{"id":194673,"date":"2008-08-27T18:52:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-27T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/27\/georgia-dueling-presidents\/"},"modified":"2008-08-27T18:52:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-27T23:52:00","slug":"georgia-dueling-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/27\/georgia-dueling-presidents\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgia: Dueling Presidents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kind of like &#8220;Dueling Banjos&#8221;, only it&#8217;s both Medvedev and Saakashvili, both writing an OP\/ED for the Financial Times.<\/p>\n<p>I think that they are both very sparing with the truth, but one sounds like a mealy mouthed politician, and the other sounds like a complete tie chewing nutjob.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/9c7ad792-7395-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html\">Medvedev&#8217;s bullet points<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Ossetians and the Abkhazians wanted independence.<\/li>\n<li>Upon independence, Georgia stripped Abkhazia and South Ossetia of Autonomy, and engaged in brutal military operations against ethnic minorities.<\/li>\n<li>That the West encouraged Saakasvili to make broad claims against the region.<\/li>\n<li>That the recognition of an independent Kosovo encouraged secessionist movements in Georgia.<\/li>\n<li>Following the recent conflict, he felt compelled to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia&#8217;s independence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/fa0035f0-7459-11dd-bc91-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1\">Saakashvili&#8217;s bullet points<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Russia intends to redraw the map of all of Europe.<\/li>\n<li>Russia was issuing passports to Abkhazians and South Ossetians to get a claim on these regions.<\/li>\n<li>That the Russians were actively ethnically cleansing Georgians using, &#8220;using arson, rape and execution.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>That the Russians were already invading when the Georgians attacked South Ossetia.<\/li>\n<li>That the Russians have designs on Ukraine, Muldova.<\/li>\n<li>That Moscow is determined to wipe out democratically elected governments in its &#8220;near abroad&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are both self serving statements from men, they are both less than completely frank.<\/p>\n<p>One of them, however, sounds nuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kind of like &#8220;Dueling Banjos&#8221;, only it&#8217;s both Medvedev and Saakashvili, both writing an OP\/ED for the Financial Times. I think that they are both very sparing with the truth, but one sounds like a mealy mouthed politician, and the other sounds like a complete tie chewing nutjob. Medvedev&#8217;s bullet points: The Ossetians and the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[964,1040,1043,1033,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-relations","category-former-soviet-union","category-nato","category-russia","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}