You could almost wonder what the prize here is. Clearly the BTC is undamaged and is likely to continue that way. And what do the US corporations and banks really care about whether Georgia is unified or not? However this appears to have been the catalyst that brought about the signing of the missile shield agreement with Poland. In a short time, with missiles in place, the US will have "nuclear primacy", and Russia will have no choice but to follow US corporate and banking dictates delivered by whichever president has been installed in the oval office to cater to their needs.

Lexington:

You are correct in your astute analysis. However Gori did not fair as badly as MSM would have you believe:

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29033 (Link with video)

Gori was the staging grounds for the attack on South Ossetia therefore it recieved an inordinate amount of attention in the ensuing counter-attack.

Dan

Lexington,

another disturbing aspect is the pre-text under which the USA began militarizing Georgia:

There is, however, one small kernel of truth in what is otherwise a rather self-serving argument: In 2002, when the U.S. began providing military assistance and training to Georgia, both the Washington and Tblisi claimed there was evidence of Al Qaeda hiding out in Georgia's Pankisi region (similarly, there were articles, like this one in Time, titled "Inside Al-Qaeda's Georgia Refuge"). Those early claims appear to have evaporated, however. In 2006, the Dallas Morning News ran an article repeating what many have come to believe in the years since: there never really was credible evidence of Al Qaeda in Georgia. The article quote a Tbilisi-based analyst saying: "I personally would not link al-Qaeda with Pankisi in any way whatsoever."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/russia-tallies.html

Dan