They were clearly outmaneuvered by Putin, but Whitney lays war crimes at the feet of Saakashvili and Bush:

There
are no military installations in the city of Tskhinvali. In fact, there
are no military targets at all. It is an industrial center consisting
of lumber mills, manufacturing plants and residential areas. It is also
the home to 30,000 South Ossetians. When Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili ordered the city to be bombed by warplanes and shelled by
heavy artillery last Thursday, he knew that he would be killing
hundreds of civilians in their homes and neighborhoods. But he ordered
the bombing anyway.

There
was no "Battle of Tskhinvali"; that's another fiction. A battle
implies that there is an opposing force that is resisting or fighting
back. That's not the case here. The Georgian army entered the city
unopposed; after all, how can unarmed civilians stop armed units. Most
of the townspeople had already fled across the border into Russia or
hid in their basements while the tanks and armored vehicles rumbled bye
firing at anything that moved.

What
took place in South Ossetia on August 7, was not an invasion or a
siege; it was a massacre. The people had no way to defend themselves
against a fully-equipped modern army.  It was a war crime.

For the
most part, Americans are still in the dark about what really happened
last weekend. There's a great video circulating on the Internet by a
Russian citizen that has been living in USA for the last 10 years. He
sums up the role of the US media with great precision. He says, "The
western media--especially CNN--is feeding you complete horseshit.
Russia did not invade Georgia first."  The youtube can be seen here: