I see that Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, is now demanding that the OSCE put all the relevant reports of its operatives on he table (ITAR-TASS, 9-2-08.)

It appears that the South Ossetian contingent of the JCC has its own website. (I think sojcc.ru/eng will probably take you there.) They say, of course, just what they _would_ say.

It takes many days if not weeks to bring in the kind of heavy artillery about which the commander is talking into or near the conflict zone.

Skepticism is called for. The Wired article relies an analyst who quotes a Georgian newspaper account in which Georgian artillery officers celebrate their “triumphs.” The weapons systems that are named are either self-propelled or towed. Most or all are designed for rapid setup and breakdown. They can fire at a distance of 20 to 40 km from the target. The degradation in accuracy caused by use at extreme ranges are not a problem for area bombardment, as the residents of Tskhinvali know to their sorrow. Consulting a map, Tskhinvali is about 30 km north of Gori, about 20 km north of the boundary formed by the Security Corridor, and about 5 km north of the South Ossetia/Kartli border.

Thus, it would appear that the named weapons have rapidity of setup and a long-enough reach so that the Georgians had no need to pre-position them in the conflict zone (though, firing from outside of it automatically would cause a conflict zone to expand, it seems to me). Certainly no need to pre-position in South Ossetia itself. Quick Google searches –

2S7 203 mm Pion self-propelled artillery gun. 46 tons (for comparison, an M1 tank weighs 61 tons). Max. road speed 51 km/h, maximum range 47 km, “shoot & scoot” capability.

GRADLAR is an Israeli upgrade to the Soviet-era BM-21 GRAD multiple rocket system. Mounted on a truck chassis. Maximum range 45 km.

152 mm Akatsiya self-propelled howitzer. 28 tons, max. road speed 63 km/h, maximum range 24 km.

122 mm D30 howitzer [Wikipedia]. Towed behind a truck, 3 tons, maximum range 22 km.

I would assume that many of these guns were moved into South Ossetia after the onset of the August 7 attack. Ranges would have to be much, much shorter to target something the size of a bridge, or to employ them in an anti-armor role.

David Axe, Wired News, 9-3-08, Did Georgia Anticipate the South Ossetian War?:

But that’s not the whole story, according to Gordon Hahn of the Monterey Institute of International Studies and other institutions. In a weekly distributed email circular, Hahn claims Georgia also moved forces into place long before the fighting started:

Georgian military officials have inadvertently revealed that they had brought heavy artillery into the conflict zone very early on. For instance, artillery brigade commanders told a Georgian newspaper {Kviris Politra} that Georgian artillery used in the zone on August 7 included {see article for catalog of specific equipment}. . . . It takes many days if not weeks to bring in the kind of heavy artillery about which the commander is talking into or near the conflict zone. . . .

Yes, I agree. Totten should get a gold star for toeing the official Saakashvili line.

* Saakashvili shoud be pressed to substantiate his claim as to timing, or at least to state his Aug. 7 sources.

* Other parties have information yet to be cited in open-source literature. The Russians (obviously), nations with satellites overhead (perhaps), and the OSCE (JPKF presence at Didi Gupta but not at the tunnel itself).

* The matter is probably quite complex. It was incredibly foolish for the Georgians to ignore Bryza’s sound advice. Their reasoning on Aug. 7 remains unexplained. Perhaps they believed they had a fleeting chance to replay the 1995 Croatian wresting of the Krijina from Serbia. I speculate that Putin supplied Saakashvili with corrupted intelligence to tempt him into taking that fateful first step northward from Gori to Tskhinvali. Certainly, Putin was ready to exploit whatever gift Saakashvili chose to offer him.

Hopefully, the timeline of those tragic days will be corrected and fleshed out as more and better information comes to light.

5:38am
> The “Georgia responded to Russian tanks in the tunnel” story surfaced at [Totten's] site, as far as I can tell

My own opinion is set forth in Totten’s comments: the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the lead elements of the 58th Army transited the Roki Tunnel early on August 8, as a response to the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali.

Perhaps the strongest case against a “Russia was invading so we had to push them out” argument is why didn’t Georgia mention that when it decided to carry out operation “Clean Fields”? Yes, Russian invasion of South Ossetia would have been a strong reason for Georgia to invade, but why wasn’t it mentioned here, when Georgia announced it was invading?