Interesting tidbit in the Washington Post

I found this story in the Washington Post quite interesting; especially in light of rumors that Bush Administration officials were in Georgia immediately prior to the conflict.

The Bush Administration has proven time again that it will start any conflict - any war, no matter how lengthy and bloody - that will benefit their political and financial interests.

After two stolen elections, 9/11, the war in Iraq (and the lies that led to it,) the lack of interest in hunting the very useful and scary bogyman Osama Bin Laden, the tapping of American phones, the trashing of the environment in the face of rapidly advancing climate change, the Valery Plame scandal, a year's worth of 'lost and unrecoverable' Bush administration emails (blatant violation of The Hatch Act,) the continual attacks on our Constitutional rights as Americans - and considering the proximity of the election - nothing would surprise me.

Nothing should surprise you either.

From The Washington Post, AP wire:

MOSCOW, Aug. 29 -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he had reason to think U.S. personnel were in the combat zone during the recent war in Georgia, adding that if confirmed, their presence suggested "someone in the United States" provoked the conflict to help one of the candidates in the American presidential race.

I'm certainly no fan of Vladimir Putin. But that doesn't mean he's crazy either. He's have to be crazy to make such a claim without some basis, some evidence to back up his assertion. And unlike our allies; so afraid of a nasty backlash from the Bush Administration that they are willing to keep our dirty little war secrets out of sight for us... Putin has no reason to keep his mouth shut.

That, and its hard to ignore the lurking presence of Randy Scheunemann; currently John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser... formerly a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government (he ended his official lobbying duties in March.)

Something smells in Georgia.

You see, Scheunemann is known to be one of the chief architects of the Iraq Invasion.

According to Robert Scheer:

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain’s presidential campaign.

Why learn new tricks when the old ones keep working over, and over, and over again? Fear wins elections. Or it used to. Whether it will in 2008 - that is up to us, and unfortunately, to those who believe everything the corporate media tells them.

The GOP is once again casting their web of lies and uncertainty over the American people. McCain just needs to sow the seeds of fear and stir the misguided blood of the Fox TV-watching crowd to keep the poll numbers close.

If Obama doesn't win by a landslide, a close election will 'magically' go to McCain. Been there, done that. The ballot may be stronger than the bullet (as Lincoln once said;) but electronic ballots are also invisible, untrackable, and inherently hackable.

Thus lose the Democrats, as though replaying a scene from 'Groundhog Day.' While Pelosi was keeping a legally sound and winnable impeachment off of her shaky table (undoubtedly to placate the lobbyists,) the NeoGOP has proven time and again that they will put anything and everything on their table -- anything that will help them steal another win in November.

We've had two elections stolen from us. A third would be catastrophic, and the final end to any pretense of democracy in this country.