Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Amnesty: Russia were not the aggressors in Georgia.

Let's all pretend that we are shocked:

Fresh witness accounts have undermined Georgia's portrayal of its onslaught on the breakaway territory of South Ossetia as a purely defensive operation, and prompted authorities to launch a fightback to counter allegations that it is rewriting the history of its six-day war with Russia.

Amnesty International will today be the latest to challenge the Georgian narrative in an authoritative 76-page report which accuses Georgia and Russia of war crimes during the short, sharp war triggered by the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on 7 August. The war, ended by French mediation after Russia invaded Georgia proper in a land, sea and air assault, triggered the most serious crisis in international relations since the Cold War.

The Amnesty report specifically accuses Georgian forces of having committed "indiscriminate attacks" on 7 August "causing deaths and injuries among South Ossetian civilians and considerable damage to civilian objects".

The line which came from the US and other western governments at the time when Russia reacted to this outrage by Georgia defied belief. They continued to talk as if Russia had decided, unilaterally, to invade Georgia.

In these days of Google, anyone with a modicum of curiosity could discover that Bush and McCain and others were twisting what took place to fit in with their own ideological narrative and that, whilst it might be true that these events provided Russia with an opportunity to do something which they have long wanted to do, it was simply deceitful to present Georgia as the victim of Russian aggression.

The only astonishing thing about the recent Amnesty report is that it is considered news at all.

Click title for full article.

2 comments:

Ingrid said...

"In these days of Google, anyone with a modicum of curiosity could discover that Bush and McCain and others were twisting what took place to fit in with their own ideological narrative and that, whilst it might be true that these events provided Russia with an opportunity to do something which they have long wanted to do, it was simply deceitful to present Georgia as the victim of Russian aggression.

The only astonishing thing about the recent Amnesty report is that it is considered news at all."

I bet you get more people reading your blog than I do but during that time, when I argued the same thing (as you did) I got a LOT of people coming from an Army's official website (pentagon) checking out my posts..kinda creepy but hey, perhaps they wanted to know what was going on as well [g].
Perhaps we ought to join forces and have our own 'online' thing going on and then the news will not be news because they heard it 'from us'..
mainstream media is doing a pretty bad job aren't they? But then, it's all about the ownership..
luckily, no one 'owns' me.. (or 'you')

Ingrid

Kel said...

Mainstream media is doing a pretty bad job aren't they?

In this case they were simply deplorable, reporting Bush's lies and McCain's statements that "it didn't matter who started this as Russian aggression was over the top" as if what they were saying was true.

At the time I found it staggering.