Mark Ames, journalist for The Nation and eXiled Online, discusses recent history leading up to the current mess in former Soviet Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili’s downward spiral, the broken Georgian economy, rumors that U.S. advisers participated to some extent in Georgia’s invastion of S. Ossetia last summer, Georgia’s relationship with Israel and America’s relationship with Russia.

MP3 here. (22:50)

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond (Soft Skull) and The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia (Grove). He is a regular contributor to eXiled Online and The Nation magazine.

Doug Bandow, author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire, discusses the Bush administration’s foreign policy legacy, why maintaining a U.S. military presence in S. Korea makes less sense than ever, the difficulty of negotiating alternative U.S. supply routes to Afghanistan while taking a hard line on Russia and Iran, the high cost in Iraqi lives for their “liberation” from one authoritarian government to another and the demise of Bush’s two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

MP3 here. (21:45)

Doug Bandow is a recent addition to the Cato Institute. His new and archived articles can be found at Antiwar.com/bandow.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director for Antiwar.com, discusses Vladimir Putin’s red-baiting of Soviet America, the U.S. military’s use of old Soviet supply lines into Afghanistan, how the incredible U.S./Russia role reversal confirms the existence of Bizarro World, why the crumbling U.S. economy won’t stop an Afghanistan surge or prevent new interventions in Africa and how the use of logical deduction in figuring out U.S. foreign policy goals only leads to wild speculation.

MP3 here. (37:24)

Justin Raimondo is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement and editorial director for Antiwar.com. His articles are archived at Antiwar.com/justin.

Glenn Greenwald, former constitutional law and civil rights litigator, discusses Noam Chomsky’s theory of “concision” in the context of the limited parameters of discussion on television, the ease of spouting platitudes and the difficulty of challenging conventional wisdom on cable news shows, how the Georgian conflict highlighted the unwillingness of the mainstream media to challenge a false premise that has bipartisan support and how Obama’s cabinet appointments were foreshadowed by his support for Joe Lieberman’s Senate candidacy.

MP3 here. (39:43)

Glenn Greenwald is a regular blogger at Salon.com and the author of Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok.

Tim Cavanaugh, columnist for Reason magazine, discusses the efforts of activist Lira Tskhovrebova to tell the South Ossetian side of the Georgian invasion, the numerous accounts of Georgian soldiers deliberately killing civilians, the U.S. media failure to accurately portray the conflict and the mixed signals Saakashvili received from U.S. neocon agitators and the State Department.

MP3 here. (34:08)

Tim Cavanaugh represents Lira Tskhoverbova, chairwoman of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights. He is a columnist for Reason magazine and former web editor for the Los Angeles Times.

Eric Margolis, author of American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World, discusses the repeating of history in Afghanistan, India’s under-the-radar regional influence and sweetheart nuclear deal, ramifications of a future “Pashtunistan”, the precarious economic and political conditions in Pakistan, the possibility of Obama using Bill Clinton as Kashmir peacemaker, the need for a waxing Department of State and waning Pentagon in the foreign policy realm, the Caspian oil pipeline as “Great Game” prize, new accusations about Syria’s nuclear program and the supreme importance of U.S./Russia relations.

MP3 here. (53:49)

Eric Margolis is a foreign correspondent and columnist with the Quebecor Media Company and author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, discusses the 2008 presidential election, how transitions in government tend toward continuity instead of radical change, the competing policy influences in an Obama administration where Dennis Ross and Anthony Zinni are possible National Security Advisor appointments, how the only difference in foreign intervention between Democratic and Republican administrations is rhetorical, how the neocon parasite feeding on the Republican party will soon leave its shriveled host behind and search for greener pastures, the continuing danger of war with Iran, realist/neocon policy toward Russia, why a vote for Nader is the best medicine in the current corporate-socialist economy, and why the Constitution and Libertarian parties may be one party too many.

MP3 here. (40:30)

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000). He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).

He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a Senior Fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Mark Ames, author of “The Cold War that Wasn’t” in The Nation, discusses the dominant narrative and ideological underpinnings in the U.S. press regarding the recent Georgian attack on South Ossetia and subsequent Russian counterattack on Georgia, the attempt to portray Russia as the aggressor by floating the idea of a first-strike cyber war despite the lack of any evidence, the alleged poisoning of Ukraine’s Victor Yushchenko and the current dispute between Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko over her reaction to the Georgia war, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, the precedent set by U.S. intervention in Kosovo, the danger of putting “defensive” missiles in Eastern Europe while the U.S. foreign policy establishment contemplates first strike capability, U.S. NED support for the Russian National Bolsheviks, the “shock therapy” robbery of Russian resources under Yeltsin’s autocracy in the 1990s and the consequences.

MP3 here. (64:25)

Mark Ames is a journalist who has written for several publications including the New York Press, The Nation and GQ Russia and is the founding editor and regular contributor of the Moscow-based newspaper The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond and The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia.

Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism officer and columnist for Antiwar.com, discusses the grossly overstated number of “terrorists” by the War Party, the centuries of the failures of those trying to conquer Afghanistan, the current crises in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Georgia, the exaggeration by the Bush regime of world conflicts to help the McCain campaign and how best to protect Americans from actual terrorists.

MP3 here. (36:27)

Philip Giraldi is a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He is a regular contributor to Antiwar.com in a column titled “Smoke and Mirrors” and is a Contributing Editor who writes a column called “Deep Background” on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for The American Conservative magazine.

Chris Floyd, author of the book and the blog, Empire Burlesque, discusses the lack of – and need for – honest reporting in this country, how the state and media manipulate language to change or hide reality, the “success” of the surge only in prolonging the war, the phony facades of both presidential campaigns, the insanity of antagonizing Russia, Obama’s unfortunate choice of Joe Biden as VP, the complete silence surrounding our proxy war in Somalia and the spreading disaster that is “The War On Terror.”

MP3 here. (41:02)

Chris Floyd is an award-winning American journalist, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Regime. For more than 11 years he wrote the featured political column, Global Eye, for The Moscow Times and the St. Petersburg Times in Russia. He also served as UK correspondent for Truthout.org, and was an editorial writer for three years for The Bergen Record. His work appears regularly CounterPunch, The Baltimore Chronicle and in translation in the Italian paper, Il Manifesto, and has also been published in such venues as The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Ecologist and many others. His articles are also featured regularly on such websites as Information Clearing House, Buzzflash, Bushwatch, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and many others. His work has been cited in The New York Times, USA Today, the Guardian, the Independent and other major newspapers.

Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque with webmaster Richard Kastelein, who created the site using open-source software. Floyd is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press, which was founded and designed by Kastelein. Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University.