Marching Through Georgia

As aspiring Georgian dictator Mikheil Saakashvili unleashes a wave of repression aimed at opposition parties, arrests their leaders on trumped-up charges of “spying,” cracks down on the independent media, tortures his political opponents and other prisoners held in Georgia’s disgusting jails, lobbies hopefully for NATO membership, and provokes war with Russia, the “libertarian” Cato Institute sponsors a conference in conjunction with the Heritage Foundation and other pro-Bush thinktanks, on “Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace” in Tbilisi.

That’s a really good sense of timing they have over at Cato: just when freedom, prosperity, and peace are conspicuous by their absence in Georgia!

According to the announcement, “Cato is running this conference in cooperation with Kakha Bendukidze, the state minister for coordination of reforms of the Republic of Georgia.”

While they’re hob-nobbing with the Georgian commissars, the Cato-ites might want to bring up this proposed “reform”: find out who tortured former Georgian government official Sulkhan Molashvili, who was subjected to electro-shock treatment and whose body was burned with cigarettes when he refused to confess to his alleged “crimes.” Shortly before being arrested, Molashvili held a news conference at which he said he had in his possession document’s proving Saakashvili’s links to corruption.