Justus For All

Some of the propaganda that Totten has published rings true with the news as it has come down here through the MSM.

Some of the statements sound far more like political whitewash being applied in large and liberal quantities on behalf of the Tblisi government.

Predating Totten by some days WaPo among many said this -

With a huge air, land and sea campaign, Russian forces routed the Georgians in the following days and advanced far into Georgian territory, overrunning major cities and military bases. An ensuing uproar in the West, accusing Russia of using excessive force, has clouded details of how the war began.

Interviews with Georgian leaders, Russian officials, Western diplomats and Bush administration officials, together with briefings by the Russian military in Moscow, show that a series of escalating military moves by each side convinced the other that war was imminent.

The Georgian leadership took steps, sometimes against the advice of its allies, sometimes without telling them, that accelerated the advance to a war in which Georgia could never prevail, according to a U.S. account. But the key question — who finally triggered full conflict? — remains in dispute. The Georgians said they staged their offensive only after Russian troops began streaming into South Ossetia and the Russians saying they advanced only after the Georgians began attacking South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali.

The Kremlin, long angry over Georgia’s close ties with the United States and Western Europe, may have been itching for a fight, as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has long insisted. If so, Saakashvili facilitated the lopsided matchup. Some Western officials say that although he faced clear provocations, he was reckless. “If it was a trap, and there’s good reason to think it was, he walked right into it,” one Western diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

In Georgia, popular anger against Russia remains high, and Saakashvili has yet to be called to account for the decision to assault Tskhinvali, a small city in which thousands of civilians were forced into their cellars by shelling.

Russian officials say 2,000 people died in Tskhinvali. That figure has been described as inflated by human rights groups. But there unquestionably was a large toll of civilian deaths and injuries, which has outraged Russia and shocked Georgia’s Western allies.

Totten might be happy to accept the word of a paid PR hack in the employ of the Georgian government.

I am not.

I think that the most significant “truth” is that the US has been relatively (in relation to the scale of the Russian action) moderate in its reaction. Even when in Tblisi, Madame Rice picked her words with some care - to give her hosts the feeling that the US supported them - while at the same time not giving the Russians cause to take great offence. In terms of the words said, the reaction of the Bush administration here was more restrained than it was to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

It is the same old story. You might recall my series on propaganda. The most powerful propaganda is not what is said.

It is the unsaid; the admission by silence; the denial by diversion of attention.