Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili took to American television to win the hearts and minds of the public; if not win them, then at least engage them.
Saakashvili said that Russia is trying to fight a war with the West by proxy.
Some quotes:
"This is freedom in general at stake. This is not about some far away remote country about which we know little."
"Everything the Americans had achieved from the Cold War is being undermined and destroyed right now."
"America is losing the whole region."
"I know America is overstretched. I know there are many other things. But realise what we are heading toward now. Russians have been very brutal, very deliberate, and they been showing everybody, 'We don't give a damn.'"
Here is an interesting bit of information:
"You know, the bombs they've been throwing on our people killing hundreds of civilians for the last few days -- I'm afraid to say thousands, but hundreds, at least. I hope it will not be thousands -- You know, they had an inscription on them -- 'This is for America.' 'This is for NATO.' 'This is for Bush.' I told President Bush about it today, by the way."
How does Saakashvili know that the bombs were inscribed with anti-American and anti-Western messages?
Did he have access to the bombs before they were dropped? Who told him about these inscriptions?
I don't really trust Saakashvili on this.
I definitely don't trust Putin.
4 comments:
Hi Mary,
I'm not an apologist for Russia as you claimed in another post's comment section, I'm just trying to find the truth.
Most of the monopoly media and The White House make it seem like Russia "invaded" Georgia with no provocation.
If you dig deeper into the articles, you usually find something in the last few paragraphs saying Georgia launched an attack to try to retake ethnio Russian areas that have been independent and protected by Russia since 1991.
Here is an example from Fox News:
"Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, launched a surprise military offensive to retake South Ossetia and reportedly killed hundreds of people, triggering a ferocious counterattack from Russia that threatened to plunge the region into full-scale war."
Saakashvili started the conflict during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with the hope that if Russia counter-attacked, the U.S. would step in to help. Now he and his American surrogates (including the top forign policy advisor in the McCain campaign) are trying to get the United States involved.
I don't want people like Saakasvili to think they can take military action and just assume that the United States will get involved to support them.
I also don't want the American public to make decisions about a military conflict based on headlines that don't tell the entire story.
Obviously, if Saakashvili assumed the U.S. would get involved militarily, he was wrong.
The U.S. response to conflict has been measured.
Obviously, the entire story IS out there if the American public is smart enough to watch FOX News.
"The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a thorough study of public knowledge and attitudes about current events and the war on terrorism. Researchers found that the public’s mistaken impressions of three facets of U.S. foreign policy — discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq — helped fuel support for the war.
While the PIPA study concluded that most Americans (over 60%) held at least one of these mistaken impressions, the researchers also concluded that Americans’ opinions were shaped in large part by which news outlet they relied upon to receive their information.
As the researchers explained in their report, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.”
If Fox News is such a poor source, then why did you cite FOX in your previous comment?
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