Some of these pictures may bother some people.

From Danger Room Comes a link to a speech that Bush gave today promising aid to Georgia with commentary.

From SPIEGEL comes a report from the Georgian city of Gori

From Michael A. Reynolds come a good overview of the history of Georgia. (H/T Abu Muqawama)

From McClatchy Newspapers…

In Chevy Chase, for example, where speeding tickets brought in about $8,000 monthly before cop cams, “We are routinely bringing in approximately a quarter-million dollars per month,” Geoffrey Biddle, Chevy Chase’s village manager, told his Board of Managers in February.

For a community of 2,000 with an annual budget of $4.6 million, that’s a bonanza. What’s more, because locals know enough to evade the cop cams, the village’s new revenue mostly comes from outsiders, rather like a commuter tax.

To much was made of the few Russian planes that Georgia manged to down. From McClatchy Newspapers…..

At first, news of Russia’s aerial attacks came in fragments. An airfield was hit, a radar station demolished. But by Monday, as bombs fell among the withdrawing Georgian forces, it was only too clear what the Russians had been up to.

The early strikes had made it impossible for Georgians, who in the war’s first day had shot down four Russian aircraft, to mount an effective response. Now Russian jets could dominate the skies.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nagovitsin, the deputy head of the Russian military’s general staff, put it bluntly: “I can report on Russian supremacy in the airspace. Georgian aircraft stopped flying.”

Outside Tskhinvali, Georgian soldiers huddled beneath trees and bridges, trying to stay out of the line of sight of passing Russian jets. In addition to military trucks, troops were being moved around in civilian buses and vans. In Gori, soldiers worked out of a university building.

They had to hide; there was no answer to the Su-25 fighter jets, TU-22 bombers and others streaking nearby, looking for prey.

If you read the full article, you will get a lot of direct quotes from Georgian soldiers.

What can we say? We have a weakness for anyone who delivers a good dose of French bashing.

From Edward Lucas’s blog….

Now that strategy is in ruins. As things stand, Georgia will be fighting not to regain South Ossetia or even to deter aggression, but to survive. It is hard to see any good outcome. Georgia has failed to win a quick victory: crucially, it failed to block the Roki tunnel under the Caucasus mountains, normally used as a smugglers’ highway, but now the route for Russian heavy weapons that Georgia cannot counter for long. Worse, the authorities in Abkhazia, Georgia’s other breakaway region, may mount an attack, either on its own or with Russian help.

It seems clear that Georgia has failed to block the tunnel for long even if they did strike at as the Belmont Club suggested. Apparently there are TV clips showing Russian troops pouring out of those tunnels, though I have not seen one to link to yet.

Edit: Belmont Club provides its own dark update.

It is hard to believe but the Belmont Club is suggesting that Georgia may be giving the Russians a really hard time. Make sure you read the comments.

If you listen to clip, you will here the Georgian President tell his side of the story. He claims he did not try to take the breakaway city. Rather, he says he was responding to the fact that Russia APC started crossing the border. I am inclined to believe him. If only because it would have been suicidal for Georgia to start this fight (as he himself admitted).