September 5, 2008: Largely out of
view of the West, Russia has been waging a bizarre media campaign internally,
striving to convince its citizens that the recent unpleasantness in Georgia was
all the doing of the United States. One of the main accusations was that
Russian troops found numerous "American mercenaries" among the dead.
When pressed by Western reporters inside Russia, to display some of this
evidence, the Russians have been evasive. Late last month, the Russians finally
came forward with the U.S. passport of one of the "American mercenaries". The name on the passport
was Michael Lee White, who turns out to be a 41 year old U.S. Army veteran. But
at the time of his alleged death, and for some time before that, he was in
Texas, caring for his sick father. He is now teaching English at the Guangdong
(China) University of Business Studies, where he was when the Russian
accusations caught up with him. When questioned by reporters, White said he had
never been to Georgia, and had nothing to do with what was going on there. When
asked about his passport, he said he did lose one on a 2005 flight from Moscow
to New York. Now he knows where that passport ended up. The Russians will
probably assert that White lost his passport in Georgia, and escaped to the
United States, where the CIA provided a dying father and a teaching job in
China as part of a coverup. This sort of thing plays well in Russia, and for
the Russian government, that's all that counts.
