No One Could Have Predicted, Republic of Georgia, the Follow-Up

/in /by

Yesterday, I said,

Since Condi’s gone somewhere (probably buying shoes in NYC), let me anticipate what she’ll say when she ever gets back to work: "No one could have predicted that the Georgians would incite the Russians to pursue regime change in Georgia."

Today, the NYT’s diplomatic correspondant writes,

One month ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia, for a high-profile visit that was planned to accomplish two very different goals.

During a private dinner on July 9, Ms. Rice’s aides say, she warned President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia not to get into a military conflict with Russia that Georgia could not win. “She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to put a non-use of force pledge on the table,” according to a senior administration official who accompanied Ms. Rice to the Georgian capital.

But publicly, Ms. Rice struck a different tone, one of defiant support for Georgia in the face of Russian pressure. “I’m going to visit a friend and I don’t expect much comment about the United States going to visit a friend,” she told reporters just before arriving in Tbilisi, even as Russian jets were conducting intimidating maneuvers over South Ossetia.

[snip]

Ms. Rice went to Tbilisi just as tensions between Russia and Georgia were escalating. Standing next to Mr. Saakashvili during a press conference, she said that Russia “needs to be a part of resolving the problem and solving the problems and not contributing to it.” Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, was clearly thrilled to host Ms. Rice.

[snip]

Ms. Rice did not get on the phone with her Georgian counterpart on Thursday, but left it to Mr. Fried to deliver the “don’t go in” message, a senior administration official said. “I don’t think it would have made any difference if she had,” the official said. “They knew the message was coming from the top.”

A few hours later, in the early morning hours of Friday, Aug. 8, Georgia launched its offensive in South Ossetia, and Russia responded with a tenfold show of force. Ms. Rice, the administration official said, “called Saakashvili on Friday morning, after their folks were in.”

Now, I’m not even remotely surprised that State is now claiming they had nothing to do with this, Condi’s visit and on-the-record confrontation of Russian not-withstanding.

I am wondering, though. At what point do people start calling Condi on her refrain, "No one could have predicted"?

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  3. bobschacht says:

    Well, that diplomatic trick of saying one thing in private and another thing in public is handy. Whatever happens, you can brandish the thing you said that turned out right and dismiss the one that turned out wrong.

    Isn’t this kind of a Reverse Kruschev? During the Cuban Missile Crisis, IIRC, it was the Russians who gave us two messages, one belligerent, the other diplomatic. Kennedy chose to ignore the belligerent one, and respond to the diplomatic one, and everything worked out. Only now it is Condi delivering the double message, and Whoops! It didn’t work out so well.

    Hey, she’s supposed to be the expert on that part of the world, isn’t she? Not so much, I guess.

    Bob in HI

    • theExile says:

      I guess she’s only an expert (archeoglogist, really) of that vanished jurisdiction – the U.S.S.R. or Soviet Union. Could Bush really be that dumb or that evil to poke the bear and start yet another war? The current two are going swimmingly and the United States is winning prestige, respect and friends – everywhere – NOT!

      I suggest Monkey Boy challenges Putin to a Judo match to the death. The winner gets Cheney as a butler as long as his batteries last.

  4. pajarito says:

    Welcome to Kurdistan, Mr. Saakashvili.

    Kinda like that Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy was always moving the football just as…..

  5. brendanx says:

    In the first day of coverage the Russians accused the Ukraine of some involvement in Georgia. Does anyone remember the details of that?

    • oboblomov says:

      Are you looking for something like this?

      At the same time the Russian air force started to bomb Georgian air fields. At least four Georgian planes were destroyed on the ground. Two Russian planes were shot down by SA-5 anti air missiles which Georgia was not known to have. These weapons were possibly manned by Ukrainian mercenaries.

      I’ve seen something else re. Ukraine involvement but can’t find it. Recall that the missiles were from Ukraine. Loosing two planes was probably a shock to the Russian mil.

  8. brendanx says:

    This is peripheral, but another example of diplomacy on two tracks.

    The heads of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics flew to Tbilisi to offer rhetorical support for Saakashvili. The Polish president, Kaczynski, is a vicious paranoiac and known pal of Bush and didn’t run the trip by the Polish prime minister, who prefers to remain integrated in the E.U. He predictably used inflammatory language declaring, for example, they were there to “take up the struggle”.

  9. DefendOurConstitution says:

    Condi’s incompetence has always been outstanding, but here even more so given her status as an expert on Soviet/Russian military relations.

  10. plunger says:

    Get used to the word “Brinksmanship.”

    Russia demands that the US “choose sides.”

    This entire thing was a set-up by the globalists.

  11. stryder says:

    Kagen is on cspan saying that Russia isn’t going to bring charges of genocide but mass murder on Saakashvilli.

  12. phred says:

    Given the collective amnesia that afflicts all members of the Executive branch these days, is it any wonder that they can’t recall any information long enough to be able to make credible predictions? Remind again why we let such people run the country?

    Of course, there is the possibility that there is nothing wrong with anyone’s memory, they are just too embarrassed to admit how poor their decisions have been. Who could have ever predicted such a degree of incompetence?

    • bobschacht says:

      Hi, phred.
      “Remind again why we let such people run the country?”

      Because we allow our representatives such scandalous latitude. They’re not doing their jobs. We should be on their backs breathing fire down their necks.

      Bob in HI

  13. plunger says:

    Saakashvilli enjoys an open microphone on CNN whenever he chooses…making the case for John McCain in the midst of the most blatant propaganda ploy ever conceived. CNN’s complicity is outrageous. It’s all lies…theater.

    No mention of the fact that Georgia was the original aggressor.

    Discernible reality?

  14. plunger says:

    McCain on CNN just announced he is sending Vice President Lieberman and Secretary of State Graham to Georgia to meet with our puppet, Saakashvilli.

    • stryder says:

      You wouldn’t be implying that the gop would manufacture a conflict in Georgia to strengthen their position in the US elections would you?

    • Nell says:

      Yes. We just delivered them back home, with their equipment, in a C-17.

      Imagine the reaction if the Russians had returned Iraqi troops from anywhere to Iraq as the 2003 U.S. invasion was beginning…

  16. brendanx says:

    emptywheel:

    Forgive this for being peripheral. In a previous thread I added a comment about the Polish president’s trip to Tbilisi (with other heads of state), pointing out that he’s a Bush pal and saboteur of the current (sane) government (no link in English).

    Then I saw this strange story about a feud between the Polish president and Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, Radek Sikorski (who is married to Anne Applebaum). It included this bizarre accusation:

    According to the daily’s publication, the president implied that FM Sikorski had betrayed Polish interests in the negotiations, and accused him of coming to an agreement with US Democratic Party officials that a deal on the shield would be signed after the November US presidential elections.

    I think that’s ridiculous (I don’t trust Sikorski to like Democratic foreign policy, for example, being married to Applebaum). It seems to me, instead, to be a case of the lady protesting too much: I swear Kaczynski must be working in cahoots with the Republicans and is only accusing his political opponents of the same crime of which he’s guilty (a very Rovian tactic). That’s our politics in the region.

  17. sailmaker says:

    Just a question: Aren’t we in the business of predicting things? With our satellites and our cyber snooping and all, shouldn’t it all have been predictable?

    Here is the MSM mouthpiece echoing Condi (God I’d hate to have to tell these lies, and I wonder what they bribed him with to say such stuff in public).:

    … members of the Georgia army unit assigned to a training program under American advisers did not show up for the day’s exercises. In retrospect, American officials said, it is obvious that they had been ordered to mobilize for the mission in South Ossetia by their commanders.

    “This caught us totally by surprise,” said one military officer who tracks events in the region, including the American-Georgian training effort. “It really knocked us off our chairs.”

  19. alank says:

    From the column:

    What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against “small, defenseless Georgia” is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.

  20. YYSyd says:

    Well to be fair to Condi, even after all these years, she still can’t predict what Cheney will do.

  21. prostratedragon says:

    Don’t suppose it would have helped her any to know about cyber attacks into Georgia that also took place in July, including on Saakashvilli’s own web site.

    But since the server that directed at least some of the attacks was here in the U.S., maybe that’s the kind of thng Condi “couldn’t” have known.

    Hattip Laura Rozen’s blog.

  22. JThomason says:

    The Georgian version is that Russian armed Ossetian militias provoked the fighting by attacking outlying hamlets on the night of August 7th:

    Meanwhile, investigators began to look into allegations of atrocities committed in South Ossetia, where the war broke out Aug. 8. Human Rights Watch reported that researchers had witnessed “terrifying scenes of destruction” in four deserted ethnic Georgian villages and said they had been looted and burned by South Ossetian militias.

    The immediate Russian media blitz justifying its actions was intensive and amazingly coordinated alleging genocide and war crimes:

    In South Ossetia, Human Rights Watch researchers saw houses of Georgian civilians set on fire by Ossetian irregulars and saw militias looting the homes of Georgians who had fled the fighting.

    Anna Neistat, one of the researchers, said by telephone from Tskhinvali that they had found no evidence so far to substantiate Russian claims of widespread brutality by Georgian troops.

    Human Rights Watch has been able to confirm fewer than 100 deaths – a far cry from the death toll of 2,000 regularly cited by Moscow.

    International Herald Tribune.