Aceflyer

South Ossetia had already been de facto independent from Georgia for many years, and clearly did not want to be under Georgian rule. Morally, Georgia was not justified in its attempt to reclaim South Ossetia by force. Legally, as per previous U.N. Security Council resolutions, Georgia did have the right to act in South Ossetia as it saw fit, as Hoch has pointed out.

Haha QFT.

Georgia began the conflict by invading South Ossetia. This is a fact that is beyond dispute at this point. However, there is supposedly reliable intelligence that Russia lured Georgia into invading South Ossetia by getting South Ossetian paramilitaries to perform certain attacks that would make Georgia angry enough to invade South Ossetia. That Russia would do something like this is believable; Russia is hardly a saint by any definition. It is hardly a secret that Russia resents the fact that Georgia is firmly aligned with the U.S. and not Russia. Of course, this doesn't excuse Georgia's responsibility for actually starting the conflict. From what I can see, the U.S. and the E.U. have reacted appropriately to this situation. Georgia has been shown that neither the U.S. nor the E.U. will back Georgia up militarily if Georgia acts rashly or irresponsibly (as it did in invading South Ossetia). Georgia has learned that it has to take full responsibility for, and accept the consequences of, its own actions. At the same time, Russia has been shown that neither the U.S. nor the E.U. will simply stand by and allow Russia to take advantage of the situation (which it may have helped instigate) and take over a sovereign democratic nation. Basically, the U.S. and the E.U. have demonstrated that they are willing to let Russia teach Georgia a lesson which Georgia frankly deserved, but that they are not going to let Russia take advantage of the situation to the point of actually taking over Georgia or installing a puppet regime there.

IMHO this thread can be closed.

thats not true. in some of the squads forums, my posts have been deleted because the forum leader is a !@#$%^&*. my posts followed all of the rules, and still got deleted. I say you take away her powers As far as squad and zone forums go, the squad/zone leaders probably have the authority to decide what is and isn't acceptable in their squad's/zone's boards. For example, in the past, some posts in HS' boards were edited because of HS' no swearing rule; those posts would have been perfectly fine in other parts of SSForum.

I am sorry to hear this, Hiro... I will miss you and hope to see you back in SubSpace some day, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Agreed doc. Although as far as WW3 goes, nah, Russia wouldn't go quite far enough for that to happen. WW3 isn't in any major power's (including Russia's) best interests, really.

I'd guess that they were removed by a Moderator or Administrator for undisclosed reasons.

I think it was a very good article. However, even had the U.S. not been tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would probably not have intervened directly; the most I could see it doing would be deploying 'peacekeeping' forces to Tbilisi to ensure the safety of the Georgian leadership and ensure that Moscow not install a puppet regime in Georgia. There was no way the U.S. would have directly engaged Russia unless really forced to do so.

Thanks Sam, I was wondering why a few of my posts vanished.

That post explains the forum downtime we've been getting recently. It doesn't explain why "My Controls" no longer works. Nor does it explain why "Arcade" no longer works, either.

Just checked. I get the exact same error when I click on "My Controls."

Probably so, doc. This at!@#$%^&*ude is apparent in this particular conflict especially in the arrangement whereby the U.S. military flew Georgian forces from Iraq back to Georgia. The U.S. let Russia know of these flights in advance, and Russian forces in and around Georgia left the U.S. planes alone, thus allowing the U.S. to technically remain out of the conflict, which is something both the U.S. and Russia wanted. A tidy gentleman's agreement.

Well they've already succeeded in !@#$%^&*ing up our way of life, albeit indirectly. I would agree that the stringent security rules and screening measures implemented at U.S. airports by the DHS are unpleasant, but I wouldn't really agree that they have '!@#$%^&*ed up' our way of life. And the airport security stuff - along with the Afghan War, but that hasn't really affected our 'way of life' significantly - is really the only thing al-Qaeda has caused. The other stuff (Patriot Act, Iraq War, etc.) was caused by the current Administration and not by al-Qaeda.

South Ossetia wants independence from Georgia and closer ties to Russia. Given that South Ossetia has already been de facto independent from Georgia since the early '90's during the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, Georgia should have left South Ossetia alone. I know this is a bit off-topic, and I'm sorry, but that claim is laughable, frankly. Exactly how would al-Qaeda manage to take over the U.S.?

The U.S. is clearly reluctant to get militarily involved - especially if it would be acting unilaterally - so unless Russia really crosses the line, the U.S. won't intervene militarily. And Russia probably isn't seeking a conflict with the U.S. at this time.

But would it hurt to add it to the page? Sure, it could be added. It wouldn't replace the links page currently there, though.

That is a great bar, however it lacks many of the links that are currently referenced at MERVBot.com.

Will do, thanks Purge!

Note: Links page @ MERVBot website updated throughout as per PoLiX's suggestion in the other thread. Check it out: http://www.mervbot.com/links.html Edit: D1st0rt and I were unable to find out who should be credited for http://bang.sscentral.com/, so it is uncredited for now. If anyone has reliable information on this matter, please let me know.

Jeez. Will this guy ever learn?

A reasonable suggestion. After further consideration though: > There's only one available version of most of the plugins there. > They are already sorted alphabetically. > What would be the point of sorting them by date updated or date added? Usually when people look for a plugin, they're looking for a plugin with specific functions; usually people don't just randomly decide they want, say, the most recently updated plugin with no regard as to what it does. Note that I haven't discussed this with RiiStar, and this could potentially be something we actually implement at some point down the road, but atm, in my humble opinion I don't see a real need for this.

Minor typo pointed out. Seems that whoever wins the September MoC will be the first SS ty!@#$%^&*!

Well, when you made the template to alleviate your boredom, you did more than CRe> and I had done for the site in months... so I felt it'd be wonderful if you were a webmaster as well. CRe> did not object. [chatlog]P (CRe>)>okay cool[/chatlog] CRe> was ecstatic over the template you made, also. [chatlog]P (CRe>)>!@#$%^&*ittttttt P (CRe>)>Wow P (CRe>)>did he give you all the stuff so i can code P (CRe>)>jesus christ this guys made my day[/chatlog]

If you do that, you'd have to add my v12 release or whatever and put my comment underneath that -- but perhaps you should also seek for third party opinions to see if I might have the wrong kind of strategy or approach to this. >.< Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying. I will do as you suggest.