Escalation

While Georgia is apparently acknowledging a catastrophic mistake by provoking a war with a world power, Russia is not letting up:

Russian tanks and troops moved through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advanced on the city of Gori in central Georgia on Sunday night, for the first time directly assaulting a Georgian city with ground forces after three days of heavy fighting, Georgian officials said.

Georgian tanks were dug into positions outside Gori and planning to defend the city, said Shota Utiashvili, an official in Georgia’s interior ministry. He said the city of Gori was coming under artillery and tank fire. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The Russians are claiming that Georgia has not retreated, and they are not recognizing the truce called for by Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili. I think they see an opportunity to pound a Western ally into dust and maybe even take back some of their Soviet-era territory. This is a tense moment for the world.

...oh, and the McCain campaign's claims that Obama is bizarrely in sync with Moscow are laughable, and a typical attempt to paint the Democrat as a scary Communist. McCain is the one with the top advisor who was a lobbyist to Georgia. They tried to pull off a neocon's wet dream of taking on the bug bad bully Russia and they got spanked, like neocon military operations always do. He has absolutely no credibility on this.