Tbilisi  - "Georgia would have to be crazy to go to war with Russia, and we are not crazy," President Mikheil Saakashvili told a reporter from Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a May interview.

Saakashvili's analysis - the first half of it at least - was certainly proven accurate by August's South Ossetia War. Russia's army demolished Georgia in a lightning campaign, as the biggest gamble of the Georgian leader's life came up a bust.

The South Ossetians and Georgians had fought once before, in 1991. By the summer of 2008, Saakashvili and the Kremlin were in open conflict over control of South Ossetia, a renegade Georgian province boasting de facto independence with its government defying Tbilisi's right even to set foot in the region.

The Georgian-South Ossetian frontier heated up in the early days of August, with Saakashvili's press staff compiling lists almost every day about shootings and mortar fire into Georgian villages from South Ossetia.

The South Ossetian version of events differed wildly, with Eduard Koikoty, the region's leader, denying that most of the firefights had even taken place. He accused Georgia's secret police of masquerading as Ossetians and shooting back into Georgia, so as to give Saakashvili a pretext for invasion.

What is nonetheless clear is that on the evening and night of Thursday, August 7, pretext or no, the Georgians did invade.

Georgian infantry columns trained by US special forces rumbled north, along with brand new NATO standard artillery and armoured cars and hundreds of Georgian police in Rambo bandanas. The armed advance was necessary, Saakashvili said, to bring peace to the region.

The Georgian lunge was, by no coincidence, a repeat of two earlier Saakashvili military gambles. Twice, in 2004 and 2006, Georgian troops overran renegade regions bloodlessly to bring them under Georgian control.

Indeed, the return of the Adjara and Kodri districts were Saakashvili's greatest foreign policy coups and the keystone of his initially wide popularity: Georgia's President was seen by Georgians to be reuniting the country.

But when Saakashvili rolled the geopolitical dice on South Ossetia, it turned out his opponents were prepared.

The five-plane Georgian air force launched a pair of bombers to block a critical road tunnel connecting South Ossetia with Moscow through the mountains. Russian missiles shot them down.

Georgian artillery and rocket launchers pounded the South Ossetian capital Tskinvali, leveling the city centre in an attempt to destroy a regiment of Russian paratroopers wearing peacekeeper uniforms stationed there. The Russian infantry held.

By the third day of the war hundreds of Russian tanks and thousands of veterans from Chechnya were rolling into South Ossetia.

Russian Marines landed on Georgia's sea coast, against negligible Georgian opposition. Saakashvili had started a war against Russia, it turned out, with roughly one-third of the Georgian army stationed in Iraq as part of the US-led occupation force there.

Saakashvili mobilized Georgia's reserves, only to discover they were poorly equipped, badly trained, and, for the most part, unwilling to fight. Tens of thousands of refugees clogged Georgia's roads. The Georgian army dissolved, abandoning weapons and vehicles.

Russia's air force ranged more or less freely over Georgia, striking bridges and military bases. Russia's navy sank half the Georgian navy in a short action in the Black Sea, captured the other half, and then scuttled it.

Saakashvili's long-crafted public image as Georgia's first warrior crumbled as quickly as Georgian morale. Two YouTube videos surfaced, one showing the President nervously chewing his tie. The second had Saakashvili crouching behind a pile of bullet-proof vests and looking fearful, as his panicked bodyguards ran to-and-fro after hearing a Russian jet in the distance.

By the last day of the war, August 11, Georgian propaganda had forgotten the alleged need for "peace in South Ossetia." The argument became that Georgia was a victim of Russian aggression.

Russian tank columns, meanwhile, ranged deep into Georgia, with one spearhead halting only 30 kilometres short of the capital.

The Russians dragged their feet on leaving Georgia, and for the next month systematically blew up or carted back to Russia Georgian tanks, cannon, and firearms. They argued that a disarmed Georgia could not invade South Ossetia again.

By the end of the year, Georgia's hopes of joining NATO were in tatters, foreign investors were fleeing, the Kodori valley was lost, and Russian forces were dug in throughout South Ossetia, now independent as far as the Kremlin was concerned.

But even worse for Saakashvili and his political future, was what Georgians nationwide had taken to calling his disastrous South Ossetia gamble: "Saakashvili's War." (dpa)