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One thing I'd like to clear up: I strongly believe that what was one of Russia's more primary motives for overwhelming the Republic of Georgia, when the window of opportunity opened up, was more simply to punish the Georgians for seeking NATO membership while at the same time sending a message to other former Soviet Union satellites that are now independent to not make the same mistake(s) as Georgia did. On the issue of resources I'm pretty sure that Russia has more than enough (not even including its ties to other major producers of natural resources), so it would not be valid to virtually exploit the smaller Georgian army and its people.
From a completely strategic perspective, the Russians played brilliantly by providing the South Ossetians Russian citizenship/passports in advance. Politically, with Georgia's initial attack on South Ossetia, Russian intervention was almost guaranteed and to an extent, "justified" for having "truly" made a number of the region's people "Russians" through their means. It was just a matter of what kind of intervention they would deal and in what form/shape.
Either the Georgian higher-ups completely undermined the Russian reaction or the Russians did an extremely good gob of being deceitful with their intentions to get the Georgians to launch their initial attack that invoked such an overwhelming response.
If the Russians don't stop at Gori, it could very well be the end of the Republic of Georgia as we know it. The real losers to come out of this, however, will be the people displaced/with their lives torn apart. I guess it's inevitable when it comes to these kinds of things, but the mere fact that it came to this to begin with is quite unfortunate. Hopefully they may get past it and develop even further once this conflict ends.
I'm not sure why these U.S.-NATO - Russian tensions still exist today. I don't think either side would have anything to gain from completely obliterating the other. I really hope it's not as simple as a matter of pride/dwelling on the past because I would forever despise such people who would be like that and still call themselves politicians.
In any case, on a side, military note, the Russians haven't been actively using any of their Flankers in this conflict. At most we've been hearing about the shooting down of Su-25s (Frogfoots; relatively old) and other TU- bomber models. But yeah, whatever Russia does after the fall of Gori will pretty much determine the future of the Georgian people.
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