WAR IN GEORGIA... SHOULD WE START DIGGIN OUR SHELTERS?

[hippifried]

NATO is was cold war artifice which functioned reasonably well in the era of MAD. But today it may create more uncertainty than stability

It's always created more uncertainty than stability. "MAD" was just that & still is.

I grew up in the days of conelrad & "duck & cover". I don't want to go back. I don't want my grandchildren to have to deal with that crap. I don't even wish that BS on Niño.

As a babyboomer, I'm a member of the first generation of humans capable of their own total annihilation. I'm also in the first generation of Americans expected (just because I was born here) to continue my education past the elementary level. We take a lot for granted. I'm just sick & tired of jackasses trying to return the country to the bad old days of the past just because they have some bogus rosy picture of what it was. It's sad that we're constantly warned about repeating history by the people who are working tirelessly to make it repeat, & that so many people buy the bullshit.

[trish]

Never heard of conelrad before. Had to google it.

[BrendaQG]

@ hippie

I grew up in the age of "the day after". The age of Ronald Regan and the idea of acceptable nuclear casualties. The age of talk of 2nd and third strike weapons (Nukes that would survive after the first and second counter force attacks.) Basically an era where I could be almost certain I would die in nuclear warfare....preferably quickly and not from radiation.

Trust me on this end of the Cold war generations it's not much better. At least you had "Duck and Cover". All we had was kiss your ass goodbye.

[chefmike]

. I do not have the time to explain this game of chess, but the information is available if you seek it out.

LMAO...most here are already familiar with the batshit crazy sources where you obtain your secret "information." If you ever did post a legit source it would be just like the little boy who cried wolf. No one would listen.

[hippifried]

Never heard of conelrad before. Had to google it.

Well... I was going to make a snide remark about your age, but I forgot what I was going to say. Brenda,

At least you had "Duck and Cover". All we had was kiss your ass goodbye.

Us too. We knew. Even in the 3rd grade while we were crouched in the hall against the interior wall, the question was: Why bother if the bomb's going to vaporize the building anyway? I don't know how many people actually believed Reagan's bullshit that global thermonuclear war was winnable, but that's all it was. The strange thing about MAD is that it only works when some sense of sanity controls both sides. Reagan broke that.

[trish]

Well... I was going to make a snide remark about your age, but I forgot what I was going to say.

I've always been a fan of the B-grade sci-fi movies and spy films of the 50's, as well as a fan of the Twilight Zone. It's not difficult to see in these expressions the stress of living in a politically unstable world stocked with enough fusion bombs to vaporize the entire biosphere ten times over and poison it for several hundred thousand years to boot. I can't imagine what goes through a child's head when he's under his desk in anticipation of such horror. It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad world!

[Tomfurbs]

Russia and the US are never going to engage in Nuclear war.

Brenda I suggest you use that garden space you set aside for your air-raid shelter as a nice shrubbery, or maybe a pond.

[bartholomeus]

poland already signed the agreement to put missles there and we have one with turkey the u.s wants to work one with the Czech Republic....

http://therealnews.com/id/2061/August 16, 2008/US+missile+deal+enrages+Russia

[bartholomeus]

Russia is doing almost the same thing the U.S did with Yugoslavia, separating a sovereign nation and also similar to the kosovo situation were the U.S supported the separatist movement of the kosovo people from Serbia.

Now that Russia supports the separatist movement of the ossetian people Bush and McCain condemn them saying its immoral to invade a country in the 21st century(forgetting about the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan)..... they are trying to make a double standard, and because of them we as a nation lose the moral and ethical right to tell them not to do it. This coupled with the overstretch of the troops all over the world(korea border, iraq, afghanistan, somalia.....) made the U.S unable to respond to this.

They will never get in a direct shooting war with russia due to the nuclear arsenal so they rushed the signature of the missile treaties in the region, despite the threats that Putin has made since last year (even before) that it would provoke an arms race in the region.

[BrendaQG]

Russia and the US are never going to engage in Nuclear war.

Brenda I suggest you use that garden space you set aside for your air-raid shelter as a nice shrubbery, or maybe a pond.

Oh really. Look who has faith in the sanity of G. W. Bush all of the sudden. I don't blame you. I mean supposedly we have a ceasefire in Georgia and we can all breath easily. Or do we?

NATO agrees to censure Russia

Peter O’Neil, Europe Correspondent, Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, August 19, 2008

BRUSSELS -- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has agreed to formally condemn Russia for refusing to adhere to its ceasefire commitment aimed at ending its occupation of large chunks of neighbouring Georgia.

"What is a promise worth, made on paper... when the promise is not fulfilled?" NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer demanded at a news conference in the Belgian capital Tuesday.

The comments came even as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe announced earlier in the day that Russia had agreed to allow an increase in the number of unarmed military observers into Georgia to verify whether Moscow's ceasefire commitments are being honoured.

The OSCE, a 56-member alliance of countries in Europe, North America, and Central Asia, still needs Georgia's approval before it sends 20 foreign observers along the border area -- but not yet inside -- the disputed region of South Ossetia, said Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, the organization's chairman.

The decision coincides with conflicting reports about whether Russia has followed through on its promise to start moving troops out of the conflict zones, as promised in a France-brokered ceasefire deal struck last week.

"We need those observers there and we need them now, because there is so much disinformation about what's going on in the war zone," Mr. Stubb told reporters. Disinformation, he added, "can lead to disastrous things."

The pending agreement comes as foreign ministers gathered here for an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Canadian Foreign Minister David Emerson didn't speak to reporters as he entered NATO headquarters, but Canada's ambassador to Belgium was expected to brief journalists later in the day.

NATO members are split, according to reports, with the U.S. and the British eager to take a hard line against Moscow. Countries such as Germany and Italy are said to be more reluctant to provoke Russia, which has been enraged by what it sees as U.S. and European interference in countries along its border.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday she won't press her counterparts to accelerate Georgia's entry into NATO, an alliance that requires all members, including Canada, to come to the aid of any member under attack.

There are already nine OSCE military observers in Georgia, with a mandate to report on events in the breakaway, Russian-backed South Ossetia region.

But their access to conflict zones has been severely restricted since Georgia's Aug. 7 military assault against separatists in South Ossetia, which resulted in Russia's invasion the next day.

Stubb said Tuesday's agreement allows the number of observers to increase to 100. He said the initial 20 would be stationed along the unofficial border that separates South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia, which was penetrated by Russian troops and armour during the invasion.

He said he hopes Russia will allow the observers to go into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the other Russian-backed separatist region now controlled by Russian troops.

The pending agreement is necessary for negotiations to begin on a long-term resolution regarding the status of the two regions, the Finnish minister said.

But Mr. Stubb acknowledged he could only hope there will eventually be an international peacekeeping force in Georgia's disputed territories.

"I have to be realistic."

________________

My friends WWIII would not come as Hollywood and TV movies would have us believe. Just suddenly one day without warning the button is pushed. Tensions would rise slowly. Until in a matter of month's the unthinkable becomes imaginable and the improbable is done.

I'm still slowly building a stockpile of imperishable provisions. Though I have not yet dug up my garden... (I think if I really thought warfare was eminent I would pack up my immediate family drive way out to the country side and make a deal with a farmer. Let us dig our shelter on your land and in the aftermath we will work for you in exchange for food sort of a deal. Oh and being a MTF TS after that point would basically require physical castration... ouch! I think about this stuff too much. )