The Aftermath Begins while occupation continues

AP: "Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has promised that his forces would pull back by Friday, Russian troops appear to be digging in, raising concern about whether Moscow is aiming for a lengthy occupation of its small, pro-Western neighbor.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told The Associated Press that Russia was thinning out its presence in some occupied towns but was seizing other strategic spots. He called the Russian moves "some kind of deception game."

"(The Russians) are making fun of the world," he declared.

Nonetheless, a top Russian general troops were moving out in accordance with an EU-sponsored cease-fire.

"The pullback of Russian forces is taking place at such a tempo that by the end of August 22 they will be in the zones of responsibility of Russian peacekeepers," Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy head of the general staff, said at a briefing."

This is pretty ridiculous. It took 3 days for Russian Armor to bully through Georgia, it shouldn't take 7 days to leave.
Presuming these are exiting moves, anyways. Occupying strategic trade routes is a pretty lousy way to do it.

I've maintained for a while this isn't an invasion for Georgia's direct benefit, but just to show the rest of the Caucus and Eastern Bloc that the Bear is no longer hibernating. So what results are coming back in from those surrounding countries?


- Poland signs the US deal to place missile defense units on Polish soil.
- Ukraine is feuding at the highest levels, with President Yushchenko has accused his Prime Minister Tymoshenko of being a traitor for Russia. Yushchenko has been as great a supporter of Georgia as will be found on this earth, even offering his home to Georgian President Saakashvili. The internal turmoil has clouded the situation, and Ukraine seems to be a nation divided by this world.
-Syria continues to ally itself with Russia.

Questions yet remains. Georgia is a close ally of the United States, and frequently relies on US military advice and intel. They're units are US trained as well. So why did this chain of events occour?
Why did Georgia, presumably with US consent, or perhaps even US encouragement, drastically escalate the conflict on the eve of the Olympics, with full knowledge the Russians would not take kindly to it?
Was it US encouragement that lead to the invasion of this nation?
Was it the US using Georgia, and the lives and livelihood of it's citizens to accelerate the NATO expansion?
Or, equally troubling, was our intel so bad we didn't know the strength and the fury with which Russia would strike?

It doesn't all fit together as neatly as we've been told, not by either side.