Some things don't add up in this New York Times article:
1.
Georgia claims that its main evidence — two of several calls secretly recorded by its intelligence service
on Aug. 7 and 8 (sic) — shows that Russian tanks and fighting vehicles were already passing through the Roki Tunnel linking Russia to South Ossetia
before dawn on Aug. 7.
-snip-
Georgia said its main evidence consisted of
two conversations on Aug. 7 between Mr. Gassiev at the tunnel and his supervisor at the headquarters.
In the first conversation,
logged at 3.41 a.m., Mr. Gassiev told the supervisor that a Russian colonel had asked Ossetian guards to inspect military vehicles that “crowded” the tunnel.
-snip-
Georgia’s claims about Russian movements appear to be
at least partly supported by other information that emerged recently. Western intelligence determined independently that two battalions of the 135th Regiment moved through the tunnel to South Ossetia
either on the night of Aug. 7 or the early morning of Aug. 8, according to a senior American official.
New Western intelligence also emerged last week showing that a motorized rifle element was assigned to a garrison just outside South Ossetia, on Russian territory, with the aim of securing the north end of the tunnel, and that it may have moved to secure the entire tunnel
either on the night of Aug. 7 or early in the morning of Aug. 8, according to several American officials who were briefed on the findings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/world/europe/16georgia.html?_r=2&em=&pagewanted=all&oref=sloginThe "night of Aug. 7 or early ... morning of Aug. 8" is almost 24 hours after the early morning of Aug. 7 ("3.41 a.m."), so HOW ON EARTH can the New York Times say that Georgia’s claims are at least partly (!) supported by new intelligence? "Partly" as in "24 hours later"?
2.
From the same article:
The problem is that this seems to contradict what Georgian officials told the Washington Post on August 17:
At 7 p.m., with troops on the march, Saakashvili went on national television and declared a unilateral cease-fire. "We offer all of you partnership and friendship," he said to the South Ossetians. "We are ready for any sort of agreement in the interest of peace."
-snip-
"
From 18:00, Georgian troops from inner districts are relocated to the area" near the South Ossetian border, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a colonel-general on the Russian General Staff, told reporters in Moscow at a retrospective briefing. "More than 20 armored units arrive."
Kezerashvili said that
around the same time, Georgians were receiving intelligence reports suggesting that Russian troops were gearing up to move south through the Roki Tunnel. Russia denies any such muster.
In a series of phone calls, Saakashvili contacted Western and NATO leaders and diplomats. "
I started to call frantically," he said in an interview with foreign journalists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/16/AR2008081600502_pf.html7 p.m. is almost 15 hours after the calls were allegedly recorded. Are we really expected to believe that it took 15 hours to inform the president that Russian troops had entered Georgian territory?
And what happened to those troops? South Ossetia is very small. Why did they not participate in the defense of Tskhinvali?