Spending several days in Georgia and listening to dozens of people - international and local government officials, experts, journalists and regular people - concocted an even worse havoc for my brain than prior to arrival. I gullibly expected, like a Belgian journalist with whom we shared a minivan to Kaspi (70km north of Tbilisi), that coming on site would tidy up disparities in reports about the same events and accidents. Inaccuracy bothered us. I did believe that on-site findings, historical evidence and personal ruminations of locals would ultimately draw the true picture of what's been going on.

I was wrong. I realised that I could testify the verity only of events I witnessed and personally heard from eye witnesses. Not more. I cannot boast I can tell an authentic story of how the conflict all started, who and what prompted it. It will be told in time, when the full compendium of war documents and key facts are opened to the public. Now they are not.

For now Georgia is the land of myth-making, the product of a whirlpool of two mighty streams of propaganda - West-backed Georgian and Russian. In propaganda, pure facts do not exist. Georgian and Russian ears keep hearing divergent stories. Well, maybe some figures such as number of sunken ships and blasted bridges, hectares of forests set on fire, number of refugees and troops, amount of foreign humanitarian aid do coincide. However, to me even that's subject to doubt as even they are coming in the "relevant" selection and are as obfuscated by interpretation as to drive governmental policy home.

Locals do not refer to their news stream as propaganda, yet label the enemy's as such. On August 7, at the start of the conflict, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili halted broadcasts of Russian TV channels dismissing them as misleading. Even if he hadn't, few Georgians would care. When at war, people's minds are so emotionally inflamed by human and material loss that they'd subconsciously digest only the combination of facts and interpretation vilifying the enemy.

Russians did likewise. Russians are unaware of lootings in Georgian villages, as Georgian and international media report, but know of Georgians doing so. Georgians know of Russian broadcasts, but the Georgian government press office insists the plunderers were Russians dressed in Georgian outfits.

Russian media aired a statement of Saakashvili's wife, Dutch-born Sandra Roelofs, who, reportedly, said her husband wanted to be Georgia's next Stalin. Georgian media label Putin and Medvedev as nurturing the same ambitions.

Russians say Georgians attacked South Ossetia, a province where, in their opinion, nine in 10 citizens want independence and just as many are Russian citizens. Hence, Russian army's presence as a peacekeeping force is justified.

Georgians insist that expansionist Russia has used cunning into luring South Ossetians into citizenship and has been attempting - through forcing a referendum - to illegally annex the province. Georgia cares about its territorial integrity, hence, its march into South Ossetian land is no less justified. Saakashvili blames Russia of acting under a scenario previously enacted in Finland, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan.

According to Georgians, South Ossetians are not entitled to the land, of which they claim ownership. Rather, they believe they acted as the guests that gradually displaced their hosts. These mountain people started descending from the Caucasus only in the beginning of last century, reads the Georgian read-out of history. A 1942 census found only four South Ossete families residing in what is now the capital of the province, Tskhinvali, locals say, and evidence this with historical maps. Georgians allowed them to co-habit these territories, even mixed with them through marriages in a sign of hospitality and readiness for long-term friendship. A day, however, came when the Soviet "divide-and-rule" policy came to play. Georgians were rendered the guests and the province was named the South Ossete autonomous republic.

Russians insist Georgians were mountain people themselves and arrived at the same time, if not later, than South Ossetes.

Myth-making goes as far as for some Georgians to claim the conflict might have been resting on purely personal grounds. The word goes former Russian president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin was born in the Georgian village of Metechi to Vera Putina and not in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Severe conditions allegedly prompted her to leave her youngest son in an orphanage to later be adopted by a Russian family. They refer to Ineke Smits, a Dutch director, who shot a 52-minute documentary telling Putina's story and attempting to find evidence of Putin's Metechi origin. Putin has his revenge now, Georgians say.

Russians rack up stories from Saakashvili's past. The Georgian president, part of a trio to have triggered the Rose Revolution and change of power in 2003, is now playing solo. Why? In Tbilisi, some hinted Saakashvili was too radical to work alongside a team of more balanced people.

Even in Georgia, few believe in the official version of Zurab Zhvania's death in 2005. The mastermind of the Rose Revolution was reported to have suffocated in a small Tbilisi flat due to a gas leak. He, the father of two, was said to have been found alongside an Azeri young male, allegedly his sex partner.

Nino Burjanadze, one of the main actors during events in 2003, just stepped down.

Amid this double propaganda hullaballoo, where does truth lie? In war, where all means are justified - war of verbal manipulation too - they say the truth lies somewhere in between.

It is hard-core true, however, that the conflict found Georgia half-way through a radical economic reform. After the Soros-sponsored Rose Revolution in 2003, the country curbed energy shortages, clamped acute corruption down, lined its mountanous countryside with modern roads, hospitals and new factories. Georgia was on a steep upturn.

The Rose Revolution, however, was a watershed for Georgia's political orientation too. The upturn came after the country embraced the US, which ingratiated Georgia's allegiance with $5 billion in Millennium Challenge Account and World Bank funds; faced its allies, such as Turkey, while turning its back on Russia. Through new roads and railroads, Georgia planned to connect to Turkey in what would be its new link to the outer world.

What is more, US graduate Saakashvili-led Georgia planned to tie itself to the West only for good by pursuing membership of Nato and the EU.

To Russia, its immediate neighbour, this naturally was a no-go situation. Though it continued to penetrate the country through joint venture and offshore companies hiding the Russian origin of financing, it had its pride hurt.

In an unsustainable situation like this, with two great powers sandwiching tiny Georgia with bids for guardianship, the conflict was inevitable. Yet few lay people suspected an armed conflict. Neither could anyone - even think-tanks - predict that the West would intervene. In the run-up to August 7, the US and Europe had stated Russia, in immediate proximity, should handle the matter on its own.

No more. The Georgian story turned into a Gordian knot, the reason for great powers' strategic realignment. Some even spoke of Cold War rekindling, with Russia "the agressor" as the old new enemy. Russia, through president Dmitry Medvedev, said it stands ready to cut relations with the North-atlantic Alliance, however reluctant it is to do so. US' verbiage sharpened no less.

In the meantime, the resolution of the Georgian conflict is nowhere in sight because inter-ethnic confrontation, at the core of the problem, was left to fester for years. South Ossetes and Georgians are unlikely to mix again any time soon. Just yesterday, August 25, the Georgian government press office reported South Ossetes took control of Akhalgori, with 95 per cent of population being ethnic Georgian. They requested that inhabitants either get Russian passports or leave.

I wonder what Russian media are reporting of Georgian troops in South Ossetia. This is just one of a series of reports on inter-ethnic strife unleashing.

Myth-making in Georgia continues.