He plans to lay a formal request for not only a resupply of weaponry and support systems but on the addition of a “significant” number of American troops to be “permanently stationed” in Georgia, on Vice President Biden on the occasion of his forthcoming official visit.

When the Russians invaded Georgia, American troops and intelligence support systems, to include a huge CIA contingent, were hastily withdrawn and have, in essence, not returned. Although many important documents were destroyed at the Tiblisi American Embassy, the Russians captured “at least fifteen trucks” stuffed full of highly sensitive equipment manuals, encrypting devices, code books and other intelligence treasures.

Of course, no one here wants to discuss this debacle and both the military and the CIA are very reluctant, in view of the obvious instability of the Georgian president, to put themselves at risk again.

Georgia once appealed to the intelligence community as a wonderful window on Russia and also as part of the Bush plan to encircle Putin’s Russia with hostile states that were in debt to the United States and who would permit the stationing of American intelligence units on their soil.

Neither the American military nor the CIA has abandoned these concepts but because of very strong Kremlin resistance to them, is proceeding with caution.

It is known that Putin wants to take back the strategically important Ukraine and that the United States would be unable to stop him if he made a strong political or military move to ensure that end.

There is now a rather fine balance between perceived intelligence needs and the recognition that Russia is now the world’s largest exporter of oil and natural gas to almost all of Europe. The Russian oil fields were nearly within the grasp of American companies after the fall of the Soviet Union but the so-called Oligarchs, with US and Israeli financial support, grabbed too much too soon and the concept was halted and overturned by Putin.

Insofar as Georgia is concerned, the Kremlin has drawn a line in the sand over the rearming of Georgia or the stationing of more than a token number of American military and CIA personnel in that country.

In watching American activities in this area, the Russian military intelligence or GRU has received considerable aid from clandestine high level American intelligence data obtained from their agents in place inside Israeli intelligence.

One factor in official Washington’s attitude towards Georgia is that at the present time, Obama wants to withdraw from the no-win Afghanistan theater and wants to use, among others, Georgian forces to replace the American troops Washington wants to withdraw as quickly as possible as American casualties mount.

The idea that any American infusion of either troops or anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons would slow down another Russian military incursion is laughable but Obama is now walking a tightrope between mollifying the highly unstable Georgian leader and the desire to use his military, that had been extensively trained by the American military, to replace Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The CIA and its Israeli counterparts have been privately discussing the idea of removing Saakashvili by a “wet action” (i.e., assassinating him) and replacing him with someone handpicked by Washington to better represent their needs.

At the present time, these discussions revolve around blaming Putin for the removal.”