blitzkrieg in South Ossetia

The fighting between Russia and its small, former Soviet neighbour broke out last Thursday when Georgia sent forces to retake South Ossetia, a pro-Russian province that threw off Georgian rule in the 1990s.
Moscow responded with a counter-attack by its vastly bigger forces that drove Georgian troops out of the devastated South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali on Sunday.

U.S. president George W Bush called Russia's actions "unacceptable in the 21st century." He urged Moscow to withdraw its forces from Georgia and accept a European peace plan. Similary, senator John McCain declared, as Bush did several hours later, that "Russian actions, in clear violation of international law, have no place in 21st-century Europe." United States have all rights reserved for that kind of action (Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran...)

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the presumptive Democratic nominee, said that "no matter how this conflict started, Russia has escalated it well beyond the dispute over South Ossetia and invaded another country. . . . There is no possible justification for these attacks."
Obama called for Russia to accept the French-authored peace plan and for "the United States, Europe and all other concerned countries to stand united in condemning this aggression." While Russia should return to its pre-conflict military posture, he said, "we cannot tolerate the unacceptable status quo that led to this escalation." He supported the deployment of a "genuine international peacekeeping force" to replace previously stationed Russian peacekeepers.

While the U.S. administration yesterday recalled the days of Soviet empire, the Russians suggested that invaders and occupiers of Iraq lacked the moral authority to offer criticism. In remarks broadcast on state television, Putin, now Russia's premier, decried Western "cynicism" for defending what he said was Georgian aggression against separatist enclaves in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "They, of course, had to hang Saddam Hussein for destroying several Shiite villages," he said of the United States. Putin said he was dismayed that the United States had used its military planes to transport Georgian 2,000-strong troop contingent home from Iraq. "The Cold War has long ended but the mentality of the cold war has stayed firmly in the minds of several U.S. diplomats. It is a real shame."

"The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia's territorial integrity." said the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev for the Washington Post. "What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity. ", "The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia. ", "By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its "national interest," the United States made a serious blunder."

link B92 (srb)

washingtonpost (eng)

reuters (eng)

BBC (srb)

photos

Kosovo syndrome: WAR FOR SOUTH OSSETIA

Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, has said that most of the breakaway province of South Ossetia has been "liberated" in an overnight offensive. Georgian tanks launched an attack on Friday on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Simultaneously, Georgian fighter jets attacked separatist positions. Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, promised on Friday to defend Russian citizens in South Ossetia.
"We cannot allow the deaths of our countrymen to go unpunished. The guilty parties will receive the punishment they deserve," he said in televised remarks. Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, spoke of retaliation and pledged to protect Russian citizens. Russia is the main backer of Georgian separatists in the two enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and has a "peacekeeping force" stationed in the region. Russia's three main news agencies said a Russian military convoy had entered South Ossetia on Friday, quoting witnesses. Saakashvili said: "A full-scale aggression has been launched against Georgia [by Russia]. Georgia will not yield its territory or renounce its freedom," he said. South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia in the 1990s but Georgia has officially started a military offensive to win back the breakaway regions. Russian warplanes are also bombing targets in Georgia, according to reports from Tbilisi. The UN Security Council has still not agreed on how to react. Washington -- which sees the country as a vital regional bridgehead and as an important transit country for gas and oil -- would like to see the country join NATO and has provided political and economic support. Washington provided Georgia with development assistance and is an important investor in Georgia.

If the situation deteriorates further, Georgia will soon face a war on two fronts. Abkhazia has signed a solidarity pact with South Ossetia. Troops from Abkhazia started moving toward the Georgian border on Friday morning. Help for both provinces is on the way from volunteers streaming into the region from the northern Caucasus.

WATER ON MARS

"We found what we're looking for"

Scientists said today they have "found proof" of water ice on Mars away from the polar ice caps, a discovery made by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.
The finding is a crucial first step toward learning whether the ground on Mars is hospitable, because all life as we know it requires water. Now scientists can get on with the business of studying the chemistry of Mars dirt in more detail.

When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before, scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material had disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to the air.

Phoenix's robotic arm first revealed the crumbs about 5 cm deep in the trench called "Dodo-Goldilocks" on June 15. By June 19, they had vanished. If the crumbs had been salt, they wouldn't have disappeared, scientists said, and if the ice had been made of carbon dioxide, they wouldn't have vaporized.
"What this tells us is we found what we're looking for," said Mark Lemmon, a Phoenix co-investigator from Texas A&M University. "This tells us that we've got water ice within reach of the [robotic] arms, which means that we can continue the investigation."

Finding ice on Mars isn't completely shocking, since observations from past satellites sent to orbit the planet, such as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, have indicated that ice is likely to lie beneath the planet's surface. Still, if confirmed, this would be the first direct finding of that ice by a probe on the ground. The next questions to answer are what chemicals, minerals and organic compounds might be mixed in with the water. "The real excitement will come when they start to study the ice in detail and attempt to learn how it formed and how old it is."

Additional reporting for this article was contributed by Jeremy Hsu, SPACE.com staff writer.