All Talk

Turns out we can't even send humanitarian aid to Georgia:

President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday.

As of late Thursday, Ankara, a NATO ally, hadn't cleared any U.S. naval vessels to steam to Georgia through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the officials said. Under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, countries must notify Turkey before sending warships through the straits.

The Bush administration coming up short in disaster relief? Unprecedented.

"The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank," said a senior administration official.

Georgia On My Mind

Go read Belgravia Dispatch on McCains's rush to really get us involved in the Georgia crisis. As in war with Russia involved. That's what making Georgia part of NATO would entail.

The Georgians are taking it on the chin, but the solution is not war with Russia. The solution was not to encourage Georgia to poke a finger in the eye of Russia. And to have not invaded Iraq on a lie, and thus set the valuable precedent that any Country can invade another and just make up crap as to why. A precedent that the bastards of the world will dine out on for the next twenty years.

Don't let the idiots who brought us the Iraq war bring us a new cold (or hot!) war with Russia. They really want it.

Question

So while Georgia and Russia went to war, Bush spent the weekend going to Olympic events and, um, interacting with the athletes. This is is not a rhetorical question: Is it better that Bush is isn't paying attention to the crisis? Would it really be better if he focused his attention on events, and not the shapely ass of beach volleyball team? Wouldn't he make the situation worse? As still yet another Bush foreign policy ends in a bloody fiasco, and the usual suspects start pimping for more war, maybe its better if Bush stays happy and out the way for the rest of the Olympics.

Now What?

It appears that a war is breaking out between Georgia and Russia. Not "down south" Georgia, "Former Soviet Republic" Georgia. The dispute is over the separatist region of South Ossetia.

How about a little Olympic truce, eh folks?