McCain's gain from Georgia conflict
RANDY Scheunemann, Senator John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, is a friend of Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili and was for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government, ending his official lobbying connection only last March, months after he started to work for McCain.
He also worked on McCain's 2000 presidential campaign after which he headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the US invasion of Iraq.
In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia's membership of NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met Saakashvili and backed his hard-line views towards Russia.
Now, at a time when McCain's Presidential election campaign is floundering, Saakashvili launches an attack on South Ossetia, killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians and drawing the inevitable Russian military response.
McCain has now re-cast his campaign around "Russian Aggression" and the need to return to Cold War vigilance and values, drawing attention to Obama's lack of experience and grounding in this area.
It is not necessary to be a conspiracy theorist to ask: "Cui Bono from the invasion of South Ossetia and the many who died?"
AS WITH all people who despise war, I am naturally fearful of what appears to be Russia's expansionist plans.
Undoubtedly, the Western media have sided with the Georgian/American position and condemn Russia for the invasion.
They have been quick to forget Georgia were the aggressors, claiming that Georgia was defending itself from the South Ossetian rebels.
These "rebels" would appear to have been the unarmed civilians and 30 Russian peacekeepers who were killed in Tskhinvali on August 8.
Bottom line, this conflict is an American war by proxy, using a complicit Georgian regime to strike at Russia for the purposes of control of the oil reserves in the region.
- Kinnegad, Co Westmeath.
