Russia Threatens Georgia: Oil Pipeline & NATO Membership Both Vex Russkies

The Washington Post has a four-page piece on the Russian invasion of Georgia without mentioning the main reason for the incursion/blitzkrieg/whatever. That would be journalism, something the WaPo only practices from time to time.

Despite the NATO subtext of the invasion, the main cause for the Putin Putsch is that the Russians want to control the pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan which passes through Georgia for about a third of its distance.

I was working for Amoco when the pipeline agreement was signed in the mid-nineties & even then the Russians were dead set against the export of Caspian oil to the West without going through Russian territory. [I visited Baku & other parts of the Caucasus a dozen times back then & almost died of food poisoning.] Even the otherwise unworldly Bill Clinton was 100% behind the Amoco Pipeline [soon to be the BP pipeline] & as Amoco's Strategic Entry guy, I got frequent & instant access to NSC officials husbanding the project inside the USG.

The US planned & helped build this pipeline---it keeps the price of oil far below what it would be if the Russians controlled it. The Russians are still the largest crude exporter in the world [or tied with Saudi Arabia] and want the price as high as possible.

Watch for the pipeline to be disrupted or bombed by Russian planes to jack up the price of oil again---you saw it here first.
UPDATE: HERE is the aforementioned bombing of the pipeline, as promised when I wrote the blog about 40 hours ago.

And with high oil prices, dissatisfied Americans are more likely to vote in a feckless Obama---the Russians consider this callow youth a Jimmy Carter Redux. The USSR invaded Afghanistan because they knew Jimmy was a toothless tiger cub---he was so busy giving away the Panama Canal & grinning while Iran took US hostages, the USSR thought he was as stupid as he looked.

Obama would just be another EU-nuch.

Putin is behind this & is the "strategerist" striking while the world's media is preoccupied in Beijing----he knows the US MSM doesn't want to cover a war in the faraway Caucasus while the lazy newsies are basking in Beijing smog & a US presidential race, plus he knows the MSM wants to minimize the foreign policy implications as that would make McCain look like the man for the job.

Look for media minimizing of this invasion until the pipeline is hit & prices spike $20/barrel.