Some of my worst fears are confirmed through multiple sources...Russia is indeed rounding up civilians and trucking them away. Are they being hauled away for mass murder like the Germans did in the Second World War? Or, like the Islamofascists...are they going to murder them, and present them as victims slain by the other side? Or, are they merely seizing hostages?
The Georgians have set up a hotline for people seeking information, or those with information from the affected areas.
Here is an excerpt of a briefing given by President Saakashvili or Georgia today:
PRESIDENT: I’d like to briefly describe the situation. Russian tanks have advanced since morning, and moved into the town Gori. They have destroyed buildings, blown up and rampaged through houses. There has been looting by Russian troops, shooting at some people, theft of furniture, computers, everything valuable.
They are now on the main road leading from West to East, blocking the capital’s bloodline, 50km from Tbilisi. They have cut Georgia in half, West and East. The capital is now in some sort of economic blockade.
Regarding the situation in Abkhazia, South Ossetia: two things. First, the Russians have rampaged through Georgian-populated areas of South Ossetia, representing roughly half of what was South Ossetia. They have ethnically cleansed the population. They have separated men from women and set up internment camps for men in the area of Kouta. There are reports of summary executions. There is also looting in several villages.
In Upper Abkhazia, they have expelled practically the entire ethnic Georgian population. The town of Tskhinvali, at the moment when we left, was heavily bombarded. It was totally levelled. They turned it into a sort of second Grozny. We demanded immediate access for the international community, so that they could verify who was responsible. All indications are that the Russians deliberately levelled the city - they destroyed the place. We also have economic sabotage, a humanitarian crisis, and predatory incursions.
Transcript available here.
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President George W. Bush has finally started to show some backbone, and is ordering supplies to be sent to the Georgians. I only hope their is plenty of weapons and ammo included in the airlifts to be delivered by our military.
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