The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia's army assault in South Ossetia in August.
The revelation, based on recruitment documents and interviews with US military trainers obtained by the Financial Times, could add fuel to accusations by Vlad-imir Putin, Russian prime minister, last month that the US had "orchestrated" the war in the Georgian enclave.
The training was provided by senior US soldiers and two military contractors. There is no evidence that the contractors or the Pentagon, which hired them, knew that the commandos they were training were likely be used in the assault on South Ossetia.
The conservative Global Security organisation in their article Georgia - Oil & Gas Politics describes how vital the Georgia section of the Caucasus oil pipeline is to the world oil supply.
Roughly 150 miles of the pipeline corridor extending from Baku, Azerbaijan to Turkey will pass through Georgia. This corridor includes the $3.9 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which began linefill in May 2005 and opened 13 July 2006, and the $1 billion South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) natural gas pipeline, completed in late 2006. Regional governments and international investors expect these pipelines to become two of the primary conduits for Caspian Sea region oil and natural gas exports over the next decade. Georgia is paid transit tariffs by the pipeline’s operators, and will be allotted a small percentage of fuel passing through the Republic
The oil barons in the White House must not be allowed to take us into another world conflagration over their insane love affair with oil dollars.
A McCain administration would almost certainly lead us here, with his blind devotion and insiders affection for Georgia - not Country First, but Oil Dollars First. We can support the autonomy of this former-Soviet nation in other ways that will be positive to the security and survival of the United States.
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