The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.
People overlook many things, and the single biggest thing thats been overlooked so far is this.
Had the Russians wanted to do so, Georgia would have been a Russian province by now. They could have completely and utterly wiped the tiny Georgian
military off the map - probably in less than 72 hours.
They didn't
They didn't go and effect "regime change". They didn't bomb the crap out of all the infrastructure and then award contracts to their biggest
companies to go and rebuild it.
What they did do was respond, in force, to the Georgians shelling a South Ossetian town immediately after they had declared a ceasefire to some local
hostilities, where Russian troops had been killed.
They may have responded disproportionately, but in comparison to other countries who do things like that, they didn't use white phosphorous on the
civilian population.
They went in and they gave the Georgian military and government a good hiding to reinforce the message that Russia looks after its own in the same
manner as the US claims to.
And then they
stopped
Now as for all the rhetoric about "kicking Russia's butt" - grow up, please. Your rhetoric is useless when you are dust, or lying in field slowly
dying from fallout poisoning, or starving to death and being killed by your own kind for scraps of food because your major cities, industrial and
agricultural centres are gone, and no one is coming to help you.
And when the first strikes have gone from land based launches, the second strikes from the subs will make damn sure that theres nothing at all useful
left. Its what they are there for, and its what they are designed to do.
This isn't a video game, or Jericho on the TV. Its the real world. And in the real world, people just die.
As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.