U.S. is flying Georgian troops into battle zone

Via the Times:

US aircraft have started to fly some of Georgia’s 2,000 troops in Iraq back home to join the fight in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq said today.

“The flights are ongoing to redeploy the elements of the Georgian contingent so that they can deal with the security issues in their country,” General Petraeus told The Times in an interview at his office inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.

He said measures were already in place to mitigate the impact on operations in Iraq of the sudden departure of the soldiers.

“We can accommodate that. Obviously it was not expected but it is something, the effects of which we can certainly mitigate.”