Could the unfolding conflict be just what the McCain candidacy needs: a foreign policy crisis that would allow him to demonstrate a new rationale for why Americans should choose experience over change in a dangerous world?

Robert Scheer, TruthDig.com

Sen. John McCain and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. AP photo, Mary Altaffer / Irakli Gedeniedze, pool

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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Crisis in Georgia Beginning to Turn Into a Big Political Liability for McCain, Robert Creamer, Huffington Post

What the Deep South and the former USSR have in common.

Noreen Malone, Slate.com

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Painting by Gustave Moreau depicting Saint George slaying the dragon.

The Web site of the president of Georgia was temporarily moved to servers based in Atlanta, Georgia, over the weekend (Aug 16-17), after what appeared to be an attack by Russian hackers. The move was overseen by a Georgian-born executive at a technology company based in Georgia (the state), who happened to be on vacation in Georgia (the country) when the fighting started. Why does a country that was formerly part of the USSR have the same name as a state in the American Deep South?

Both got their present-day monikers from the British. The name of the country comes from the Russian word Gruzia, which was in turn derived from the Persian and Turkish versions of the name George, Gorj and Gurju. It's not clear when the Brits started using the word Georgia in place of Gruzia, but scholars believe the switch happened sometime in the late Middle Ages.

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Al Qaeda’s success in forging close ties to Pakistani militant groups has given it an increasingly secure haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan, the American government’s senior terrorism analyst said Tuesday.

Al Qaeda is more capable of attacking inside the United States than it was last year, and its cadre of senior leaders has recruited and trained “dozens” of militants capable of blending into Western society to carry out attacks, the analyst said.

The remarks Tuesday (August 12) by the intelligence analyst, Ted Gistaro, were the most comprehensive assessment of the Qaeda threat by an American official since the National Intelligence Estimate issued last summer, which concluded that Al Qaeda had largely rebuilt its haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

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It is absurd to suggest that Putin or his presidential puppet Medvedev have any leg to stand on.

Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, Huffington Post

Russia's brazen blitzkrieg-syle military attacks on the independent and democratic state of Georgia warrant worldwide condemnation, and much more. In the past few days, Moscow has conveniently used Georgia's internal dispute with the unrecognized breakaway territory of South Ossetia (which desires to split away from George and join the Russian Federation) to use disproportionate Russian military force to settle once and for all its political score with its former Soviet satellite. Russia's goal: to shatter Georgia's territorial integrity by supporting the rebellious and separatist Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and the other breakaway territory of Abkhazia and orchestrate a Soviet-style putsch against Georgia's pro-western government. Meanwhile in New York, Russia is doing everything possible to prevent the UN Security Council from passing any reasonable resolution urging restraint and a cease fire in order to buy it as much time as possible to complete its mission against Georgia's pro-western leadership.

What lies behind Russia's use of the age old canard that it is merely making aggressive war to preserve the peace? Nothing less than Vladamir Putin's ruthless determination to overthrow the democratically elected (and U.S. - educated) president of Georgia - Mikhail Saakashvili, and to prevent Georgia from becoming a member of NATO. Indeed, Moscow wasted no time in making it clear that it will settle for nothing less than the removal of Saakashvili and part of its demands to agree to a cessation of hostilities. Not since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has Russia sought to overthrow a foreign government by military force.