Those Georgian soldirs are also being reequipped in Iraq and Afghanistan by the US. The US has tasked at least one Burke-class destroyer to the Black Sea and has use of the port at Burgas. Which is only some 25 miles from the Bulgarian flagged joint US base at Aytos. Aytos is very important as it has a cement runway outside of the city that is capable of handling dozens of flights a day and has a 15,000 ft runway.

And at any one time there is at least a regiment of the Army being retrained and refitted there at any time. Sometimes there is at least a brigade sized presence there. The US may not be directly supporting the Georgians but they have enough tactical assets in the area to give the Russians pause and the Georgians with a large strategic chip in play.

Here's the link to Caroline Glick. http://www.carolineglick.com/e/

Ok, I'll bite. What is the "...true story of the statue?"

I should have suspected this grand and secret true story would of course be bogus and borrowed from a comment on another blog. A dinner party was held in France in 1865 where some kind of monumental gift was mentioned to show friendship between France and the US. Bartholdi was at that meeting and was excited about the idea but he didn't go to Egypt for another two years to work for de Lessups in the building of the Suez Canal. But the host of that party and his guests were the impetus while Bartholdi was hired to create their vision. There his vision of the size changed from grand to gigantic. It is entirely possible that a model might have been made for de Lessups and the Khedive but nothing has survived while there are models and drawings that Batholdi made that are in the posssession of both the governments of France and the US. Aside from the fact that no one really cares if there was another intent for the model as the Statue of Liberty was designed and built for America by a France that even then worried about its failure to create a stable government and that could successfully integrate large groups of people into citizenship.

Not even a A for effort here as the Sandmonkey link goes back to Wikipedia and Snopes discounts the entire theory as simply either not true or impossible to prove.

What link in French? If the idea of a gift predates the model then exactly what are you trying to prove? BTW, opinion blogs are often wrong especially if they repeat unsourced stories. And again what difference does it make where the original model came from except as a childish snub that ignores the magnamimous thought and its eventual location.

I'm still not sure what your point was except implying that perhaps the design was a leftover. The link in French is basically almost identical from the article on the Ellis Island website. But since the idea for the gift and the general idea for some kind of monumental structure came about both before Bartholi went to Egypt or made a claimed model, which doesn't really sound similar to the Statue of Liberty except for the corona, all the rest is still irrelevant. And again quoting from unfootnoted articles is simply not the way to persuade.

Just reading the links you posted as they are generally so inaccurate they contradict themselves and they certainly contradict the original insult.

Wrong about what? Read what I said again, if read in the first place, and show me where I was wrong?

And this quote would indicate that there might have been a model made for the lighthouse but the idea for the gift was before the model. " It is entirely possible that a model might have been made for de Lessups and the Khedive but nothing has survived..."

If you're going to accuse someone of being wrong then maybe it might be a good idea to make sure that what you're complaining about is really what they said.