Now That's How To Stuff A Poll! (Updated)

According to a CNN poll, 92% of those polled said that the Russian incursion was merely peacekeeping--not an invasion. Russian bloggers did their job:

Russian Bloggers Are As Powerful As Russian Hackers

...How did this happen? Very simple actually. The information about the CNN poll quickly made it to the Russian blogosphere (it is impossible to determine where it all started because of the huge number of posts on the topic) and bloggers started encouraging their readers to go to CNN and vote for the first option. The news was quickly disseminated over an enormous number of the Russian blogs and the results were predictable: 92% supported the official point of view of the Russian government.

Of course, it probably helped their cause that unlike pro-Israeli advocates, who have to deal with a strong Arab PR machine, the pro-Georgia machine is not exactly a force to reckon with.

Meanwhile, check out Diggbait, which claims:

Digg in Bed With Russian Menace!

Take a look at the front page of crazy-huge crowdsourced web aggregator Digg today and you'll see a totally different portrait of the war in Georgia than you'd find on the front of the New York Times. It's not the scary specter of Russia asserting its dominance over the region and thumbing its nose at the West, gambling that we won't respond with force. It's not tanks rolling toward a soverign nation's capital in the hopes of overthrowing its pro-American leader. No, it is, as usual, a conspiracy by George W. Bush and the Mainstream Media to confuse and deceive you. A false story propagated by those terrible, biased gatekeepers.

...If the adolescent groupthink of Diggers could be summed up, it's this: whatever Bush says is wrong, whatever the MSM says is wronger, and if the two are in agreement it's clearly the wrongest idea ever.

Maybe. Or maybe Russians digg as well as they blog--it has never been so easy to manipulate and bypass the media.

UPDATE: So how far can you go to interpret events in Georgia? How about this--Russia lost:

Russia is now tied down. Their freedom to act has just been reduced. You know: hold 'em by the nose and then kick them in the ass.

The Russians now have what? 30K - 40K troops tied down and their attention concentrated at the cost of 1,000 Americans in the field + a few hundred advisers. Plus there are Israeli advisers in Georgia as well.

Americans are taking no casualties and the Russians seem to be bloodied.

The time for a counter strike at Russia's wind pipe (the Roki Tunnel) is when they have fully extended. To make such a strike before that reduces the effect. As a commenter at the Belmont Club link said they have learned nothing from 1908. Evidently we have.

We will see how stupid the Russians are in the next few days. If they keep advancing while taking losses - i.e. they are goaded into ill considered action - they become more vulnerable every day. If they retreat they lose face. The Georgians need to keep retreating while fighting delaying actions to maintain limited contact and then cut off the Russian wind pipe. In the immortal words of Groucho Marx - stucco.

It is reported that Putin's face turned to ash at the Olympics. Perhaps things got out of hand before he was ready to act. We have disrupted Putin's timing. i.e. a spoiling attack.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE 2: Here is a similar evaluation that Russia is losing:

I just talked to a friend who is very plugged into this and is as shrewd and informed an observer on the European scene as you can find. He thinks it's going badly for the Russians and is not 1968 redux as they had hoped. The presidents of the Baltic states and Poland have flown to Tbilisi, providing a moral backstop for the Georgian government. And now the Bush administration is stepping up, with Bush's stern words today, with humanitarian aid going to Georgia that the Russians can't possibly oppose, and with Sec. Rice headed to Tbilisi. All this is serving to frustrate the ultimate Russian war aim of toppling Saakashvili, who is addressing enthusiastic crowds on the streets and taking the Russians to the Hague. He thinks the fact that it hasn't turned out the way the Russians expected accounts for the constant back-and-forth about whether they are stopping or not.

Hope springs eternal.

[Hat tip: Instapundit]

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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