I do believe Georgia started the mess, but Russia has been flexing it's global expansion senerio for a bit now (pot calling the kettle black). Georgia is not yet a member of NATO, but did supply the 3rd largest contigent in Iraq (but only a couple thousand). Some of the disputed area is where a pipeline is that allows 1 million barrels a day to be exported to the west.

Bob

>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4500362.ece
>
>As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”
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>A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.
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>This whole thing is confusing. Some one who knows please correct me. Didn't this start because Georgia decided to retake the area that had won independence? Didn't Georgia start this mess and then Russia stepped in to help Ossetia (probably political)?