THE PHONY, BRUTAL, SLOPPY, AND INEPT INVASION OF GEORGIA

Russia is continuing its invasion of free, democratic Georgia with overwhelming military force. Given the raw power Russia has been willing to apply, there's no question as to which side will win.

But one of the many untold stories of this fateful war is how poorly Russian forces are performing-despite careful planning and extensive preparations.

First, let's explode the myth disseminated by the Russian government (and accepted by many in the Western media) that Georgia started this fight by "invading" South Ossetia.

Setting aside the fact that South Ossetia is legally a part of Georgia, this fight began with a set-up worthy of Hitler's machinations in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Having created, funded and fully backed the South Ossetian separatist movement since the Soviet crack-up, in late July the Kremlin ordered the local militias they own to provoke the Georgians.

In the week prior to the invasion, South Ossetians, aided by Russian "peacekeepers," had shelled and raided Georgian villages beyond South Ossetia. In Tbilisi, the freely elected president, Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-Western leader, took the bait and walked into Moscow's trap-he ordered Georgian forces to go in and clean out the areas where the South Ossetian militias were operating.

Within hours, the Russian military was on the move.

Anyone seeking proof of who orchestrated this war has only to consider how swiftly Russian ground, air and naval forces "responded" to Georgia's attempt to protect its citizens.

Even the U.S. military-which is vastly better prepared, better trained and better organized than Russia's-could not have launched so broad a coordinated assault from a standing start.

Not only was this invasion planned in detail, but elements of Russia's 58th Army, headquartered in Vladikavkaz, just across the Caucasus Mountains from Georgia, had task-organized an initial armored brigade for the invasion's spearhead-soon followed by the equivalent of a full division, augmented by paratroopers from Russia's strategic reserve.

The 58th Army had adequate warning time to replace deadlined vehicles, perform pre-combat maintenance of the rest, distribute full combat loads of ammunition (beyond what was already on the tanks and other armored vehicles), shift troops between garrisons, deploy forward logistics elements, and disseminate tactical plans.

You don't do that in a couple of hours. That takes several days for the very finest military unit-and weeks for most others.

Additionally, the Russians had time to get a squadron underway from its Black Sea Fleet, based in the Crimea (under a grudged agreement with Ukraine). At least five major combatants, led by the flagship guided-missile cruiser, Moskva, sailed rapidly into position to blockade Georgia's coast, attack Georgia's tiny navy-and (unconfirmed) land naval infantry, Russia's version of our Marines, in Abkhazia, another Moscow-backed separatist region in northwest Georgia.

Need still more proof of Moscow's premeditation? For months, Russian railway troops had been rebuilding the rail line from Russia into Abkhazia. In support of the invasion of Georgia, Russia deployed additional troops and ammunition along those tracks-while paratroopers landed in Abkhazia to support the local Moscow-backed separatists.

At present, Abkhaz militias, backed by Russian firepower, are attacking Georgian forces in the Kodori Gorge, far to the west of South Ossetia. This isn't just a diversion. Russia is determined to dismember its tiny southern neighbor.

And there's more: As soon as the invasion began, the Russian air force launched waves of attacks on pre-planned targets. Anyone who knows how airpower works realizes that the target selection and pilot briefings had to have taken place well before the Georgians fired a shot. The first wave of SU-27 attack fighters, followed by strategic bombers and more ground-attack aircraft, was en route to key targets almost instantly.

Of course, Russia's massive commitment of elite units enabled Moscow to roll over Georgia's brave, but heavily outnumbered and outgunned, forces in South Ossetia. And it was clear from the start that the Kremlin's targets would extend beyond the territory it claimed to be "protecting" from Georgian "genocide" (if you believe that twist, you'll believe that Hitler was the best friend the Jews ever had).

Oh, and as for those Russian claims that it "had to protect its citizens," well, the Russians simply handed out passports to South Ossetians over the years in a de facto annexation the world ignored. Those "Russian citizens" are about as Russian as the citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Still, for serious military analysts, the remarkable thing has been how little Russian performance has changed over the years (and decades, and even centuries).

Overwhelming force-the sledgehammer blow-remains the Russian approach to warfare. Nothing wrong with that in theory-it's essentially the Powell Doctrine (which the Bush administration ignored in Iraq, leading to a near-disaster).

The problem is that the Russian military remains indiscriminate in its targeting and horribly sloppy in its execution. Their sledgehammers tend to hit everything in the general area.

Watching the film clips from the combat zone, a military professional can't help being struck by how slovenly the forces on both sides appear-these aren't U.S. Army Soldiers or U.S. Marines, by any means. Still, in ground combat, sheer numbers let the Russian army bull through-hammering the Georgian positions with an avalanche of firepower.

The Russians quickly became disorganized, though-the control measures on the planning maps appear to have broken down. An attempt on Sunday (8/10) to push beyond South Ossetia to seize the Georgian city of Gori (Stalin's birthplace, by the way) and to wrest control of the crucial east-west highway and rail line-eastern Georgia's ties to the rest of the world-failed.

Even though they'd been driven from South Ossetia by the Russian juggernaut, Georgian troops rallied in defense of Gori-the key strategic point in Georgia's interior-and repelled the Russian attack.

Today (8/11), the Russians launched a massive and better organized assault on Gori and the city has fallen.

Nonetheless, although the journalists on the scene failed to grasp it, the failure of Sunday's attack was a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Putin's gas-and-oil-revenue-funded and revamped Russian military. Further, Putin, currently in his "Wolfschanze" in Vladikavkaz, must be furious with his pride and joy, the Russian air force).

The inept performance of the Russian air force may have been the most striking feature of the war thus far. Again, numbers alone guarantee a Russian win. The abysmal performance of Russian pilots has been on display for all the world to see –  although, once again, the media don't understand what they're witnessing.

While the Russians are certainly not above terror-bombing civilians, many of the air strikes on apartment buildings and other civilian targets are the result of inadequate training, Russian pilots flying scared-or both. Precision weapons delivered by top-of-the-line aircraft demand skilled pilots emotionally prepared for combat-which, frankly, Russia doesn't appear to have.

The air force elements in the North Caucasus have some of Russia's latest-model aircraft, along with an arsenal of hi-tech weapons. But Russian pilots don't log the flight hours their Western counterparts do, and they rarely get to conduct live-fire exercises with the latest (and most costly) weapons.

Having flow hundreds of missions with guided bombs under their wings during this conflict, Russian pilots appear to have missed far more targets than they've hit. Had the U.S. Air Force performed this badly, the chain-of-command would have been fired.

As of this writing, at least a dozen attempts have been made to hit the crucial Caspian-Black Sea gas pipeline from the air-without success thus far. (Russia not only seeks to bankrupt Georgia, but wants to send a warning signal to the West than it can turn off not only its own taps, but those of its neighbors).

Similarly, the first attempted strikes on the oil-storage facility in the port of Poti missed its target, while many of the attacks on railroad stations and yards also missed or did only limited damage.

Russian pilots did manage, in the invasion's opening phase, to destroy a number of Georgian aircraft on the ground-but the Georgians managed to shoot down a number of Russian aircraft. The Russians admit losing two, while the Georgians claimed to have shot down at least ten by Sunday, so split the difference, as experienced intelligence officers do.

Compare such loss rates-suffered against a tiny state such as Georgia-with the almost non-existent U.S. and allied air losses in recent wars, in which friendly fire has been a greater threat than the enemy.

The strictly military point is that, despite large increases in Russian military budgets, the Russian armed forces remain a dangerous, but crippled, bear.

So what are the strategic implications of this dirty little war of aggression? It's now or never for the West. If NATO states and sympathetic parties elsewhere cannot muster a unified political front against this unquestionable aggression, it bodes ill for the future:

Georgia today, Ukraine tomorrow.

Russia is on a megalomaniacal course to restore its former empire through brute force, intimidation and subversion. Despite the pretense of elections, Vladimir Putin, not his frontman, President Dmitry Medvedev, remains in charge. And Putin increasingly appears to be a figure we all know far too well from history-a brilliant, calculating madman.

US Army Col (ret)Ralph Peters is the author of 23 books, including the new adventure-travel memoir, Looking for Trouble, which features several chapters of his experiences in Georgia and the Caucasus.