Thank goodness, they might be thinking at the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, for the financial crisis. Were it not for the ever-blacker news about the Western world's economy, another scandal would be vying for the headlines – and one where the blame would be easier to apportion. It concerns our two countries' relations with Russia and the truth about this summer's Georgia-Russia war.

Over the past couple of weeks, a spate of reports has appeared in the American and British media, questioning many assumptions about that war, chief among them that Russia was the guilty party. Journalists from the BBC, The New York Times and Canada's Embassy magazine, among others, travelled to South Ossetia, the region at the centre of the conflict, in an effort to establish the facts.

Not the "facts" as told by the super-slick Georgian PR machine at the time, nor the "facts" as eventually dragged from the hyper-defensive and clod-hopping communicators of the Kremlin. But the

The attack was motivated by oil - as usual - specifically oil pipelines. Sabre rattling by the Bush administration is a sure sign that media manipulation and outright lies are not too far off. Historically US government foreign policy has always been to protect their own interests at all costs, even if it means murdering innocent civilians as in South Ossetia.

Why? Because it derailed the "Bad Bid Bear vs. Poor little Rabbit" narrative.