According to a story appearing in Monday's Times of London that cited unnamed "defense sources," the U.S. is "planning to take control of all military operations in Afghanistan next year with an Iraq-style troop surge" involving "as many as 15,000 extra troops."[1]  --  "Although final decisions cannot be made until the new U.S. administration takes over in January, plans are being drawn up to send two to three U.S. combat brigades — a total of between 8,000 and 12,000 men," Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter wrote....

Though differences remain, Western leaders are forming a more united front, increasing pressure on Russia to live up to its pledge to withdraw from Georgian territory," with heretofore cautious German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying in Tbilisi that NATO countries "are on a clear path in the direction of NATO membership" for Georgia, the Financial Times reported late Sunday.[1]  --  "Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, told Nicolas Sarkozy, his French counterpart, that Russian forces would begin their withdrawal on Monday, moving towards South Ossetia and a security zone that roughly coincides with its borders, according to the Kremlin," Charles Clover and Catherine Belton said.  --  But "Mr. Medvedev stopped short of promising that Russian troops would return to Russia, suggesting that Russia could maintain a sizeable force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in a buffer zone several kilometers wide around the enclaves.  --  Such a massive Russian presence in the enclaves could allow them eventually to seek independence or be annexed by Russia, something Georgia is desperate to avoid." ...

Russia acquiesced to signing a ceasefire agreement with Georgia on Saturday but apparently continued to ravage military assets and infrastructure on Georgian soil as Georgian President Saakashvili continued to direct insults toward the Russian forces and their leadership, Reuters reported.[1]  --  Though Russia denied it, the Los Angeles Times claimed an eyewitness verified that a key Georgian railroad bridge was blown up Saturday.[2]  --  "The blast in the Kaspi region caused immediate economic chaos," Megan K. Stack said, "forcing Azerbaijan to suspend crude oil shipments to the Black Sea ports, and stranding 72 Armenia-bound freight cars in Georgia."  --  Meanwhile, "Russian soldiers dug in at strategic posts along the country's main roadway."  --  "Russia has appeared to be taunting Georgia, sending tank columns roaring toward the capital only to turn them back again."  --  "But despite the constant commotion of redeployment, the trend has been a creeping entrenchment that has engulfed strategically crucial Gori and moved steadily in on the capital, creating a swath of nearly abandoned towns and villages," Stack said.  --  AFP reported that on Sunday in an article in the Sunday Telegraph a former head of the British armed forces recommended that the West accept that "The 'Near Abroad' — the countries bordering Russia — are strategically vital to its security," said General Sir Mike Jackson.[3]  --  "For me, the right course for the West — without compromising its own position and values — is to show a greater understanding of why Russia behaves as it does, to accept more willingly Russia's concerns for its Near Abroad. . . . This is the challenge for politicians and diplomats: strategic military hostility and confrontation must remain a thing of the past." ...

Michael German, a policy counsel for the ACLU who was an FBI agent for 16 years, says that a new domestic spying measure will lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters, the Washington Post reported in a front-page story Saturday.[1]  --  "If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information," he said.  "It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government."  --  "Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months," Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson reported.  --  "Under the Justice Department proposal for state and local police, published for public comment July 31, law enforcement agencies would be allowed to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch a criminal intelligence investigation based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists.  They also could share results with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases." ...

On Friday, at almost the same time that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brandished an agreement newly signed by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi and said "Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once," a Russian military convoy advanced to within 55 kilometers of the Georgian capital, the Financial Times of London reported.[1]  --  "It was the closest to Tbilisi Russian forces have come since the conflict erupted last week," Charles Clover said.  --  "The tone and content of U.S. and European statements on the Russia-Georgia conflict have been subtly diverging all week," Clover observed, "with European nations such as France and Germany less inclined to isolate or punish Russia for its actions, while the U.S. has been the most openly confrontational." ...

On Friday the New York Times ran as its lead story a piece based on information from unnamed "senior officials" who say that "Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush administration’s relationship with Moscow."[1]  --  Paul Reynolds of BBC News commented that "The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.  --  It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation.  --  Yet the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging."[2]  --  Reynolds said that Georgian propaganda "did not fit the facts, but some of the mud has stuck and Russia has been on the international defensive," and is "losing the propaganda war" by not cultivating Western media.  --  BACKGROUND:  Canada's Globe and Mail published an overview of the career of Gerogian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday.[3]  --  Mark MacKinnon said the Georgian's career took off after "The Soros foundations began pouring millions of dollars into organizations that were nominally interested in free media and democracy building but mainly served to undermine Mr. Shevardnadze's rule and push for Mr. Saakashvili to succeed him (including the youth movement Kmara, which would provide the backbone of the protests during the Rose Revolution)."  --  Despite recent expressions of support from the U.S., MacKinnon judged Saakashvili's position "increasingly desperate" and said that "Now that [Russia] has humbled him militarily, many expect a Russian-sponsored push to oust him from within."  --  From a wider perspective, the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 "heralds the final end of the hopeful era that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Moscow and Washington are once more now fully at odds over everything from the World Trade Organization (which the U.S. has blocked Russia's efforts to join) to Iran's nuclear program (which the Kremlin has helped to build).  South Ossetia is only the first hot conflict zone in this New Cold War."  --  In another analytical piece, WSWS argued that the New York Times is allowing itself to be used to promote a version of events that is scarcely credible:  "The claim that Saakashvili acted without the foreknowledge and approval of the U.S. is simply not believable."[4]  --  "In fact," Alex Lantier and Barry Grey wrote, "there is nothing democratic about the Saakashvili government.  It is a right-wing regime that rests on a faction of the post-Soviet oligarchy that enriched itself by plundering the formerly nationalized economy.  It has promoted a tiny wealthy élite on the basis of 'free market' policies, while the broad mass of the Georgian people have slipped ever more deeply into poverty.  --  Its methods are authoritarian.  Saakashvili himself was reelected in January 2008 in snap elections which he called after putting down mass protests the previous November and declaring martial law." ...

On Monday Scott Ritter wrote on the web site TruthDig that while he "cannot independently confirm Suskind’s findings," he did hear "a similar story, from a source I trust implicitly."[1]  --  Ritter believes that in 2003 "the CPA had passed to the Badr militia my name, the dates of my planned trip to Baghdad, my proposed agenda, and a list of Iraqis I had planned to meet with, including Mohammed.  This information was in turn passed on to the unit in the Badr militia which specialized in targeted assassination in Baghdad."  --  And Ritter believes an account from the source of this information, whose name he does not provide, according to which he received a proposal from U.S. personnel in Iraq to collaborate in fabricating evidence of WMD there.  --  "And so," he concluded, "I am willing to believe Suskind and his sources about similar cases of fraud, this time in the form of the CIA’s manufactured Mukhabarat document."  --  And what is important in the light of Suskind's information, Ritter wrote, is that Congress act.  --  "If the rule of law is to have any meaning today, Congress has no choice but to institute proceedings mandated by the Constitution against those high officials who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people.  Far from stating that impeachment is off the table, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi rightfully has no option but to instruct the House of Representatives to initiate investigations into the crime of fraud and other related obstructions of government undertaken by the administration of President George W. Bush.  And if these investigations confirm that such crimes have indeed occurred, she must, as a servant of the Constitution, undertake impeachment proceedings.  That Bush is a lame-duck president, and his time in office is short, is no excuse for failure to defend the rule of law to its fullest." ...

On Thursday in the London Guardian, a veteran columnist rejected the recent "outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from Western politicians and their captive media" with respect the the conflict in Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.[1]  --  "By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of U.S. imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power," wrote Seamus Milne.  --  "That a stronger Russia has now used the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should hardly come as a surprise.  What is harder to work out is why Saakashvili launched last week's attack and whether he was given any encouragement by his friends in Washington." ...

On Friday, in an article translated from the Norwegian below, the Oslo newspaper Klassekampen reported that a "bitter struggle between the United Steelworkers Union and [Kongsberg Automotive's factory in Van Wert, Ohio's] Norwegian owners" has attracted the attention of the Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions.[1]  --  Union leader Arve Bakke called the use of a lockout and strikebreakers by a Norwegian defense giant "morally reprehensible."  --  "To keep workers out through a lockout while simultaneously hiring unorganized labor is completely unacceptable and morally reprehensible.  We got rid of that sort of thing in the ‘30s in Norway," Bakke said.  --  "From American owners we can’t expect anything better than that they follow American tradition and legislation, but I expect better from Norwegian owners," he said.  --  Last week local press in Ohio reported that two union leaders were travelling to Norway to speak to Kongsberg executives, but were told that "the lockout and its resolution . . . will be off limits."[2]  --  BACKGROUND:  Kongsberg is Norway's best-known company specializing in defense equipment and dual-use items (annual revenues in 2007 about $1.5bn), and has recently purchased other Norwegian defense and electronics firms to become stronger in international civilian markets.  --  In Johnstown, PA, Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace is opening its first manufacturing plant in the U.S. to build remote-controlled guns that can be mounted on top of vehicles.  --  Thanks to Troy Storfjell for sending his translation of the Klassekampen article.  --  Storfjell comments:  "What this whole thing shows, in addition to the way that the United States is on the road to becoming a Third World labor market for European capital, is that capital is not nation-specific.  Simply because it can't do something in Norway doesn't mean that the Kongsberg company won't do that very thing in countries with weaker labor protection, like the U.S." ...

The competition over energy supplies that underlies the crisis in Georgia was visible in a Financial Times piece Thursday.  --  Following the drastic reduction of oil exports from Azerbaijan via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean due to an explosion in Turkey last week, "Russia invited Azerbaijan on Wednesday to increase its oil exports through a pipeline from Baku to Novorrosiysk on the Russian Black Sea.  Exports of Azerbaijani oil through the pipeline to Russia have slowed to a trickle since the Baku-Tbilisi-Cehyan pipeline began working in 2005."[1]  --  Isabel Gorst reported that Azerbaijan, which borders Georgia to the east, resumed exports of natural gas exports "through a pipeline across Georgia to Turkey on Thursday. . . . Russia is also pressing Azerbaijan to export gas through Russian pipelines, diverting supplies away from the route across the Caucasus." ...

With Russian forces still active inside Georgia despite a ceasefire agreement, the geopolitical crisis in the West Virginia-sized country seemed to be entering a new and dangerous phase on Thursday as two U.S. military aircraft arrived with cargo and Georgia's president displayed renewed obstreporousness.  --  "The deputy chief of Russia’s armed forces, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, called on the U.S. to disclose what was inside the cargoes Washington is shipping as humanitarian aid," the Financial Times reported.[1]  --  "'Let's ask the American side so that you are convinced of whether the cargo is humanitarian or not,' he said.  'Why don’t they lift the curtain for us about what is being supplied? Russia is very concerned about this.'"  --  Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said that "the U.S. must choose between supporting its 'special project' in Georgia and forging a 'real partnership' with Moscow," Andrew Ward, Stanley Pignal, and Catherine Belton said.  --  Washington, meanwhile, "issued a veiled threat to expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized nations and block its accession to the World Trade Organization, warning that its actions in Georgia were “inconsistent with the principles” of such institutions."  --  AP reported that Russian Foreign Minister said Thursday that "One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity."[2]  --  Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said this was "bluster" and that "We will ignore it."  --  Christopher Torchia also reported that "in the key city of Gori . . . a checkpoint confrontation ended in the confused flight of Georgian forces," while "[a] Russian general in Gori had said Wednesday it would take at least two days to leave the city."  --  In Washington, "Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright said Russian forces appeared to be forming up in Georgia in preparation for withdrawal."  --  "Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he sees no need to invoke U.S. military force in the war between Russia and Georgia.  He warned, however, that U.S.-Russian relations could suffer for 'years to come' if Moscow doesn't retreat." ...

The Financial Times said Wednesday afternoon that journalists had confirmed that Russian armored vehicles and tanks "moved into the Georgian town of Gori and the surrounding area on Wednesday," even as Moscow denied the reports.[1]  --  "Czech TV journalists in Gori . . . saw smoke rise up from a Georgian army base in the town, which suggested that it had been destroyed by Russian troops although it was not clear whether the force would stay or leave."  --  Recriminations continued on all sides.  --  Abkhazia's leader, Sergei Bagapsh, declared Wednesday that the operation to retake the Kodori Gorge from Georgian troops was "completed and the military has restored the Abkhazian boundary in the area. This is a great victory for the Abkhazian people."  --  The Washington Post reported Wednesday morning that in response to "apparent violation of the cease-fire agreement" U.S. President George W. Bush, "[f]lanked by [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates," warned Russia to respect Georgia's "sovereignty and territorial integrity" but "again offered little indication of a concrete threat to Russia if it does not stand down and remove troops from Georgia."[2]  --  Bush's statement, which said the U.S. is "concerned" not only about reports from Gori but also about reports that "Russian forces have entered and taken positions in the port city of Poti, that Russian armored vehicles are blocking access to that port, and that Russia is blowing up Georgian vessels," is reproduced below from the White House web site.[3]  --  Bush said he was sending Rice to visit France to confer with French President Sarkozy and then travel on to Tbilisi "where she will personally convey America's unwavering support for Georgia's democratic government," and that he had "also directed Secretary of Defense Bob Gates to begin a humanitarian mission to the people of Georgia," a mission he characterized as "vigorous and ongoing" that would involve a U.S. C-17 aircraft already en route as well as other U.S. military aircraft and naval forces....

According to Stratfor, the reports we discussed yesterday of three U.S. strike forces en route to the Persian Gulf are not to be believed, despite their wide currency.  --  "There is not yet credible reason for concern based on the information available about the disposition of the U.S. Fleet," the private intelligence company said late Tuesday, publishing a map that according to which "the U.S. carrier fleet was in one of its most relaxed postures."[1]  --  "However, should we see the Reagan transit the Strait of Malacca and another carrier transit the Strait of Gibraltar, we will certainly have more to say at that point." ...

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili agreed late Tuesday night to the peace plan on whose terms French President Nicolas Sarkozy had secured agreement from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier in the day, the Financial Times of London reported Wednesday morning.[1]  --  The agreement stipulates a cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Russian and Georgian troops to pre-conflict positions, but "the two sides remained split over the future status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist enclave, and on the introduction of international peacekeepers," Catherine Belton, Roman Olearchyk, and Harvey Morris reported.  --  "The peace outline made no reference to the status of the enclaves and sidestepped a decision on an international force, saying only that Russian peacekeeping troops would remain until an international 'mechanism' had been found."  --  Meanwhile, "In its first concrete action of protest, the U.S. on Tuesday cancelled a Pacific Ocean naval exercise set for next week involving Russia, Britain, and France."  --  AP devoted a piece to how the crisis is playing in the U.S. presidential campaign.[2]  --  "[John McCain] has been hitting the Kremlin hard . . . Obama, too, has been full-throated in condemning the Russian attack but has called for restraint on both sides."  --  Despite all the international criticism, Russian public opinion is predominantly supportive of Russia's use of force, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.[3]  --  Despite the peace agreement, "huge Russian military convoys [are] still snak[ing] toward the scarred capital, Tskhinvali," the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.[4]  --  Andrew Osborn and Marc Champion said that Russians are giving tours of Tskhinvali to persuade outsiders of Georgian crimes of aggression, but "[t]he tour provided little evidence to support Russian claims that over 1,000 civilians in South Ossetia perished from Georgian bombs and bullets.  Doctors at the main hospital in Tskhinvali said around 220 people were brought in for treatment, but they gave no clear answer to repeated questions about the death toll."  --  Meanwhile, evidence was abundant that Russia intends to fully exploit its victory:  "The traffic on South Ossetia's roads Tuesday suggested the Russian army isn't planning to leave anytime soon.  The sole two-lane road that snakes from Russia through plunging mountain passes was clogged with military hardware.  Heavy battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, supply trucks, and howitzers rumbled toward the capital.  Helicopter gunships flew overhead in the same direction."  --  In Georgia, disappointment with the West is widespread:  "Already, some Georgians have begun to question whether Mr. Saakashvili made a strategic blunder that has cost the country substantial pieces of its territory.  'We waited and waited for the U.S. and Europe to help, but it was just words, words,' said Lali Chavchanidze, her hands trembling.  'I haven't eaten in a week, just smoked,' she explained."  --  But Russia's president showed only contempt for Georgia:  "'Thugs differ from normal people in that once they scent blood, it's very hard to stop them,' the Kremlin leader said at a news conference, referring to Georgian authorities.  'Sometimes surgical methods have to be used.'" ...

Anatol Lieven wrote in Wednesday's Financial Times that there are two lessons to be learned from the recent war:  "The first is that Georgia will never now get South Ossetia and Abkhazia back.  The second is for the West:  it is not to make promises that it neither can, nor will, fulfil when push comes to shove."[1]  --  The West generally and the U.S. in particular "bear a considerable share of the responsibility for the Georgian assault on South Ossetia and deserve the humiliation they are now suffering," wrote the author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford UP, 2004).  --  "[T]he Bush administration armed, trained, and financed the Georgian military. . . . The Bush administration, backed by Congress, the Republican presidential candidate John McCain and most of the U.S. media, also adopted a highly uncritical attitude both to the undemocratic and the chauvinist aspects of the Saakashvili administration, and its growing resemblance to that of the crazed nationalist leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the early 1990s. . . . [T]he Bush administration even put heavy pressure on international monitoring groups not to condemn flagrant abuses by Saakashvili’s supporters during the last Georgian elections. . . . Finally, the U.S. pushed strongly for a NATO Membership Action Plan for Georgia at the last alliance summit and would have achieved this if France and Germany had not resisted."  --  "The latest conflict is humiliating for the U.S., but it may have saved us from a catastrophic future:  namely an offer of NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine provoking conflicts with Russia." ...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced "the decision to end the operation to force Georgian authorities into peace" on Tuesday, though the situation on the ground remained unclear.[1]  --  French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Medvedev in Moscow and then continued on to Tbilisi to meet with Georgia's president — Georgia rallied international support, as "NATO ambassadors meeting in Brussels blasted Moscow for 'an excessive, disproportionate use of force,' and renewed their support for Georgia to ultimately join the military alliance," and "the leaders of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states travelling to Tbilisi where they addressed a mass rally."  --  Bloomberg News reported that unnamed "senior U.S. officials" told a reporter that "NATO should affirm the potential of Georgia and Ukraine to become alliance members in the face of Russia's incursion into Georgian territory."[2]  --  As for the settlement under discussion to end the conflict, Russia's foreign minister said that "an absolutely binding condition" is "that the Georgian side is to pull back its forces not only from South Ossetia, but also from other areas of Georgia from which they can shell and bomb the region," Reuters said.[3]  --  An Al Jazeera correspondent said that on Tuesday Moscow became "a hotbed of diplomatic activity", with "traffic [coming] to a standstill [on Moscow's boulevards] as official cars screamed by at high speed."[4]  --  Neave Barker said the Russian media were propagandizing the public.  --  An early Wed. morning Moscow Times report said that the Russian and French presidents agreed on "a six-point legally binding document that Georgia will have to sign for an international peace plan to work."[5]  --  "'If the Georgian side will really be ready to sign this and withdraw troops to their initial positions [and] follow through on everything that is stated in these principles, then a path to the gradual normalization of the situation in South Ossetia will be open,' Medvedev said at a joint news conference after the talks [with French President Sarkozy]."  --  The Medvedev-Sarkozy talks, in which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also participated, went on longer than expected, Anatoly Medetsky and Anna Smolchenko reported.  --  "When asked why the talks went so long, a senior Russian diplomat who participated in the meeting said only that the leaders had agreed on everything long before they emerged to speak with reporters and had in the remaining time 'told jokes about women.'  The diplomat did not smile as he spoke, and it was unclear whether he was joking."  --  "Sarkozy headed for Tbilisi where he was prepared to spend the night talking to Saakashvili.  'The night is young,' he said."  --  But Russia is refusing direct talks with Georgian President Saakashvili.  --  "'Saakashvili can no longer be our partner, and it would be better if he stepped down,' Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday." ...

On Tuesday, Secrecy News called attention to a "new report from the Senate Judiciary Committee examines the use of the state secrets privilege by the executive branch and describes the intent of new legislation to strengthen judicial review of its use in civil litigation."[1]  --  The state secrets privilege is a legal ploy devised by the U.S. national security state in the 1950s enabling it to override legal proceedings that are not in its interest; it is not dissimilar in effect to the political committees that sit alongside Chinese courts and allow the totalitarian Chinese government to annul any verdict or sentence that it regards as politically noxious or inconvenient.  --  In recent years the privilege has been invoked more and more frequently, including, as, in the Sibel Edmonds case, the subject of a documentary entitled "Kill the Messenger" (original title: 'Une Femme à abattre') recently shown by UFPPC.  --  The beginning of the Judiciary Committee's report is reproduced below.[2]  --  The report notes that "the state secrets privilege has never been codified in statute."  --  A 2005 study found that "In the twenty-three years between the decision in Reynolds and the election of Jimmy Carter, in 1976, there were four reported cases in which the Government invoked the privilege. Between 1977 and 2001, there were a total of fifty-one reported cases in which courts ruled on invocation of the privilege."  --  The Judiciary Committe report notes that "some Federal courts have viewed assertions of the privilege as a virtual 'automatic win' for the Government.  Courts have refused to review key pieces of allegedly privileged evidence, given unwarranted deference to the executive branch on the danger of disclosure, upheld claims of state secrets even when the purported secrets were publicly available, and dismissed lawsuits at the pleadings stage, without considering any evidence at all." ...

On Monday, Iran's Press TV called attention to a report on an Israeli web site asserting that the U.S. is sending a flotilla of warships toward the Persian Gulf in a movement that may be linked to Georgia's decision to stage an attack in South Ossetia.[1]  --  The report, which appeared on the web site Debka, which has links to Israeli military and intelligence circles but which is also used at times to circulate disinformation, is posted below.[2]  --  It asserts not that "three more warships" are en route, as the Press TV account has it, but that three "strike forces" involving "more than 40 carriers, warships and submarines, some of the last nuclear-armed, opposite the Islamic Republic, a concentration last seen just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003," will arrive in the Persian Gulf region this week.  --  Debka commented:  "While a massive deployment of this nature calls for long planning, its occurrence at this time cannot be divorced from the flare-up of the Caucasian war between Russia and Georgia.  While Russia has strengthened its stake in Caspian oil resources by its overwhelming military intervention against Georgia, the Americans are investing might in defending the primary Persian Gulf oil sources of the West and the Far East."  --  For recent official Navy accounts of the movements of the ships named, see here, here, and here.  --  Claude Salhani, the editor of Middle East Times, cited "informed sources" (based on the information, these seem to be Debka's sources) and indicated that he found the reports credible.  --  In response to this news, "Kuwait has activated its Emergency War Plan," Press TV reported Tuesday, citing a Middle East Times by the same author (a well-respected journalist) as its source.[3]  --  Middle East Times said that "Telephone calls to the Pentagon were not returned by publication time."[4]  --  Al Jazeera has also called attention to the reports of large-scale U.S. naval movements....

Although the war that has now extended beyond the disputed province of South Ossetia into Georgia proper is only entering its fifth day, an extensive account of the war the online encyclopedia is still calling the "2008 South Ossetia War" is already well developed.  --  Contributions to the "Discussion" pages are helpful in sorting out the many conflicting reports, the basis of many of which seems to be anti-Russian propaganda.  --  In principle the discussion page only concerns the Wikipedia article and not the war itself, but in fact it often contains both dispassionate analysis and firsthand experiences.  --  For example, last night at 20:51 UTC Mon. (1:51 p.m. PDT, 1:00 a.m. Tues. in Tbilisi) Narking wrote from the Georgian capital:  "So far it's calm here.  Even though it seems like there are fewer and fewer lights in town.  Just some minutes ago the TV tower went totally dark.  TV works still though.  The mobile net doesn't work since during the day."  --  At 05:13 UTC Tues. (10:13 p.m. Aug. 11 PDT, 9:13 a.m. in Tbilisi), Dysmorodrepanis wrote:  "Every on-the-ground source I have seen (Reuters, Al J, 'anonmyous US official' — can you say 'military advisory coordinator' ;-) ) says that until the last night, no significant Russian forces had advanced significantly beyond the border, not to Gori, and certainly not to Mshketa.  Seems they have taken the first large village/military base/police station (whatever's closest) on every trunk road leaving the areas of dispute, and that's that.  Of course, new day, new game . . . but it might really be over.  --  It might get messy in Tbilisi though; as you can see some in the US believe that the whole governmental/military apparatus of Georgia has its back broken.  Every report I have seen from N 'mainland' Georgia speaks of a wholesale rout of Georgian forces, no C3I beyond platoon level if even that much (the Al J correspondent was pretty blunt about it being like 'every tank crew on its own').  Stay tight, keep up the good work and CYA. Peace."  --  The first four paragraphs of the Wikipedia article as it stood on Aug. 12, 2008, at 08:08 UTC are posted below.[1] ...