a provocation. I must add, a futile provocation, because of the timing. It's all over but for the shouting, Sarkozy will probably get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Saakashvili has completely destroyed his reputation with the Georgians (I speak from firsthand knowledge here). Not because Saakashvili ordered the attack on South Ossetia, but because he acted like a coward afterwards.
Here I'm not just talking about the episode when he for whatever reason freaked in the middle of a televised interview and ran for cover, with his bodyguard scrambling after him, but about him having the Georgian troops abandon their positions and pull to Tbilisi. Now, this may be reality or this may be perception, but Saakashvili is not well-liked in the Caucasus right now... Also note that the prevalent perception of Saakashvili on Daily Kos is simplistic - either a clown or a staunch defender of democracy. Reality is not that simple. Saakashvili was brought back to Georgia from the US by Shevardnadze, the patriarch of Georgian politics, Gorbachev's right hand. For a while, Saakashvili was the minister of justice, and the country's symbol of hope for stopping rampant corruption and internecine struggles. Then he turned on Shevardnadze... Then he must have flipped the coin on shelling Tskhinvali... If you insist on comic-book treatment, the character that comes to mind is Harvey Dent...
Saakashvili's antics notwithstanding, Bush's speech is either a futile blow of hot air or a dangerous step to escalating the situation just as it started to cool down. I hope for the former.
Final update.
Looks like it is hot air, praise be to the Great Chupacabra Whose Name Shall not Be Uttered. On a different note, one of my friends just got off the phone with his kin in Tbilisi who lived quite close to the military airport. Their house got evacuated, the evacuation was completely botched, some people left, many didn't even bother. In any case, no one got hurt in the house or on the street, and now the shooting is distinctly over, and people are coming back from the evacuations. With this little bit of good news, I think we should conclude this diary, and hope that sanity pwns teh Bush.