For Nos. 1-4, click here.

5) Iran admits to having nuclear weapons

The dominant issue in the election at the moment is the economy, and it’s an issue the Democrats are winning on, all the way down the ticket to congressional races. Senator McCain’s earlier admission in the primary season that he ‘doesn’t really understand the economy’ and his failure so far to produce a detailed economic plan beyond ‘I’m going to balance the budget and cut taxes,’ hasn’t helped.

Nevertheless, in spite of public feeling towards the war in Iraq and Obama’s trenchant opposition to the war foreign policy is an issue that McCain dominates. It’s partly a question of biography (he’s a POW if you didn’t notice from the 60% of his nomination acceptance speech that mentioned this) but it’s also a question of Senate experience and voters’ traditional confidence in Republicans on issues of security.

If Iran was conclusively found to have nuclear weapons America would be forced to respond. Bush might – West Wing-style – leave the next President with a new war to fight, he might bide his time with economic sanctions, diplomacy, and UN negotiations. Either way, this would be of tremendous help to the Republicans.

Of course, as with a lot of these surprises timing is everything. Should this happen on the eve of the Vice-Presidential debate for example, Biden’s foreign policy expertise will ensure that the debate is car-crash television. The best hope of success for the Republican ticket with this ‘October surprise’ would be it happening before the foreign policy Presidential debate, or near the end of October, so Obama has no time left to dissuade typical voter reactions to security issues.

Would help: Republicans

6) Major breakdown in situation in Iraq

This would really throw open the race, not least because it wouldn’t necessarily automatically benefit either side. On the one hand, McCain has really owned the Iraq issue in the last few weeks and the sudden breakdown in the situation with throw his claims that the ‘surge’ has worked. On the other hand however, it would also throw Obama’s plan to set a timetable for full withdrawal within 16 months. McCain could criticise the Democratic nominee by pointing out that Iraq isn’t stable enough for withdrawal and that the plan to begin handing back power to the Iraqi government has been rushed; but Obama could just as easily suggest that the GOP’s judgement with the ‘surge’ wasn’t all he’s talked it up to be and a reminder of the disastrous state of the Iraq war would surely boost support for the man who opposed it from the start.

Perhaps the ace in the pack here is Senator Biden. While Palin wouldn’t be able to weigh in on the issue without highlighting her complete lack of foreign policy experience, a breakdown in current tactics could well throw fresh support by Biden’s long-touted plan to split the country in three, leaving almost autonomous Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite areas. That could be enough to ensure this surprise would benefit the Democrats.

Would help: Democrats, probably

7) Terrorist attack on US domestic soil

In the same way that a McCain health scare would be game over for the Republicans, a terrorist attack would, in all likelihood,

Slogans of hope and change, and the promise of a fresh young face would, I feel, be wiped out should a terrorist attack take place on US soil, especially if it is linked to Al-Qaeda. In times of vulnerability voters generally become more conservative, they turn to what they know. Expect the familiar face of an experienced, ex-military man with the slogan ‘Country First’ to be irresistible. For many Americans (80% at the current count) President Bush has taken the country in the wrong direction. However, he has nevertheless succeeded in one key respect – he’s kept the country safe since 9/11. Republicans still have a huge edge amongst voters on security issues, and I can’t see Americans being ready to elect a foreign-born, foreign-looking man with the middle name Hussein in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist atrocity, as irrational as that may be.

A failed or foiled attack would have a similar (though weaker) effect of swinging the election to McCain’s favour but would not quite be game over for the Democrats. More likely, and still damaging for the Obama-Biden ticket, would be if the US government were to raise the colour-coded threat level in October as happened in 2004.

Would help: Republicans

The unknown

Of course, the reason politicians fear an ‘October surprise’ is because they’re so-called because they’re not predicted and they’re not planned for.

The biggest game changer of all could be something no-one sees coming. We’ll just have to wait and see.

It’s a phrase that strikes fear into the heart of every US political consultant and campaign manager: the ‘October surprise.’

Here, in order of their likelihood, are four events which would shake up the race and potentially decide who will be the next President of the United States of America. Nos. 5-7 to follow in Part Two.

1) Major Palin scandal

Given the apparent lack of vetting of Governor Palin by the McCain campaign, a fresh scandal or revelation about the 44-year-old is the most likely ‘October surprise.’ Indeed, there is one revelation we can already count on. The result of an independent investigation into ‘Troopergate‘ will be released on October 10. Should the report contain significant criticism of Palin, her anti-establishment, reformer credentials will be out of the window. This one is already worrying certain Republicans – they’re currently attempting to derail the investigation.

There are other potential scandals floating around too. The National Enquirer has run allegations that Palin had an affair. Normally, of course, the Enquirer isn’t taken very seriously, but since their success with outing the Edwards affair earlier this year the mainstream media is required to take a second look. Currently there is no evidence for the affair but should conclusive proof come to light expect the Republican base to fall out of love with the Alaskan Governor fast.

Any major Palin scandal would lead to questions about whether McCain will drop her from the ticket, Eagleton-style. That will depend on the nature of the scandal, and the proximity to the election and, whilst betting markets show that nearly 20% think there is a chance of that happening at the moment, it is very unlikely since it would almost certainly doom McCain’s chances of success. Regardless of whether he drops her, a Palin scandal would significantly harm the Republican ticket, leading to questions about McCain’s own judgement, as well as the electability of Governor Palin.

Would help: Democrats

2) New Osama bin Laden tape

Al-Qaeda has a habit of timing events to foreign elections. Whilst a terrorist attack on US soil would have a bigger impact, more likely is the release of a fresh video or audio tape from Osama bin Laden discussing the American election. He did exactly that in 2004, with the CIA’s own analysis suggesting it was intended to help the re-election of President Bush.

The release of a new bin Laden tape is anticipated and expected to the extent that some commentators have suggested that the absence of such a tape in October should be taken as demonstrating that he favours an Obama presidency. It’s unlikely that he does. After all, he wanted a continuation the Bush term in 2004, and a continued US presence in Iraq helps al-Qaeda recruitment and fund-raising. A tape would highlight fears that the Democratic nominee is not ready to stand up to terrorists, with the Republicans (as is traditional) enjoying a boost in votes.

Would help: Republicans

3) Obama assassination attempt

It’s been a major – and largely unspoken – fear since Senator Obama first announced his candidacy.

He received Secret Service protection earlier than any other Presidential candidate in history. Whilst the apparent assassination threat to Obama from the arrests in Denver turned out not to be credible, a genuine one, particularly late in the race, would be a major ‘October surprise.’

Assessing the impact of an attempt is not clear-cut, since the circumstances and nature of the event would be important factors. A foiled or failed attack would probably remind voters of the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy, and of the personal risk he was taking in running. Republicans would no longer be able to publicly suggest he is not patriotic enough and there would likley be an increase in sympathy votes. However, depending on the ideology behind the attack, it could also bring security issues to the fore, aiding the Republicans. Overall though candidates tend to gain when they suffer personally (as Obama’s failed 2000 bid for Bobby Rush’s congressional seat can testify). A failed assassination attempt would likely help Obama and might therefore spark all kinds of right-wing ‘he did it himself’ conspiracy theories.

Would help: Democrats, probably

4) McCain health scare

Taking inspiration from The West Wing, a health scare for the 72-year-old, cancer surviving, ex-POW Republican nominee is not beyond the realms of possibility. This should be a big fear for Republicans because any health scare significant enough to require disclosure to the public and/or time off the campaign trail will pretty much mean game over, especially if it’s fresh in voters’ minds come November 4. Expect a major drop-off in GOP votes if such an event forces voters to seriously consider whether Governor Palin is experienced enough to take over as President.

Would help: Democrats

Expect Part Two with Nos. 5-7 tomorrow.

“This is …the Dahiya.”

The road out of the Downtown Beirut snakes through an underpass. Going further into the urban area, the buildings start to crumble. The electric wiring is hanging off the tenements and the structures are peppered by bullet marks. It’s as if a stone-eating strain of leprosy has infected South Beirut. The streets are full of filth and heavy with dust.

“This is…is Hezbollah-city.”

A group of men in brown  fatigues are checking people’s documents under an over-pass. Arabic graffiti curls along the walls, the lettering turning into a fist holding a Kalashnikov. The emblem of Hezbollah. Posters of a soldier in the shadows stamping on the Star of David hang from roof-tops. Veiled and bearded crowds are bustling past.

“They don’t look like policemen.” They have uniforms here, like anywhere else.

“No…No…they are Hezbollah. Helping…with traf-fic.”

The brown slum blocks suddenly give way to a vast rubble square.

“That’s where Hezbollah HQ was…and over there…was where Iman Fadlallah lived…and…”

I’m not listening. As we drive through the maze-like streets we see spaces where whole apartment blocks just aren’t there anymore.

“But we’ll build it better than before…the Jews better realise…we’ll take out all their Tel Aviv…in time…”

Anas is my taxi-driver. He has one arm and cranes round the wheel to show me around his part of town. The other arm was blown up by the IDF during skirmishes in the ‘90s – he tells me.

“My two brothers are dead fighting the Ya-hoodi…I love Hassan Nasrallah…I take you meet my brother.”

The old BMW swerves slightly and we file through traffic down a main street. On the lampposts hang placards each bearing the stern faces of martyrs. We pull up by a petrol-station and stop.

“There is…Anwar.”

I look around at the pumps and a laughing teenage mechanic juggling with a spanner. Anas grabs me, gruffly – and points at a lamppost placard above my head.

“There he is.”

Finally then, after several days of spotlight-stealing teases, McCain has named his vice presidential nominee.

Ladies and gentlemen meet Sarah Palin.

The press seem to be picking up the fact that she was once runner up for Miss Alaska, but there’s a lot more to her than that.

She’s 44, just over a year into her first term as Governor of Alaska and she’s everything a Republican could want in a woman – she’s fiercly pro-life, a lifetime member of the NRA, and even includes hunting and eating moose-burgers in her hobbies.

In her short time in politics she’s already got a reputation as a fierce reformer. She blew the whistle of Republican corruption, sold the Governorship’s private jet on her first day in office and has passed agressive ethics reform legislation.

In fact, she’s pretty similar to Obama in terms of experience and the legislation she’s passed.

There’s one school of thought that says that Palin’s inexperience is going to mean McCain can no longer attack Obama as inexperienced.

Indeed, that’s the main reason she was relatively overlooked by the press – Romney, Pawlenty, Ridge and Crist was the most widely advertised shortlist.

It’s not actually an argument I fully buy. Yes, Vice President is one a heartbeat away from the Presidency itself (and in McCain’s case that’s a particularly legitimate concern given that today is his 72nd birthday), but there’s still a big difference between who is at the top of the ticket and who is at the bottom. Obama started running for President 18 months after becoming a Senator, Palin is just a running mate. In the same way that Biden shores up Obama’s foreign policy credentials, McCain shores up Palin’s relative inexperience.

More importantly, in picking Sarah Palin, McCain appears to be changing the whole campaign narrative; he’s redefining the whole reason to put a cross next to his name on the ballot come November 4. McCain is casting himself as the maverick, a reformer who is going to bring four more years of Bush policies. It’s a narrative that’s going to require a redrawing of Obama’s attempts to pain McCain as “McSame.”

Picking Palin is not only a bold attempt to appeal to disaffected Clinton voters, and women generally (though judging from the initial reaction on the web that’s not going to work so well – she’s no Hillary Clinton, not least because she is opposed to abortion; it’s also a bold attempt to redraw the race.

She’s everything Obama’s Biden pick isn’t. She’s unconventional, unexpected, a genuine Washington outsider, a reformer. And whilst that brings flipsides too – she has zero foreign policy experience and we’ve no idea how she’s going to perform against Biden in the veep debate – overall I think it’s an exciting and very brave pick.

Last night Obama brought out some tough talk to challenge McCain’s solid Republican policies. From tonight, he’s going to have to fight to keep hold of the ‘change’ brand.

4.00am – Ok, just over 45 minutes later and it’s done. Some initial thoughts:

In short, a very grounded, policy-focused speech, as we’d been led to expect. For the first time Obama really took McCain on this evening, addressing issues that have previously been left to Republicans – foreign policy in particularly, but also abortion and gun control. Tonight Obama showed he could talk tough.

Obama addressed pretty much everything that’s been levelled against him by the GOP so far. In countering the ‘celebrity’ charge we got something a bit different to his standard biography. Obama grounded his story this time much more in the story of his family, his World War II grandfather was prominent for example. He also addressed his perceived lack of experience, his foreign policy judgement. At the same time there was a hearty dose of offence. McCain gaffes and slip ups from throughout the campaign were borught up, including the comment by McCain’s senior economic adviser that the economic slowdown was a mental recession and that America is “a nation of whiners,” something which hasn’t been part of the media narrative for a long time.

Near the end there was an attempt to reclaim patriotism as a concept that knows no party lines, and Obama then launched into a pitch for Independents and Republicans. He talked through the big cultural issues that have been drawn on tightly partisan lines in the past – gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage – and reiterated his 2004 promise, that (to paraphrase) “there is no red America and no blue America, there is a United States of America.” It’s going to be harder for McCain to go negative after this evening with Obama suggesting that the candidate who can only tell voters to run away from the other candidate, is a candidate that brings nothing new.

In spite of Obama’s promise to avoid character attacks (‘we can disagree on policy without attacking character’) McCain’s long stay in Washington got a mention as did his famously short temper. Most of all, we got a hint of the inspirational power that has taken Obama all the way to becoming the first African-American to receive the nomination of a major American political party alongside a sense that he is ready to take the fight to McCain. Tonight he laid out his vision for the country in detail and made it clear that he’s tired of McCain’s attempt to define the campaign as a referendum on Obama and that he’s ready to debate the issues. Obama redefined himself in terms of his policies rather than just his biography.

3.12am – And here, to an adoring chorus of 84,000 flag-waving supporters, is the man himself. It’s game time.

2.55am – Senator Dick Durbin’s up. He’s the man who also introduced Barack for the 2004 DNC keynote speech, back when it all began.

2.40am – For those who can’t wait Obama’s prepared remarks are out. I’m going to wait to hear it from the man himself so no comments on it for the time being.

2.25am – And we’re going off schedule for a suprise visit by Joe Biden to explain why the Democrats have moved the convention to Invesco Field – int: it’s to make it ‘more open.’ Oh, and Wolf Blitzer assures me that Elvis is in the building.

In other news, the McCain campaign has kindly told reporters he won’t be leaking the name of his VP pick tonight. Of course, the suggestion that he was going to leak it in the first place came from the McCain campaign and it’s been a pretty sucessful way of getting into the media coverage on what should have been a day of back-to-back Barack discussion.

2.10am – Susan Eisenhower’s just finishing off her speech. Not long to go now. Only Senator Dick Durbin is scheduled to speak between Eisenhower and Obama. Look out too for a video by the director of An Inconvenient Truth who has been following Obama around the country.

1.15am – Well, here we are. After a long absence for a bit of r & r I’m back to liveblog Senator Obama’s historic acceptance speech. So far at the Democratic National Convention we’ve had Michelle’s biography lesson, Hillary’s attempt to instruct her 18 million voters to back Obama, Bill Clinton’s much more convincing attempt (he gave, you know, actual reasons to back Barack) and Joe Biden’s veep acceptance speech in which he basically ignored his prepared remarks.

Tonight the weight of expectation really is on Obama. We’ve seen great speeches from him in the past, but tonight has to be much more than that. Today is the 45th anniversary to the day of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech and the 15,000 Democrat delegates along with nearly 65,000 local ticket holders have all moved from the Pepsi Centre to the Denver Broncos’ Invesco Field for the nomination speech, just to really push home the historic nature of the speech. Perversely, for all the praise his speeches have received in the past, tonight’s can’t be too lofty. The Republicans have been reasonably successful in branding Obama as a celebrity who can give great speeches, but doesn’t understand the real concerns of voters. This evening we can therefore expect less lofty rhetoric, and a greater attempt to address the economic woes of everyday Americans.

Obama’s due up at 3am but in the meantime expect Al Gore, Bill Richardson (who got bumped yesterday for the Obama ‘suprise’ visit) and a host of video tributes to Martin Luther King. That’s not to mention Will.i.am doing his ‘Yes, we can’ song live, and – even as I write – Shania Twain is playing.

You can follow the convention live on CNN if you have cable, or on the internet democrats.org has a great high quality feed.

In the meantime, if you go here you can watch McCain’s latest ad, an attempt to enter today’s media narrative by speaking straight to camera and congratulating Obama on tonight’s speech.

If you go to fivethirtyeight.com, you can take a look at a great polling site which currently gives Obama a 57.5% chance of winning. More importantly, it also analyses the latest Gallup daily tracker which shows the start of the ‘convention bump.’ Obama has opened up a six-point lead and this is based on data collected over Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That means that 1/3 of the data came before the convention started and this data doesn’t include reactions to Bill Clinton or Joe Biden yesterday so expect a bigger bump in the next few days. Nate Silver, from fivethirtyeight.com, previously predicted from historical data that there wouldn’t be a bounce until the third day and that the average bounce is six-points. As the polls were tied up nationally going into the convention it appears that Obama has achieved that already – although obviously there is a margin of error.

And lastly, if you keep refreshing drudgereport.com you can see if McCain really will be leaking his veep nominee tonight (but don’t hold your breath on that one – I’m 99% sure he’ll be announcing tomorrow at 11am ET as planned).

An open-back military truck pulls up. At first the Figaro and the Sunday Times think the people onboard are refugees. A short brown man in a T-shirt jumps off. “Who are you, what you want?” He’s shouting. “You’re journalists? Get on the truck and I’ll show you the destroyed villages and take you to Ossetia.” I don’t have a moment to wonder what the fuck is going on. Five minutes later I’m in the open-back of a truck filled with professional journalists hitting 60 km/h on the dust track to the mountains.

The New York Times guy has the eyes of a drug-addict. We are chatting about Putin when he notices the boss is shouting to speed-up. “This you first war…?” I nod politely. I travelled around Iraqi Kurdistan, but it wasn’t like this. “You smell that?” A deep rot fills my nostrils as we enter a village. Somebody whistles in the truck. All the journalist have smelt it. Cameramen rush to the side of the truck trying to get shots. The Russian Colonel standing in the back with us starts shouting something incomprehensible. We swerve round another corner and grind to a halt.

The boss shouts at us to jump out of the truck and we clamber out. “This is a damaged Georgian village. We want to explain that the damage was caused gas-leaks, accidents, criminals, and some cases of arson.” The Guardian reporter looks at him. “Sacha are you telling me that thinking I’ll believe it.” He snaps something in Russian to the Colonel. “Sacha I speak Russian. You can’t throw me off the truck and leave me here.” He screws up his face. “You have twenty minutes. Watch out for bombs. You know what your doing.”

I follow six cameramen as they rush into a burnt out building. Devastation is in the details. It’s the shards of glass, the burnt documents, the smashed plates, the torched items of daily life. We hear wailing from the top floor. The camera men rush up the stairs – “Watch out for cluster bombs” one shouts. I follow in his footsteps. An elderly women in simple peasant clothes is shrieking. It’s clear there wasn’t a gas-leak here. As the camera-men snap she screams louder in terror and begins to panic. The Italian shouts, “she’s useless, too much screaming.” They rush off – there is a destraught grandmother outside. I stand there watching these men swarming like bees round honey. I step back slowly and run down the stairs.

Outside I follow another journo into a shelled house. Imagine you put a building through a blender – all your possessions shredded and crushed up under a pile of rubble. I stand there picking up pieces of a plate in what used to be a kitchen. The Figaro finds something. “Oh, look a bullet casing.” He chucks it away nonchalantly.

Sacha the boss is screaming. “Your time is up. Your time is up.” In front of the trucks an old women is being pursued by eight flash-photographers and trying to get away. On the truck the guys show off pictures of her terrorised face. “Make a great front page…this one.” The truck bobs along the valley, spraying a trail of dust behind us onto the mini-van behind. A reporter for Le Monde is smoking a cigarette and puts on his Raybans. “Beautiful day…look that’s a rocket launch.” A trail of smoke lights a distant corner of the valley. He flicks the Marlboro out onto an abandoned field. The tools are still left where the people dropped them as they ran away.

Rising peaks of the Caucasus mountains are up in front. I start to feel like a tourist. I feel the grin of the Le Monde guy pulling across my face. There are some sand-bags ahead and another group of tanks. The excitement in the truck is palpable. The photographers jump, jostle and swear at each other as they try and snap more pictures.

The truck pulls into a village-town. Tskhinvali – the ‘capital.’ It’s wretched. Sacha is shouting. “Out, out.” My feet land on a street that simply isn’t there anymore. Buildings have been punched open, walls have collapsed. The Le Monde guy gestures to me; “Let’s not listen to Sasha’s bullshit. Follow me.” We wander down a side-street. The roofs of the hovels of the Ossetian’s have been ripped off. A man with a massive gash across his skull wanders up to us. He doesn’t even speak Russian. He points to his head and then to a wreck. We follow him. I have seen countless pictures of charred teddy-bears. He picks one off the ruin of his house and thrusts it into my hands. The he points at the fruit he was saving for the summer in jars. Rotten. “Enough of him” decides Le Monde.

We enter into a shack. A short Ossetian women shows us her home. Her Russian breaks down after the words – “they did it…” Her husband sleeps on a filthy bed in the corner, she doesn’t wake him up. A little child wanders in. His arm is bandaged. I am feeling a little bored. Another one. I catch myself, shake my head a little.

“Your time is up. Get out. We need to leave.” Sacha is pacing around frantically shouting at a General through his Nokia. “Just do it…We’ll be there in twenty minutes.” He clears his throat and spits into the shards of glass beneath his feet.

We swerve out of Tskhinvali onto the road further up the mountains. A few burnt out tanks are permanently parked under some plain trees. It stinks. I swallow but it stays in my mouth. The Colonel shouts – “This Khetagurovo.”

I am still bad at climbing off the truck. Maybe I’m too short but when I land on the floor I slip on some bullet casing and whack my head into the dust-track. There are barely any houses but they are all pock-marked and some windows are blackened. There’s been a fire. Sacha is explaining how ‘Russia’ sees what happens. The New York Times journalist bends over. “Ak-74s…interesting. Let’s go check out the post-office.” We push open the door of the shattered bureau. The safe was blown open and the floor is covered in piles and piles of Soviet era postcards. Happy Revolution Day. Pictures of Red Flags. Old Soviet pension books are ripped up and strewn in every corner. There is a sheet of glass that people who work in offices in any country place pictures under. I push off bits of burnt wood to look at the photos. The faces are staring at me. A faded colour picture of a goggle-eyed baby girl. A black and white passport photo of a young man. A school photo from the ‘50s. I don’t know why, but I pushed off the side covering and shoved them into my computer bag. I haven’t looked at them since.

On my way out an old man is lying in the dirt sucking a plastic Kvass bottle.

“Are you OK?”

He raises what appears to be his only arm and shouts. “To the great Russian people. You saved us. Saved us.” He spills the brown fluid over-himself. The Le Figaro guy looks him up and down.

“He’z di-zgust-ing.”

I follow the New York Times journo now. A brown-skinned man has latched onto him. He’s speaking slowly.

“What are their names? Where are they buried.”

I suppose this is what Poland must have looked like in the late summer of ’45.

“Can you show us? Great. Is it far?”

We trudge across a field and come to an earth pile. I didn’t see anything. It just stunk.

There are four of us in the car. The road ahead is empty and the cameraman is trying to hide his equipment as we draw up at the first checkpoint. “You…tell them you’re my brother, that we are a family going to see our aunt in Gori. Just say it in Russian…quickly. If they ask… say you’re ID is back home…on their side of the Checkpoint.” I nod. This isn’t the moment for disagreements. She gestures to the driver. “Go slower you idiot…you’ll frighten the Russians.”

He isn’t listening to Irina. He is chewing a piece of paper he tore off the corner of the daily news and is listening intently to the radio. He clutches the steering wheel tightly. Irina sighs and stuffs her press card into the little box under the dashboard. She’s in her late twenties and is wearing simple clothes to pass unnoticed by the Russians. I think she’s probably nervous too. For the past few days virtually no Georgian journalist has been allowed into Gori. To my left a French photographer is drinking a can of Sprite.

“It’s really nothing. I mean…The Russians are so polite. These Georgians don’t know what they’re talking about. They aren’t shooting the wheels off cars like the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. Seriously…boring war….this…You want some Sprite….You thirsty?”

I don’t answer. He crunches the can and screws down the window to lob it out into some trees. The air bats my face. Brown plains and barren hills are passing by at 120 km/h. A few cows are wandering around in gloomy serenity – but I am trying to calm myself down. I thought until five minutes ago we were just going to the check-point. My stomach feels a little unsettled. Pictures of TV News flash through my head. Then I realise there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I smoke a Kent as we draw up to Russian lines. I suppose I’m trying to look ‘hard’ by pulling some kind of frown. I repeat to myself. “This is what you wanted…what you wanted.”

The Russian standard is flying 21 km from Tbilisi by a stream. Some soldiers are taking a nap. Others are re-enforcing earth dug-outs. It’s looks like their kit and attitude hasn’t changed since Life photographers snapped scenes like this is in the ‘40s. I feel like I’m inside one of those pictures. I open the car door into what I had only known from photographs. This should be in black and white. This should be 2D. The Tank is hanging over the side of the tarmac, three hastily thrown-together pieces of concrete mark the control spot. In the drizzle the Officer lumbers up and stares us up and down. A uniformed guy taps Irina’s shoulder and lifts up his early 2000’s Oakley sunglasses. There are large scars along his left-cheek. He smiles with unwashed teeth.

“Good morning….Pretty.”

So these are the ‘peace-keepers.’ You can see the Tartar in those long eyes. He holds an AK-74, spits out some phlegm and takes down the code on the number-plate. There’s no saluting, I can’t see a seniority system between these twenty-somethings. But he’s definitely in charge. Three of his men open the boot, push some stuff about and signal we can go on. They are quite polite and laugh a little idiotically when they find a bottle of cheap vodka in there. The French photographer keeps muttering under his breath. After a few minutes they let us through.

“Ridiculous. This is nothing. Not like when I was in Afghanistan -“

Irina pulls round and snaps at him. “How the hell would you feel if there were Russians soldiers – no matter how polite…21km from Paris?” He rolls his eyes and takes out some biscuits. “Want one?” He chews the chocolate all the way into Gori. He’s still being rude but has switched to French. “You see those APCs there…she’s afraid of them. I’m not. I’m a reporter…I see it almost like a toy. I want to snap it… Can’t be afraid of it….”

Tanks are loitering around the edge of the town like metal-animals. Young men are sitting on them looking rather bored. “You see…” The Frenchman mutters. “War is about waiting. That’s what you’ll learn.”

All is empty. There’s nobody home. The deserted streets eerily remind me of Christmas Day in England – just all the window panes are smashed in and a few apartment blocks are blackened. They’ve been bombed. The car bumps along the road. Irina shouts, “they used cluster bombs so be careful. You all know what they’re like.” I smile. I have no idea what a cluster bomb looks like. And rather stupidly I don’t ask. We park in the main square under the statue of Joseph Stalin. He was born in Gori – but musing about his historical legacy seems ridiculous when I can actually breathe it. Russian soldiers are on patrol so we push quickly into the Town Hall.

Soviet Baroque columns hold up a space crammed with the frightened and the confused. The wounded are sitting around dejectedly in the ante-chambers. Cuts, bandages and slings for broken arms fill the four corners of the room. As we walk up the stairs an old women is in tears. I don’t stop to ask why. The Georgian Governor is waiting for Irina.

He’s a young guy and has a nice pink shirt and a thick black desk in a room with a large conference table. Head in hands he smokes another Parliament Kingsize and coughs. Really badly. Behind him are his shelves. There are sixteen icons, a collection of knives and a framed photo of someone aiming a pistol. I Imagine he took it when war seemed like something fun. The Governor is sullen and spends most of the time scribbling down tank positions onto a map of his district and keeping an eye on the TV. Movements, pull-backs and new strikes are running along the announcement ticker.

“My country is occupied. We are resisting.”

I hear a grating laugh. Some journalists find that funny. Outside I run into the correspondents of the Figaro and the Sunday Times. These grinning men suggest I wander down to see the prisoner exchange. We arrive too late. General Borisov, the supreme Commander of Russian Forces in Gori is already leaving in his 4×4. He’s visibly drunk, is sweating profusely and speaks a foul-mouthed car-mechanics Russians. “Look guys…I’m getting my fighting boys outta here….just leaving some peacekeepers OK…? Just outside, right?” I ask him if the tanks there are going to be needed for that. He burps. Everybody pretends they didn’t notice. “Peacekeeping’s tough man. My guys are getting the fuck outta here tomorrow…. Don’t hassle me…I’m bu-sy!” The door is slammed and he hits the road. A piece of paper fell out of the door as he brutally shut it. Later that evening, the Le Monde Correspondent explains what the circles mean. It’s the new map of Georgia.

“They are occupying everything north of Gori and everything West of Senaki. For good. Or so it appears.”