You mean the war the Russians declined to get involved in, where it was merely their allies (not Russian citizens) who were being attacked? That war? Against. Why do you ask?
> And where
> is the evidence of "extreme violence"? Yes, some nasty weaponry was used,
> but so far the massacre seems to be fictive, as a small percentage of the
> purported bodies have been accounted for.
I was using "extreme violence" to mean things like indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets, as opposed to the kind of (mostly) low intensity operations used by the British here. I wasn't thinking in terms of a body count.
But, since you brought it up, maybe you could tell us how many bodies you think are needed before violence can be described as "extreme".
> Call me skeptical, but when capitalist states claim to go to war for
> humanitarian purposes, I think it's generally a good idea to assume that
> their aims lie elsewhere. But again, maybe I'm just cynical.
I haven't ascribed humanitarian motives to the Russians. I don't think they give a shit about the Ossetian people either. Doing something pursuant to a right or obligation doesn't necessarily imply doing it out of the goodness of your heart.
> > I haven't heard anybody
> > extrapolating that into a position that invasion is ok under any and
> > all other circumstances.
>
> Russia apparently has.
Maybe they have and maybe they haven't. I don't think you can draw that conclusion from anything they've done so far. Their reaction may have been disproportionate but it was a reaction nonetheless.