Quote Originally Posted by Norfolk View Post
Georgia's regular troops may be, they've definitely got their work cut out for them.
Not to mention Russia's ability to impose a complete air and naval blockade on Georgia (it has already partly done this).

For a variety of reasons--in order to respond to perceived NATO and US encroachment in their sphere of influence, to highlights the limits of US power in the area, in order to signal "don't mess with us" to the rest of the CIS states, to assert that they are a superpower not to be be trifled with, to show they still have real military power, and for domestic political reasons--the Russians have every incentive to make the Georgians very miserable indeed.

Again, perfectly predictable. Why it wasn't foreseen in Tbilisi will, I am sure, be a quite interesting story.