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All things Russia and Ukraine...

Discussion in 'Free Fire Zone' started by CAC, Mar 15, 2022.

  1. USMCPrice

    USMCPrice Idiot at Large

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    You misstated or misunderstood what the article was saying. The article was published on 22 March, 26 days after the February 24th Russian invasion, was concerning the United States response to the Russian invasion, not US actions to entice Russia to invade. To be honest, who can argue with their aims?
    From the article:
    "According to Sanger, who cannot have written his piece without high-level sources, the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation … CIA officers are helping to ensure that crates of weapons are delivered into the hands of vetted Ukrainian military units, according to American officials. But as of now, Mr. Biden and his staff do not see the utility of an expansive covert effort to use the spy agency to ferry in arms as the United States did in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the 1980s.” "

    So, the administration is attempting to supply sufficient arms and aid to the Ukrainians to prevent Russian victory, but not so much that they provoke an expansion of the war (...without inciting a broader conflict); I think we all hope NATO doesn't get drug into open conflict with Russia, or the war expands to other countries bordering Russia. I think we can all agree that we don't want the conflict to devolve to the point Russia uses nuclear weapons, tactical or strategic, (..conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary). Next, the US does not want its actions to prevent the two sides from reaching a negotiated settlement or preclude any chances of a Russian withdrawal, (...without ... cutting off potential paths to de-escalation ). He then goes on to state the US is using the CIA to insure the weapons are getting into the right hands (vetted Ukrainian military unit), not the black market, criminal organizations or questionable militias. What problems do you have with that?

    The author then goes on to give his analysis of the probable course (in his opinion) of the conflict in Ukraine and compares the Sino-Russia situation today to the Cold War that started with the 1950 invasion of South Korea. It should be noted that the author "thinks" the war would end with Putin on top after 10 weeks. It has now gone on for nearly twice that time and Putin's chances of obtaining anything more than a stalemate don't look good.

    "But there’s one very striking contrast. In Cold War I, President Harry Truman’s administration was able to lead an international coalition with a United Nations mandate to defend South Korea; now Ukraine has to make do with just arms supplies. And the reason for that, as we have seen, is the Biden administration’s intense fear that Putin may escalate to nuclear war if U.S. support for Ukraine goes too far."

    You stated: "The U.S. government wanted the war in the Ukraine." How do you square that opinion with the authors take, that the Biden administration has an "intense fear" that its support for Ukraine may escalate to nuclear war?
     
  2. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    It is a curious situation, as if you come across a woman being r a p e d and you have to be careful not to do anything that might seriously offend the r a p i s t.
     
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  3. USMCPrice

    USMCPrice Idiot at Large

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    Again, I think you mischaracterized the article. The article warns as much in a note appended to the article as of April 2022; "We encourage you to explore this research brief and the full report that it is based on. However, because Russian state media entities and individuals sympathetic to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine have mischaracterized this research in recent weeks, we also encourage you to explore this helpful resource on Russia's “firehose of falsehood” approach to propaganda and our research on “Truth Decay,” which is a phenomenon that is driven in part by the spread of disinformation."

    To put into historical context, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In 2014 Russia invaded the Crimea and Donbas regions of the Ukraine. This was precipitated by the February 2014 replacement of the pro-Russian government with a more pro-western government. Crimea was invaded and annexed, and the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk were given aid and support by Russian troops. Then in 2015 Russia became militarily involved in the conflict in Syria. The Rand study was looking at potential ways to contain Russia expansion, mainly by exploiting Russia's greatest weakness, its relatively small economy. The different options were rated as to their likelihood of success in extending Russia, benefits and costs/risks. The report looked at dozens of possible actions, most of which were never implemented. For instance, one option was to "Expand U.S. energy production"-Likelihood of success was high-Benefits were high-costs/risks were low. Nothing controversial here. Provide lethal aid to Ukraine was another option, it was rated as having a moderate likelihood of success-would provide high benefits-but was a high cost/risk option. As noted, this was but one option examined out of dozens. It did not promote said option, it merely analyzed its potential success and the benefits/costs/risks associated with the option.
     
  4. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    But it means Putin, Medvedev will be out, and Russia will build everything back to normal in Ukraine. Did you think about it. For instance, Finland payed its military debt to the USSR already in the 50's and all in all to other countries like the US and the UK. We are proud about that.
    Situation now: all the big western businesses leave Russia, Russian foreign currency is stuck and Nobody wants to Make deals in rubbless. By the end of 2023 Nobody uses Russian gas or oil in the west. The airspace for Russians is shut etc.inflation will cause that Soviet Money gives less and less Food. So not any deals in the west and building items like tanks and Cars, I believe aeroplanes as well ends. What a World to live in. And every day dead soldier people are either brought home or Burnt to ashes.
     
  5. USMCPrice

    USMCPrice Idiot at Large

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    More analogous to you come across a group of women, one who is being assaulted by a repeat sexual offender holding a hand-grenade with the pin pulled. It is clear from his past history that once he finishes with the first woman, he will move on to assaulting the others in turn. You have to figure out how to aid the woman being assaulted, without the perv releasing the grenade and blowing everyone to hell. Morally, you are compelled to aid the woman being assaulted, but don't want to endanger the others. Fortunately, the rapist has a small penis and can't maintain an erection, so he's botched the initial attempt, and the woman is a fighter and has given as much damage as she's taken thus far.
     
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  6. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Ok. Then you are saying Russia fell for THE US trap. Would Putin be so stupid. It is a battlefield where the US can test its weaponry without being in war.
    I have thought about it at times. Seeing weaponry in action without being a participant...Russia have you been led to a testing ground?
     
  7. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Sniper and a head shot with soldiers ready to put an explosion blanket on the Grenade or throw it away.
     
  8. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    Some people just won’t accept the truth. For years, Senator Lindsey Graham has made it clear that he wants a war with Russia. The late John McCain did too.

    Watch this old video clip that shows Graham and McCain try to escalate the fighting in Ukraine, while pledging support to a group of local soldiers or paramilitaries. At about 1:20 into the footage, Senator Graham begins with the words, “Your fight is our fight … 2017 will be the year of offense”

    GOP Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham foment war with Russia!.jpg


    Most of the American and Western corporate news networks have removed their copy of the video from Youtube, because it’s embarrassing to the U.S. government.

    The video also contradicts the typical, “Russian disinformation” propaganda from American and British politicians, corporate media and security agencies. Anyone who does not agree with their policy objectives is smeared as a Russian agent, Russian asset, Russian puppet, etc. That’s just McCarthyism repackaged for modern media, because the nitwits who control our government and armed forces have no new ideas.
     
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  9. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    You don't seem to get it.

    Joe Biden and Vladamir Putin are like drug dealers in a turf war. Finland is a just a pawn on the chess board. How does that feel?

    The Biden Administration would rather see the Ukraine destroyed than give ground to a competing economic and military power. That's why Biden has flooded the Ukraine with weapons, which he certainly would not do if he actually cared about the people who live there.

    Understand this about the way the U.S. government does business: corporations want monopolies, not competitors. That's why they try to subvert any kind of threat to profits.
     
  10. A23

    A23 New Member

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    Absolute rubbish with no evidence to support tat ridiculous claim.
     
  11. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Hmmm...What is the difference l don't get?
    If I say the US is testing weapons in Ukraine without using its own soldiers, is that so much different? Ok tell me where I go wrong. I know big Money make big bucks like I said before, simply building the camps to the US army by paying local workers a dollar a day they get a lot of Money. How far am I from your world? I was in Bosnia and Makedonia 1996-1998. Sad but many Americans thought they were in Germany.
     
  12. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    Fixed that for you.

    How many US airstrikes have targeted the Ukraine?
    How many US cruise missiles have hit the Ukraine?
     
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  13. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    We know that the Putin preferred government would resemble of that in Belarus. What in the world this has to do with Finland?? Only that 12% wanted to join NATO before is now 80%. Wonder that. Putin is undoing his good work but that is his problem. Not mine.

    EKB: people who say that of smaller countries usually have no clue. We stopped the Winter war without your help. Ain't that something.
     
  14. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    Apparently you and Mr Kai-Petri ignored the pictures of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen. That's what it looks like when the U.S. and it's allies flood a country with weapons.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  15. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    Check out this video of a U.S. Senate hearing, dated from January 2020.

    VIDEO Adam Schiff on Ukraine Jan 2020.jpg




    The rant from Adam Schiff starts at about 14:30. We have seen the same type of war-mongering from members of the U.S. Congress, again and again, for the past 70 years. For lack of anything better, Schiff is channeling the late Senator Joseph McCarthy. As I said, our intellectually-challenged leaders have no new ideas.

    Schiff should be officially censured for his nutty anti-Russian propaganda, just as McCarthy was in 1954.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  16. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    That was a long time ago. The outcome of any subsequent war won't be decided with nostalgia.



    I don't think it's our job to stop Europeans from killing each other. America is not supposed to be your parents or the local police.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  17. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen look pretty well destroyed to me. Moreover, maybe you should watch this:

     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  18. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    T
    The Arab spring I don't know but the Iraq. Attack was it 2003 we definitely were publicly against it people went even on military targets to stop bombing them.
    And why is ak-47 the most used guerilla weapon? WHO makes them, locals. Still originally from the USSR.
     
  19. EKB

    EKB Active Member

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    This article gives a more sober view of NATO policy than what you get from Fox News, CNN, Sky News, BBC, etc.

    NATO and a War Foretold

    Some of the more important points:

    1990 U.S. State Department memo warning that creating an “anti-Soviet coalition” of NATO countries along the U.S.S.R’s border would be perceived very negatively by the Soviets.

    Broken promises by Western officials that NATO would not expand eastward

    Declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted by the National Security Archive reveal multiple assurances by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and 1991.

    1997 letter by 50 prominent foreign policy experts, calling President Clinton’s plans to enlarge NATO a policy error of “historic proportions” that would “unsettle European stability.” But Clinton had already made a commitment to invite Poland into the club, reportedly out of concern that saying “no” to Poland would lose him critical Polish-American votes in the Midwest in the 1996 election.

    Stoltenberg could have remembered the prediction made by George Kennan, the intellectual father of U.S. containment policy during the Cold War, when NATO moved ahead and incorporated Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1998. In a New York Times interview, Kennan called NATO expansion a “tragic mistake” that marked the beginning of a new Cold War, and warned that the Russians would “gradually react quite adversely.”

    William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Moscow, sent an urgent memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

    Instead of comprehending the danger of crossing “the brightest of all redlines,” President George W. Bush persisted and pushed through internal opposition within NATO to proclaim, in 2008, that Ukraine would indeed be granted membership, but at an unspecified date. Stoltenberg could well have traced the present conflict back to that NATO Summit–a Summit that took place well before the 2014 Euromaidan coup or Russia’s seizure of Crimea or the failure of the Minsk Agreements to end the civil war in the Donbas.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  20. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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