there were virtually no images from the first

That fact should have raised suspicions from the first. The Russians claimed Georgian cruelties as a pretext for this adventure. They were not unprepared to act, just unprepared to allow the world to know the actual truth. How hard would it have been to transmit real-time images? Even an amateur with a cell phone can do it. But that is the problem. The state easily stands to lose control in such an instance. And while photo-doctoring has its uses, real-time narratives don’t easily lend themselves to such manipulations.

It would seem the focus lay on trying to dominate the verbal message and hope in that way to mold world opinion. Some people were taken in. I heard more than one person, supposedly intelligent and informed, swallow the Russian line whole. (One commentator based his opinion on a verbatim reading of an official Russian statement.)

The problem for (in this case the Russian) authoritarians, though, is that while the universities and the MSM might still be easily vulnerable to their machinations, the internet has trained its more sentient users to be sceptical, if not reflexively suspicious. Most of us, initiated by Rathergate and Nigerian money scams, aren’t easily taken in. The Russian blogswarmers, bless them, gave it their best shot. But lies and propaganda don’t sway like they used to.

The Pootie Patrol needs to up the quality of its game.