Posted on August 17, 2008 - by Venik

Holbrooke Paid by Saakashvili?

Richard Holbrooke, the former US Ambassador to the UN and currently the vice chairman of Perseus LLC, is now in Tbilisi accusing the cowardly Russian soldiers of stealing pants off the dead bodies of Georgia’s courageous warriors. Holbrooke is claiming that Russia is about to invade Ukraine and is getting ready to take over the world tomorrow night.

The information I have from a friend in Moscow, who is a senior journalist for one of Russia’s leading business dailies, suggests that Holbrooke might have received as much as $4.8 million in salary from the Belgian PR firm, contracted by president Saakashvili to work with the journalists in Tbilisi.

For those of you who missed the news, The Times recently published “Georgia loses the fight with Russia, but manages to win the PR war,” by Tony Halpin and Roger Boyes, detailing Saakashvili’s attempt to mislead Western journalists operating in Georgia’s capital. Here’s an excerpt from the article in The Times:

“As foreign correspondents poured into Tbilisi a team of Belgian PR advisers launched a slick operation to keep them updated with e-mail alerts detailing the latest alleged aggressions by Russia and the Georgian Government’s reaction. On Sunday, for example, more than 20 e-mails went out to shape Georgia’s message that Russia had launched an invasion.

Some of the claims veered into outright exaggeration – such as stating that Russian jets were “intensively bombing Tbilisi” or that Russian troops had taken Gori – but the 24-hour news culture meant that many organisations repeated them without independent verification.”

Holbrooke’s involvement with the Belgian PR firm would explain his unexpected private visit to Tbilisi today and the ludicrous accusations he is making against the Russian army. In a CNN interview today Holbrooke claimed that the Russian soldiers, dressed in “stolen Georgian uniforms and carrying stolen American M16s”, are looting the town of Gori. Holbrooke provided no evidence to support his accusations.

All of you have seen the video footage of Russian troops in Georgia: the Russians have no problem displaying their national flag on their armored vehicles and they make no secret of their presence in Georgia. If anything, they seem to advertise their presence in the country. Rather than accuse the Russians of wearing stolen Georgian uniforms and carrying the ridiculous M16s, perhaps the more logical assumption would be that some Georgian soldiers, wearing their own uniforms and carrying their own M16s, decided to help themselves to the belongings of the fellow countrymen displaced from Gori by the war and that Richard Holbrooke decided to help himself to a few easy, tax-free millions. The man is just trying to retire – nothing’s wrong with that.

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