The Airlift

Found this dispatch referencing the US airlift of Georgian troops Putin's criticized, and I've got to say that it troubles me that our military is taking this active a role in the conflict:

A US military aircraft on Monday delivered Georgian soldiers home from Iraq as reinforcements in the Ossetia war.

The air force C5 cargo plane carried elements of Georgia's 13th Infantry Battalion, accounted by its desert combat experience and US training to be Georgia's most effective combat force.

Georgian media offered contradictory reports as to whether one or more US cargo planes had arrived at Tbilisi International airport.

A Deutsche Presse-Agentur reporter in central Tbilisi saw a single C5 Galaxy cargo jet departing the vicinity at a high angle normally used to avoid possible missile fire.

Russian bombers over the last three days have struck a military airfield next to Tbilisi's civilian airport, once when a US cargo plane was on the ground roughly a kilometre distant.

It was unclear what portion of the Georgian infantry brigade in Iraq had returned to Georgia. Georgia prior to the airlift had some 2,000 men stationed in Iraq.

The rated capacity of a C5 is some 120 tons.