It's so depressing and upsetting to see yet more images of people's lives destroyed. What's wrong with our so-called world-leaders? World-class idiots more like. Their solution for everything is 'bomb it'. Putin is a disgrace. After all the hopefulness of Glasnost, the guy seems intent on dargging us back into the worst aspects of the Cold War. Of course we now see anoth side effect of Bush's decision to unilaterally invade Iraq to effect regime change. When the US ambassador and other US officials try and lecture Russia, they are laughed out of the house. The Russians aren't taking any lectures from anyone - they've seen how it works: if you're big and strong enough you just tgrab what you can. No one will try and stop you, though they'll talk tough. The secret is to get your troops to occupy as much and as quickly as possible. Then, whenever the ceasefire comes, you can negotiate to give up a few square kilometres of invaded terroritory as a magnanimous gesture while keeping a whole lot more. No-one's going to re-invade to get you out, as long as you're a big powerful country.

But the Russians are the villians here - what they're doing is totally unacceptable and hypocritical (they pounded Chechnya for years for asking for the same thing as S.Ossetia is demanding of Georgia).

Anyway, you already know all that, I suppose I'm not saying anything knew here. I just wish I knew what we ordinary people could do to stop this madness. I'd go and march and protest if I thought it'd make a difference, but I did that over Iraq and I don't know what it achieved, but not much, I reckon. I suppose the only thing was that it helped prevent the neo-cons from having it all their own way without even a voice of dissent, and that's worth soemthing, but I really wish I could just wave a wand and spare those poor civilans the horrors they must endure.