US embassy spokesman in Tblisi retracted his earlier statement

You have to admire a nerd girl grad student who enlists in the navy on account of 9/11, and then keeps duplicate blogs in Esperanto and English, while qualifying for her ship’s pistol team and Junior Officer of the Deck!

She did complain about the yummy Navy cookies and sitting staring at the Sonar displays making her ass big

No Marines, US Navy, or even CIA specops in here. I am for doing it the mean way: FBI, secret service, that CIA, IRS, SEC branches which look after money laundering and alike.

The Russian elite needs the West as safe heaven for its money, as refuge, as supplier of all those shiny little hings that make some fun, Lamborghinis, Haute-Couture, et al.

Pick out the oligarchs most close to Putin first (spare the rest and the half-way decent business). Unearth their dirty money (it will be in the West, safe from their master and their friends), jail their mistresses (or the best friend of her) if you find some cocain with them, or better even if you find hints on how they betrayed each other, make it covertly public, it will trigger some mischief. Find out what Mafia clan they are aligned with – everyone will have one for his comfort and security – and snatch their members whenever they put their feet in the West.

Don’t think John Wayne, think Hillary.

Sending a destroyer to show solidarity and re-assurance for the Georgians is fine and noble, but it won’t impress Putin. He knows that the West is not going to war this time.

The above however will create a lot more of “social dynamics” than comfortable and might shatter the oligarchy, giving room for somebody else.

“The fact that there are nine Western warships in the Black Sea cannot but be a cause for concern. They include two U.S. warships, one each from Spain and Poland, and four from Turkey,” Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said.

You might get it, but you’d have to be on a hair trigger for it.