An October Surprise is a trick common in American presidential campaigns: an event is engineered to block an opposition success or to create a crisis that will distract the public's attention.
Examples: the Republicans blocked the Vietnam peace agreement in 1968 or the release of hostages in Iran in 1980.
Conn Hallinan, in Georgia on my Mind, Counterpunch, writes in
http://www.counterpunch.org/ as follows:
U.S. trainers say they had no inkling that the Georgians were going to attack Ossetia, a denial that is hard to swallow given the buildup of ammunition, armored vehicles, and supplies that the Georgians must have made in preparation for the invasion. It strains credibility to think that U.S. advisors did not know what was up, but if they did not, it bespeaks a sobering level of incompetence on the American military side.
The Israelis are not so coy.
According to the DEBKA File, a publication close to the Israeli military and intelligence agencies, Israeli advisors “were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian Army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital.”...
Shortly before Georgia attacked, the Russians tried to get a resolution through the UN Security Council calling on Ossetia and Georgia to renounce the use of force. The U.S., Britain, and Saakashvili torpedoed it. Why?
Might the U.S. have snookered the Georgians into making an attack Washington knew would end in disaster? Political commentator Robert Scheer suggests the war was a neocon election ploy aimed at getting John McCain elected president. On one level the charge seems far-fetched, but as Scheer points out, the McCain campaign is filled with neocons and Georgia boosters, and some of McCain’s recent statements seem as if they were lifted from the depths of the Cold War.
Is the Georgia War the “October surprise” for the fall elections as Scheer suggests? The Republicans need a crisis so they can argue that only McCain has the experience to handle it. The Iran bugaboo is wearing thin, and the polls show overwhelming opposition to a war with Teheran. China is playing nice, and, in any case, it is not a good idea to pick a fight with someone who can call in its loans and bankrupt you.
But there is always the big, bad Russian bear.
