Those Russian butchers

No wonder the neocons are having a tough time whipping up outrage over the Russian response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia:

The commander of the artillery brigade, Maj. Gen. Devi Chankotadze, said in an interview in front of his headquarters that 170 Georgian soldiers had been killed in the conflict, and 1,200 wounded. Two-thirds of the wounded soldiers had returned to duty, he said.

1,370 casualties isn’t nothing, but it’s not exactly the Soviet-style massacre that some neocon interventionists were trying to sell over the last two weeks.

UPDATE – Debka reports the further unravelling of the neocon attempt to fire up yet another US war:

The US ambassador to Moscow, endorsing Russia’s initial moves in Georgia, described the Kremlin’s first military response as legitimate after Russian troops came under attack…. This was the first US admission that Georgia was the aggressor in South Ossetia and showed cracks in their hitherto solid support for president Mikhail Saakashvili.