houdini1984
2 hours ago
Frankly, I have no reason to believe anything that this government says about anything. Period.

With that said, let's assume that it's true. Let's assume that everything the DOJ alleges is 100% accurate. Who the hell cares? Why should I be concerned about a media company taking Russian funding and having a pro-Russian slant in their coverage? Is that more damaging to my way of life than the entirety of our media complex colluding with their Democrat counterparts? Seriously... if we're concerned about media interfering in American affairs, disrupting elections, or promoting hostile entities' interests, then indict CNN, MSNBC, and the other mainstream media outlets that routinely smear conservatives, run defense for Democrats, and rewrite history and reality every day. //

John Q. Public
an hour ago
I think there isn’t much lower than fluffing for the Russians, but what exactly is illegal about getting paid by them to do it? Any lawyers present?

Secondly, it’s almost certain this does not end with Tenet media. Some of the Pro Russia stupidity I’ve read on other prominent blogs is far too potent to be organic.

streiff John Q. Public
an hour ago
FARA and money laundering as the funds came from sanctioned sources.

GEN Jack Keene was in Fox this AM....stated that Ukraine is now occupying as much/more of Russia than Russia does Ukraine.

He then brought up "bargaining chip". //

The Russian reaction so far seems to have been a reluctance to react. There was probably a feeling that this incursion was just like the small-scale penetrations into Belgorod Oblast, particularly because the Russians hadn't received any backchannel warning from Jake Sullivan's National Security Council. When the scope became more apparent, some reaction was necessary, but the Russians were unwilling to commit the troops it would have taken to stop the Ukrainians because that would mean an end to their offensive in Donetsk. Finally, the political pressure to do something has kicked in, and we see 30,000 troops heading there. //

Learning fast streiff
2 days ago
“GEN Jack Keene was in Fox this AM....stated that Ukraine is now occupying as much/more of Russia than Russia does Ukraine.”
Gen Keene after …Ukraine….at 4:05 qualified his statement with “….in the last several months.”
The omitted qualification gives a completely different meaning to the statement.

I'm still seeing this as a very opaque operation where, as was the popular saying on night convoy operations in the Army, "I don't know where we are but we're making good time." //

Seveer of the 95th rifles @Seveerity
·
The russians released helicopter guncam footage of them taking out a convoy with guided missiles.

Their own convoy.
Embedded video
1:17 PM · Aug 14, 2024

The U.S. Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to issue letters of marque and reprisal (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11), providing a legal foundation for privateering. This concept remains an option under U.S. law. //

Engaging privateers to target the Russian ghost fleet could also have the secondary effect of incentivizing international shippers to register under the U.S. flag. The prospect of U.S. Navy protection against potential retaliation by Russia or other adversarial powers would be a significant draw for these companies. Currently, U.S.-flagged vessels are entitled to the protection of the U.S. Navy, providing a security assurance that can be crucial in unstable maritime environments.

This shift could bolster the U.S. merchant marine fleet, enhance national security, and ensure better compliance with international laws and sanctions. Moreover, a larger U.S.-flagged fleet would create a more robust logistical network — absolutely vital in deterring the PRC across the vast expanse of the Pacific.

Such symptoms are consistent with exposure to elemental mercury, the liquid or "quicksilver" version of mercury sometimes used in thermometers. According to the Cleveland Clinic, this form of mercury is "usually harmless if you touch or swallow it because its slippery texture won’t absorb into your skin or intestines." But if you breathe in any of it, watch out—symptoms occur "immediately" and can include coughing, breathing trouble, nausea, bleeding gums, and a "metallic taste in your mouth."

How Did It Happen?

You don't give the Tsar unpleasant information. The invasion of Ukraine unfolded the way it did because the FSB directorate responsible for intelligence in Ukraine gave optimistic reports about the desire of Ukraine for an Anschluss and said the Ukrainian Army would not fight. According to Bloomberg, something similar happened this time.

Gerasimov and top officials "seemingly dismissed intelligence warnings that Ukrainian soldiers were gathering near the border with Russia’s western Kursk region as much as two weeks before they began the assault," Bloomberg said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was also not briefed on the troop buildup, the unnamed source reportedly told Bloomberg.

True or not true? It's hard to tell. //

Ukraine's challenge is to convert a tactical and operational victory into something that has strategic impact.

Russia has been knocked back on its heels, and Putin has been made to look rather ridiculous. He's not going to take that lying down because if the Tsar is not omnipotent, well, he's not the Tsar. It is hard to see how Gerasimov and most of the Russian General Staff survive this fiasco.

The episode has also demonstrated a degree of operational brilliance that no one expected. So far, the Ukrainians have seemed as mired in Soviet-era tactics as the Russians.

The Russians are getting a GRU assassin, Vadim Krasikov, who was sentenced to life in prison in Germany for gunning down Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian-born Chechen dissident, in broad daylight in a Berlin park. Also possibly involved: "Four Russians detained in the US on charges including cyber crime, smuggling and money laundering were thought to possibly be part of the exchange - although their names have not yet been made public."

Another part of the puzzle seems to be two deep-cover Russian agents arrested in Slovenia in December 2022 who were suddenly sentenced to 19 months in prison Wednesday and then immediately released on time served and expelled from the country.

President Trump withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. He did so for two reasons. First, Russia was cheating on the treaty like it always cheats on treaties (which is why I categorize anyone wanting an agreement with Russia as invincibly stupid, terminally naive, or a Russian agent of influence). It had developed and deployed prohibited weapons in Europe. Second, China was not bound by the treaty and was developing intermediate-range nuclear weapons while we were prohibited.

There is no "unilateral moratorium on the deployment of ground-based intermediate-range missiles" on Russia's part for Putin to suspend. Putin made several proposals for a general moratorium, which the Trump administration rejected. There are no monitoring or verification measures in place.

If you want more details on the events leading up to President Trump's departure from the INF, read Trump Announces the US Is Leaving a Treaty Russia Is Violating, and You Can Guess What Happened. https://redstate.com/streiff/2018/10/21/trump-announces-us-leaving-treaty-russia-violating-can-guess-happened-n96589

What Putin wants is to retain roughly 100 forward-deployed launchers for missiles that would be covered by the INF and for the US to negotiate away its ability to respond. Putin's lapdogs are all upset about Russian cities being within range of NATO weapons but not a single one of those voices has ever expressed any concern about Russian weapons based in Kaliningrad threatening a majority of NATO capitals.

Fabian Hoffmann @FRHoffmann1
·
When people claim medium-range missiles in Germany are destabilizing because they can reach homeland targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow, ask how often they’ve complained about short-range ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles stationed in Kaliningrad.

1/5
9:01 AM · Jul 15, 2024

And threatening to nuke NATO capitals is something that happens on Russian state television a couple of times a month. //

Hopefully, Trump won't let himself be rolled by Putin the way that China's Xi pantsed Biden; Checkmate? US Removes Missiles From the Philippines As China's Xi Plays JFK to Biden's Khrushchev.

The CEO of Germany's leading defense industry corporation escaped assassination by Russian operatives earlier this year thanks to the timely cooperation and information sharing between the United States and Germany. Armin Papperger, the head of the massive Rheinmetall conglomerate, was targeted for death by Russia because of his company's central role in arming and supplying Ukraine.

According to reports, US intelligence uncovered the plot and enabled German counterintelligence and security forces to put Papperger under close protection. The missing part of this story is the German GSG9 hauling the Russian assets off to prison. The assassination operatives and planners are still at large.

This episode is not a one-off. It is part of a campaign of hybrid warfare that is being actively waged against the West by Russia as part of its campaign to eradicate Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare involves blending kinetic and non-kinetic actions to exploit an enemy's weaknesses without crossing the line between peace and war. //

In the current case, Russia wants to keep NATO off balance and damage critical assets, but it doesn't want to tickle that fine line between painful annoyance and an Article 5 consultation.

There are two main characteristics of hybrid warfare. First, the level of violence must fall below the threshold the adversary would consider an attack requiring military response. Second, the source of the attack must remain ambiguous and difficult to definitively attribute to a foreign actor. These two factors make it difficult for a state to develop a coherent response to various lines of attack.

For the past months, the Russian OPTEMPO of hybrid operations in Germany has accelerated: //

Natasha Bertrand @NatashaBertrand
·
A senior NATO official said today that Russia's sabotage campaign across Europe is a "more concerted, more aggressive effort, than what we’ve seen certainly since the Cold War...we’re seeing sabotage, assassination plots, arson — real things that have cost human lives.”
1:46 PM · Jul 9, 2024. //

Per-Erik Schulze @PerErikSchulze
·
Nothing to see here. Just perfectly normal russian bottom trawling back and forth repeatedly just on top of the main fiber optic internet cable between Svalbard and the Norwegian mainland. From NRK.

4:29 PM · May 26, 2024. //

All of these are examples of hostile action from Russia becoming gradually normalised because nobody is willing or able to deal with it. In this way, Russia pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable, or at least accepted, by doing something that should be outrageous, and then doing it more when there is no response from the West. //

Russia is engaged in a very aggressive hybrid war against Europe that includes propaganda, economic attacks, cyberwarfare, and kinetic operations on the ground. That war's objectives are to increase internal divisions in European countries, damage their economies, and weaken their resolve to resist Russian demands.

In the case of Estonia, Russia is amplifying a border dispute so that it can become a plausible potential casus belli. As I've pointed out before, Estonia is a particularly tempting target for Putin because it is about 24 percent ethnic Russian. If Putin can successfully encroach on Estonia without consequences, NATO will become very unstable. See How Putin Dismembers NATO Without Firing A Shot: A Scenario From the Cold War for more details.

Europe is treating these attacks as individual data points and not as a coherent Russian destabilization campaign. As long as that goes on, Russia is winning this hybrid war, and it has no reason to stop.

Henrik Kindstedt
@HenrikKindstedt
·
Follow
Replying to @sumlenny
Short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected:

1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014.

2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014.

3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened.

4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened.

5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria.

6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later.

Above is only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. Not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014.

There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase. Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022.

Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny.

Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2024 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022?

7:51 AM · Jun 14, 2024. //

Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
·
The thing about the USSR/Russia is not that it is "not democratic". It is that is not contractual. Any contracts dishonour the Tsar. Why?

If Tsar made an agreement with X, it means:

1) X forced him to limit his own power
2) to secure X's interests

That's a huge dishonour

Kirienko's statement that "Russian state is not based upon agreements" should be read in this context.

Contractual = Limited = Dishonourable

Contractual = You faced the interest of the second party and had to back off, giving them concessions. What kind of Tsar you are? //

Putin's current demands may be serious to him, but no one else should consider them as such. No matter what a ceasefire or even a peace deal looks like, keep in mind that Putin's goal is the eradication of Ukraine as an independent state and that any agreement is a tactical ruse to lay the groundwork for that objective. Peace in Ukraine that is not enforced by Western arms and security guarantees is simply not possible so long as Putin is in power or possibly as long as the Russian Federation exists.

William Burr and Leopoldo Nuti examine the Kennedy Administration's efforts to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy, part of a secret deal with Nikita Khrushchev to end the Cuban missile crisis. //

Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) at Cigli air base in Turkey, 1963. There a squadron of 15 Jupiters was deployed becoming operational in March 1962. //

Kissinger’s finding that “almost everyone” among senior Italian government officials suspected a US-Soviet “agreement” on the Jupiters was not the only time such suspicions surfaced. In the days and weeks after the crisis began to dissipate, mid-level State Department officials discussed rumors that President Kennedy had favored a deal and had a “keen interest” in getting the Jupiters out. In the months after the crisis, McNamara and Rusk tried to batten down suspicions of a deal, testifying before Congress that there had been no such thing. But doubts persisted. Senator John Stennis (D-Ms), among other Senators, was convinced there had been a trade.[v]

It was essential for the Kennedy administration to implement the secret deal and make good on a commitment to the Soviet leadership, but executing it had its complexities. While Khrushchev focused mainly on the Jupiters in Turkey, withdrawing the IRBMs from Italy was also a US goal. Under a coherent policy, the US could not leave Jupiters anywhere on NATO territory, although this made the diplomacy more complicated. And the withdrawal of the Jupiters could not be completely secret, because it had to be carefully and delicately coordinated with Italy and Turkey, whose governments had signed agreements accepting the missiles. Both were NATO allies, and Washington could not ride roughshod over them.

To minimize suspicions of a US-Soviet deal, the reasoning for the Jupiter withdrawals would be carefully explained to Italian, Turkish, and other NATO interlocuters.

Washington, D.C., October 30, 2019 – The current crisis with Turkey over Syria has raised questions, yet to be resolved, about the security of 50 U.S. nuclear weapons stored at Incirlik Air Base. These questions have been posed before, going back almost to the start of nuclear deployments in Turkey in 1959.  How the United States responds carries implications for the region, for U.S.-Turkey relations, and for NATO. //

Members of Congress Worried in 1960 That Leaders of a Coup “Might Seize Control” of Weapons

Other U.S. Officials Feared Risks of Accidental War or Overreaction to Local Crises

During Mid-1960s Turkish Officials Were Interested in Producing an “Atomic Bomb” //

Document 13

Memorandum of Conversation, 14 December 1962, Top Secret
Dec 14, 1962
Source
RG 59, Records of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Politico-Military Affairs, Subject Files, 1961-1963. Box 2. Memoranda (5 of 5)

The Jupiter missile deployments in Turkey (and to some degree Italy) were central to the Cuban Missile Crisis, both to instigating it–Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’ saw them as a “bone” in his throat–and to the secret Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement that resolved the crisis. While President Kennedy provided secret assurances to Khrushchev that the U.S. would remove the Jupiters, only a handful of people knew about the secret deal, and the NATO countries, included Turkey, learned nothing of it at the time.

Speaking with Turkish Defense Minister Ilhami Sancar, McNamara misled him by saying that the U.S. had refused to discuss with the Soviets the “comparability” of the Jupiters with the missiles in Cuba. He further argued that the U.S. was doing Turkey a favor by removing the dangerous and obsolete weapons and replacing them with Polaris missiles that would be deployed in the Mediterranean.

Henrik Kindstedt
@HenrikKindstedt
·
Follow
Replying to @sumlenny
Short list of the results of negotiations with Russia that it never respected:

1. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Russia agreed to “respect independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders of Ukraine” as well as “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”. Breached by Russia invading Crimea in 2014.

2. The Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and “reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders” between the two countries. Russia breached it in 2014.

3. The OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999. Russia committed to withdrawing its troops from Moldova’s Transdniestrian region and Georgia until the end of 2002. That never happened.

4. The 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement following Russian aggression against the country. Russia agreed that “Russian military forces must withdraw to the lines prior to the start of hostilities”. That never happened.

5. The Ilovaysk “Green Corridor” in August 2014 and other “humanitarian” death corridors. Russia pledged to let Ukrainian forces leave the encircled town of Ilovaysk in the east of Ukraine, but instead opened fire and killed 366 Ukrainian troops. In the following years, Russia attacked numerous humanitarian corridors in Syria.

6. The “Minsk” agreements of 2014 and 2015. Russia agreed to cease the fire in the east of Ukraine. There had been 200 rounds of talks and 20 attempts to enforce a ceasefire, all of which the Russian side promptly violated. On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

7. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia pledged to “provide maximum assurances regarding a safe and secure environment for all vessels engaged in this initiative." It then hindered the initiative's operation for months before withdrawing unilaterally a year later.

Above is only focused on deals made with Russia to address specific issues and conflicts. Not mentioning almost 400 international treaties that Russia has breached since 2014.

There are no conclusions to be drawn here, except that no one can seriously use the words "Russia" and "negotiations" in the same phrase. Putin is a habitual liar who promised international leaders that he would not attack Ukraine days before his invasion in February 2022.

Russia's tactic has remained consistent in its many wars over the last three decades: kill, grab, lie, and deny.

Why would anyone genuinely believe that Russia in 2024 is any different from Russia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2014, 2015, and 2022? //

My theory is that it was released today because the Ukraine Peace Summit is kicking off tomorrow in Switzerland. Around 90 countries will be represented, but Moscow has declined to take part. I think Putin's speech was to underscore to the gathering that nothing they have to say matters, as Russia has its own agenda, making the outcome irrelevant.

The takeaway for the West should be that peace isn't possible without handing Putin a crushing defeat on the battlefield and devastating Russia's economy.
7:51 AM · Jun 14, 2024

Puzzling out the power supply to Urals atom plants.

THE DECRYPTION OF A PICTURE, by Henry S. Lowenhaupt

One day in August 1958 Charles V. Reeves showed me a picture of the Sverdlovsk Central Dispatching Office of the Urals Electric Power System which he had found in the July issue of Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent of Look magazine (Figure 1a). He remarked that at the Boston Edison Company he had controlled electric power generation and flow in the Boston metropolitan area from just such a dispatching station. //

[Source: Studies in Intelligence. Volume II. Issue: Summer. Year: 1967]

While most news outlets are focused on Roaring Kitty, the jobs report, or Hunter Biden, the most consequential news item of the year may be unfolding before our very eyes in our hemisphere. The Russians are coming. But so, too, are the Chinese and Iranians. In fact, they’re already here.

We’re not talking about the border so the right isn’t covering it. We’re not talking about Trump, so the mainstream media isn’t covering it. We’re talking about the war coming to South America designed to distract the United States.

To understand the significance of this, we must first recognize the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape at the expense of a distracted and weakened United States. An emboldened Russia, China, and Iran have coordinated internally to bypass international sanctions, while externally, they have provoked conflict on a growing number of fronts. //

American oil companies are actively exploring the oil-rich Essequibo region of Guyana. Venezuela is preparing to invade it. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Quds Forces are in Venezuela already, along with both Russian and Chinese military advisors. The Venezuelans have been using Iranian coast guard vessels to patrol the river border with Guyana.

Russia, China, and Iran are in Venezuela, helping them prepare an invasion of an American and British ally to seize American-backed oil fields. The only thing Joe Biden is doing is letting Venezuela sell oil to fund the invasion.

We don't know why an announcement of a border change with Lithuania and Finland appeared on the Defense Ministry website with a press release in TASS, but we can rest assured it was, and is, very real. Neither do we know why Russia changed the boundary markers in the Narva River without consultation. These actions are setting the groundwork to gauge a NATO reaction to Russia seizing territory in Finland and the Baltic States. If NATO responds cautiously with Jake Sullivan crapping his drawers over Putin's moods, the next step will be "little green men," followed by Russian troops stepping in to defend Russian minorities in Latvia, Estonia, and on Svalbard Archipelago in Norway.

As I've said many times, you have to pay attention to what your enemies are telling you. Putin has repeatedly said that he does not accept the borders created by the dissolution of the Evil Empire or the end of the Romanov dynasty, for that matter. You don't just wake up one morning and pretend that international borders can be changed at a whim. Putin could conceivably think of a minor land grab against Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland as an act that could fracture NATO and not bring on a larger conflict. That's how he decided to invade Ukraine.

RNC Research @RNCResearch
·
ABC: Putin says the U.S. supplying high-precision weapons to Ukraine for strikes on Russian territory is "direct participation in this war" ... does that concern you?

BIDEN: "I've known him for over 40 years."

11:35 AM · Jun 6, 2024

Steve Guest @SteveGuest
·
Joe Biden just said that he has known Vladimir Putin for "over 40 years."

Either Biden is lying or he is admitting he was in contact with a KGB agent since 1984 or Biden’s brain is so cooked that he doesn’t know what on earth he is talking about.

11:51 AM · Jun 6, 2024 //

Rascally > Min Headroom llme
15 hours ago
Weren't some of the classified documents he had in his garage and at the Penn Center from his time as a Senator 40 years ago? The time when Dem Senators were afraid Reagan was going to start something and were trying to bolster and help Russia...? //

jester6
18 hours ago edited
If you take what Biden said at face value, it would be bad, but if you look at this objectively, it's much worse.

I don't think anyone, including Putin, thinks Biden is making these decisions. He is a puppet of the Neocon Hawks in the Deep State (both Republican and Democrat) who want to keep pushing Russia. Some people call it the Blob.

That means the people calling the shots collectively (there probably is no one decision-maker) are inaccessible to their Russian counterparts. So we are dancing on the edge of war, and there is no means for diplomatic dialog.

If things deteriorate, we could find ourselves in a situation like the Cuban Missile Crisis, except with no way for Kennedy and Kruschev to talk.

Negotiations don't start from a position of maximalist demands unless you are able to enforce them. Even the alleged Putin confidants who talked to Reuters for the report admit that Putin is tired of the war and wants to move on.

Let me stop here for a moment and say that anyone who thinks five members of Putin's entourage talked to Reuters about Putin's personal position on peace talks without acting under orders from Putin to do so. Those people are a danger to themselves and to others. The fact that no one in the Kremlin has acknowledged this alleged cease-fire offer on the record tells you all you need to know about its seriousness.

This means that Russia is not only demanding to keep the territory it has overrun, but it is actually requiring Ukraine to relinquish more territory as a condition of negotiations. //

If we look at this offer as anything other than a propaganda ploy aimed at bolstering the spirits and imaginations of Putin's fan club in the West, we are probably idiots who deserve whatever comes next. //

The Russians are simply advancing a narrative ahead of the international peace conference Switzerland is hosting on June 15-16.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice. All the Russian proposal does, to the extent it is even a serious proposal, is reward Russia for criminal behavior, return control of Russian overseas assets to Moscow, remove war-related economic sanctions, and set the stage for another Russian invasion. Nothing in the Russian scheme is even vaguely just, and no sane government would consider it. Russia knows that and they don't want it considered, they want big social media accounts and some Republican Members of Congress and Senators to have talking points to advace Putin's agenda.

The bigger problem is the Biden Crime Family's close ties to the Chinese government, and because of those ties, Joe Biden is afraid of pushing the Chinese too hard. Calling them out for providing lethal aid to Russia could very well be a red line in Beijing's relationship with Joe, Jim, and Hunter. //

anon-aqgv Ed in North Texas
6 hours ago
Russia population: 144 million
Ukraine: 38 million

Which side do you think will run out of manpower first?

DaveM anon-aqgv
5 hours ago
1960:
US Population 173 Million
Vietnam Population 30 Million.

Which side do you think will run out of manpower first?

JSobieski anon-aqgv
5 hours ago edited
Population of American colonies in 1776: 2.5M

Population of Great Britain in 1776: 8M

Which side did YOU think ran out of manpower first?

JSobieski anon-aqgv
5 hours ago edited
Population of USSR in 1989: 286.72M

Poulation of Afganistan in 1989: 10.67M

Which side did YOU think ran out of manpower first?

JSobieski anon-aqgv
7 hours ago
Non-symmetrical demands for manpower, which shouldn't be too hard to understand.

Russia cannot apply 100% of its manpower to Ukraine, while Ukraine can and does apply 100% of its manpower to fighting Russia.

Russia has extended supply lines, while Ukraine does not.

Ukraine is fighting in its home territory, Russia is the invader.

These concepts are difficult to understand, but I get that some people just refuse to understand.

A great example of non-symmetrical warfare was 9/11. Fewer than 20 people with boxcutters shut down US airspace.

Dieter Schultz JSobieski
7 hours ago edited

These concepts are difficult to understand, but I get that some people just refuse to understand.

I keep recalling one of the most insightful comments I ever encountered on the web, namely: "And now we get to the crux of the matter, I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you."

If any of this sounds familiar, you need to think back to the Vietnam War and our policy of allowing the North Vietnamese Army to have "sanctuaries" in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. For most (maybe all) of that conflict, North Vietnamese Air Force fighters could not be attacked on the ground; they only became legal targets when airborne.

Though Ukraine is clearly able to use domestic weapons against targets in Russia, drones have their limitations. Because of US policy, Ukraine had to sit on its hands and wait for the Russians to cross the border rather than destroy units and equipment before they entered combat. I'm sure plausible arguments can be made that the White House and Pentagon are merely making recommendations, but there is no doubt that the Ukrainians are treating these recommendations as firm guidance, and the Russians are reacting accordingly. //

Since the one time Ukraine used US anti-aircraft missiles over Russian territory disjointed many noses in Washington, Ukraine has allowed Russia to launch glide bombs at Kharkiv and Ukrainian Army positions for the last five months with impunity. //

If the policy of the US is to bring this war to a conclusion, then the policy is an extremely stupid one. It allows Russia to strike Ukrainian population centers with impunity so long as the attack comes from Russian territory as recognized by the civilized world. Russia can mass troops and weapons on Ukraine's border at any point, and Ukraine is forbidden to attack them preemptively. They must let Russia strike first. If Biden's purpose is to drag the war out ad infinitum to maximize damage, slaughter, and political instability, then it makes sense. I'm not posing that alternative facetiously; as we saw during COVID, Biden and his appointees were willing to kill as many Americans as it took to impose policy preferences. There is no reason to think they hold Russian or Ukrainian lives in higher regard.

More disturbing is that we're seeing the return of Robert S. McNamara's Whiz Kids to policy making, only this time, we are using unqualified midwits and lackwits from the bowels of the Democratic foreign policy intelligentsia instead of legitimately smart people. They are trying to play cute "non-escalation" games that might be amusing in the faculty lounge after a few hits of some good Lebanese hash but which kill and cripple men, women, and children in Ukraine. Retreating to the establishment of sanctuaries where the Russians can train and stage operations is bizarre because we know that policy doesn't encourage negotiations; it encourages recalcitrance.

If we are serious about ending this war on terms acceptable to Ukraine and to our NATO allies, and that should be our only concern, then Russian forces and equipment must be put at risk inside Russian territory, and if it requires the use of American munitions to do that, then that's what we need to do.