Vsaj tako poroča Times:

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” — a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace. . . .

The Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked.

“Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?”

Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Itak, da bodo ta mali tekstek vlačili okoli po medijih in z njim dokazovali, kako nevaren je Putin, kako nevarna je Rusija, kako se za Boga moramo nasloniti na ZDA itd… Nič novega. Kaj naj človek stori, kot da v branje ponudi alternativne poglede, predvsem na kratko vojno med Rusijo in Gruzijo, ki so jo mnogi hoteli predstaviti kot agresijo nevarne azijske pošasti na svetilnik demokracije in svobode na Kavkazu.

The Russia-Georgia War Revisited byJason Bush

But not everyone has forgotten about the war in Georgia. In the months since the conflict, international monitors, journalists and human rights activists have been quietly piecing together what really happened last August. And their conclusions offer a strikingly different interpretation of events from the one that was popular with most western commentators at the time.

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Mary Dejevsky: Why did the West ignore the truth about the war in Georgia?

Thank goodness, they might be thinking at the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, for the financial crisis. Were it not for the ever-blacker news about the Western world’s economy, another scandal would be vying for the headlines – and one where the blame would be easier to apportion. It concerns our two countries’ relations with Russia and the truth about this summer’s Georgia-Russia war.

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Reckless Georgia

Which is why Obama should take note of emerging accounts about the beginning of the war from seasoned monitors sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Those monitors, who were on the ground in the breakaway region of South Ossetia when hostilities commenced the night of Aug. 7, reported seeing Georgian artillery and rocket launchers assembling just outside South Ossetia at 3 p.m. that day, well before any Russian convoy had crossed into the enclave.

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