Bush Administration Contemplated Military Response to 2008 Georgia Conflict

That is this morning's scoop from Ben Smith at Politico. The attack would have involved "surgical strikes," including bombing the Roki tunnel mountain pass that connects Russia with Georgia. "There were people on Cheney’s staff and Hadley’s staff who said, 'We can’t let Georgia go down like this,'" he writes, though they ultimately decided that "it was not an attractive option." My guess is that a strike would have been pushed more forcefully if it became clear that Mikheil Saakashvili's regime was truly on the verge of collapsing. The Russians proved uninterested in going that far, so nothing ever transpired. A reminder though that, almost two years out, the region remains on the brink.