One Possible Reason Why Dick Cheney Thinks He Has a Dog in the Russia-Georgia Fight

"A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. 'If Georgia collapses in turmoil,' Mr. Goldman notes, 'investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline.' And so, he concludes, Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime." - James Traub, The New York Times

Then there’s this little-reported news item that no doubt got Dick Cheney’s attention a lot more quickly than the news of 1500-2000 Georgian civilians getting killed:

Russian fighter jets targeted the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which carries oil to the West from Asia but missed.

Finally, we’re getting beyond the How Dare They Do This to a Sovereign Nation?! bullshit that we’ve been hearing from Bush to McCain to Obama.

The BTC pipeline, for anyone who doesn’t follow the news or hasn’t at least read Jeremy Scahill’s book about Blackwater, bypasses Russia entirely and runs straight through Georgia. A look at the map above reveals that the alternative pipeline, which has been a thorn in Putin’s side from the beginning and a bone of contention between the US and Russia, runs straight through Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi.

Of course, Iraq was all about liberating them from another brutal dictatorship that just happened, by sheer coincidence, to be sitting atop the second biggest oil reserves on the planet earth. So I certainly trust in Cheney’s and McCain’s pious bromides about standing up for a democratically-elected government that just happens to be one of three hosts to a US-backed oil pipeline under attack from a Russia that can only, by coincidence only, be hurt by it.

Yeah, it’s all about democracy. That’s it.