Whose agenda?

Behind the frightening escalation of military activity in Georgia there are a number of agendas, contradictions and underlying issues that it's not easy to get to grips with. For example, what role has the US government and the Republican presidential candidate had in stoking the conflict? Read Seamus Milne in The Guardian here and Robert Scheer on truthdig ('drilling beneath the headlines') on this theme. I've put a range of links to background information and analysis on the del.icio.us pages. The whole situation reveals a lot about the state of big-power aspirations, policies and relationship, about their own internal political motivations and about the number of layers of the onion one has to peel back before beginning to find the real facts.