“The Russians are clearly in the cat-bird seat.”

OK. Maybe they’re not, what ever a cat bird seat is. They don’t need to take Tbilisi. What is to be gained there? Westerners, including the NYT love negotiated settlements and the Russians can surely parley for one in their favor. They have committed very little forces to bottle up Georgia and as long as there “irregulars” can live off the land and terrorize the populace in a way that gives plausible deniability to the Russians for responsibility; ie: South Ossetians who rampaged after seeing their daughters violated and their dogs squashed by Georgian monsters…et al. The Russians control their media by the force of death and Western media news outlets will not upset anyone who will theaten them bodily or threaten their access to a story (see CNN and Saddam).

I do not see the Russians weakness here. Maybe it is I with a log in my eye but from this perspective it doesn’t seem so. Westerners are in short attention span theater more and the Leftists will eventually control the meme and the evil tyranny will have to go home in humiliation. That will be GWB and company. Wait and see.