'Appointing a loyal vassal of Washington like Shashkin defense minister - Saakaahsvili attended Columbia University on a State Department scholarship and understands full well who needs to be pleased if a new "rose revolution" is not to cut short his now over eight-year reign - is to be expected from a leader who may not be learned or cultured, sapient or even shrewd, but is instinctually alert to which side his bread is buttered on and what his American sponsors demand of him.

Which may simply be a question of acquiescence, as his choice might have been "suggested" to him by the U.S. ambassador in Tbilisi after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Georgia a month ago.

In introducing the new defense minister, the Georgian satrap also praised his predecessor, Bacho Akhalaia, who is now the country's interior minister, for managing "to fully clean" Georgia's armed forces of "hesitant elements with an old-style of mindset, who were ready to ally themselves with the enemy” in reference to a mutiny staged by members of a tank battalion stationed in Mukhrovani, thirty kilometers from the capital, on May 5, 2009, a day before annual NATO Cooperative Longbow/Cooperative Lancer exercises were to begin in the country. The enemy, there's no need to mention, was and remains Russia.'

Read more: The Pentagon's Proxy on Russia's Southern Border: Georgia Gets New U.S.-Approved Defense Chief