Lawman

In a word… Yes. Because we aren’t “going to war” and again that could be explained to you in about 6 minutes. You’ve spent more time arguing with me than it would take to educate yourself as to why the strategic policy makers are doing what they are doing in regards to arming Ukraine. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Your opinion is noted. It’s stupid and Ill-informed but noted. Here is a chance to actually educate yourself on the why of what’s going on and how waiting for Russia to attack NATO is stupid. “Expert” in quotes, adorable. Yeah it’s probably pretty fair to say he’s a crap load more qualifiedto discuss the nuance of this and why it’s critical while maintaining an apolitical stance while you deliberately drag up Biden and Blinken. Dude routinely lampoons Biden, Trump, and Obama so he’s hardly some unqualified political narrative talking head. He isn’t the media, he’s a well circulated published author and does strategic policy seminars for billion dollar investment groups and government strategic planning. So yeah, it’s fair to say he’s probably decently qualified at his job and pretty accurate in his interpretations considering the amount of money that kind of influence its being steered by. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tell us you didn’t watch the video without telling us you didn’t watch it… Dude lays out exactly why waiting for Russia to invade Poland/Latvia/Estonia/etc is suicide at about the 6 minute mark… At 25 minutes he explains why something like Nordstream would happen intentionally… Yes we get it, it’s not Tucker Carlson but this guy briefs strategic level government officials and key notes seminars on energy and agriculture industry leaders and investors. Tucker… briefs people living in trailer parks. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This guy succinctly explains in the first six and a half minutes why you’re viewpoint is completely out of contact with why we are doing this. It’s not about widening a war it’s about preventing the war with NATO a phase before it can occur, because at this point the Russians are recognizing their only real card to play against NATO at this point is going to the nuclear assets. Oh he’s also updated this presentation as the war has evolved, and for those that don’t think the Russians have a reason to destroy Nordstream, you really need to go look at the amount of damage not being able to readily get Natural Gas is about to do in the most powerful industrial base in the EU. It’ll hurt the Russians… but it will kill the Germans and by extension hobble the EUs economic ability to do anything. And deliberate sabotage vs just turning it off gives them the political card to play accusing the US and forcing political pressure to lessen aid to Ukraine (as we are now actively seeing calls for). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The evidence is building from open source intel that the Russians have consumed a lot of their viable FMC ASE equipment and are now operating their KA-52s without it. We’re seeing shoot downs occur without any expenditures of flares or similar, and the post shoot down analysis of photos shows them either partially or completely not installed. I don’t doubt their fixed wing aircraft are having similar problems. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Look at how far we’ve advanced in communications. We’ve come a long way from having hostile entities and criminals need to steal our PIA from a laptop left in a random rental car or the bathroom of a Panera bread. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

But wait we were assured this was strictly about energy production. That must be some massively efficient energy what with pushing the envelope for weapons grade when you can make power with a third that level pretty much anywhere. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Between this stuff and what’s been going on with DCA over Iraq/Syria it’s become the air to air version of what we were doing spending multi hundred thousand dollar to kill a guy with a shovel. Directed Energy can’t get here fast enough… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh you definitely sound like you “did your own research on the matter.” Again, you say you aren’t sympathetic to the Russians absurd view that this is all justified, then you list out tit for tat pretty much their interpretations of the Maiden protests and other pretexts for invasion of Ukraine. Your little history lesson ignores a lot including the long established history of the guy those protests resulted in deposing (you know the one that won the first set of rigged elections a decade earlier after his opponent was mysteriously poisoned then later lost). Then there’s how he got elected after Russia used economic embargo of gas and other means to paralyze Ukraine’s infrastructure and work to foment the western push that got him elected the second time. Oh and Russia actually did join the rest of the world in recognizing the new Ukrainian president. They just did so after they annexed portions of the country they wanted and staged rigged elections to support their actions as legitimate. Just a quick reminder…. The Donbas and Crimea both belonged to Ukraine. What next you gonna tell us this was really about de-nazification or some other excuse that absolves them of any culpability in the decade long war inside the borders of a neighbor? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Again we didn’t start this, and your efforts to be sympathetic to the Russian point of view aren’t lost on the adults in the room. We didn’t start a war with a European neighbor, they did. We didn’t invade a country under false pretenses to overthrow its government and attempt to replace it with a more amenable vassal state, they did. And they are “spinning their wheels” because in no small amount of efforts to bolster the Ukrainian military by U.S. and other NATO nations since they started annexing territory in 2014. You seem to either fail to understand that or deliberately do not acknowledge it as the effect of Russian aggression not the cause of it. Our enhanced posturing and things like Atlantic Resolve are costing us billions and have been since 2014. They are costing us manpower because of the increased demand on families and soldiers which costs more in the long run due to lost experience and the requirement to restore it. The Army has acknowledged the desire to go to the lower cost EDRE enhanced model of maintaining readiness and deterrence without the full on deployments of rotational combat forces, but that has been predicated on the cessation of direct hostilities by Russia against its European neighbors, which I’ll remind you yet again came first before the deployments started. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Again as others have pointed out this is the cheapest form of spending we have ever had in regards to opposing Russian influence and attempts to hinder our efforts and interests and positively affect their own. If you were at all honest in your sudden alarm to the cost of these efforts (let alone wider foreign policy) Id encourage you to compare the ongoing costs of Atlantic Resolve deployments against the pitifully low cost of our efforts to aid Ukraine to date. It costs a little less than 2 billion in current costs just to rotate an Armor brigade or similar heavy element. That’s the direct cost, it doesn’t even begin to scratch the manpower negative we get on sustainment with those rotations. We only started doing that in direct response to Russian aggression in Crimea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No the summation of the arguments he’s making is what is getting him called a stooge. This isn’t “I just want an honest open conversation about…” We can read the real intent his actions through the culmination of stated opinions and what conversations he attempts to advance and which ones deliberately avoided/ignored/bypassed. And while yes examples of historical conspiracy theorists turn out right the vast majority do not. You can’t point to media/social media bias in say hiding the Biden laptop stuff during the election, then turn around and use that as the justification for your belief that Bush did 9/11 or the moon landing didn’t happen and demand to be taken seriously with that. Go read the other thread, dude is seriously peddling crap from Twitter handles, or wild ramblings by Seymour Herch passing it off as part of this mountain of direct evidence that we are being lied to and the US simply has to be responsible. He’s not presenting this as a possible, he’s presenting it as a fact and telling the room we’re all too stupid to put the clues together. By the way if you want a laugh go to his Twitter loon’s page the latest stuff is tinfoil crazy like the US used an Earthquake gun on Turkey. Dude is in this thread repeatedly sharing nothing but examples and stories about dubious Ukrainian actions and downplaying real examples of Russian actions. I’ll remind you he’s the one that started the whole line topic on downplaying Russian involvement in MH17, then kept trying to minimize the realities of that exact situation when challenged on it. So what is his desired end state. Well it’s kinda the joke with the whole “I’m not racist, but” example. Make pleading statements when pressed on it about how you wants Russia to lose, but really he’s only interested in that we modify our support to an isolationist standpoint of delayed or no real tangible support to Ukraine. He and others keep implying this isn’t in our interests and we have no dog in it. We (the US and Allies) have to suddenly be hyper sensitive to some impossible purity standard in the actions/corruption/etc of a foreign state even when it’s interests directly along with our own interests. Establishing that standard we halt our current or future spending and stop delivering any kind of meaningful money or actions to support the Ukrainians. That’s exactly the outcome that aligns with Russian desires, hence why they spend the effort in influence campaigns like the ones mentioned in that Brookings Institute article. And I’ve seen plenty of with that kind of desired end-state at the heart of their efforts on Ukraine whatever their deeper motivation to it. A bunch seem to be the “can’t let the other team have a win” types (Tucker Carlsons types) who just adopt the opposite tact and support or don’t support war when it suits them. Some are the isolationist types that just don’t want us to play the foreign policy/influence game at all or the hard Dove types who just don’t support anybody in this situation but offer no solution other than wouldn’t it be great if we all loved each other… We saw this exact same type of thing with regards to preventing us from taking actions against Isis. “We can’t support the Kurds/Yazidi/Iraqi government because…..” “Isis isn’t hurting us” stuff like that. In that previous example all those arguments did was lengthened the time to actually do something about it and the size and damage of the conflict that was churning with or without us when it was clearly the right thing to anybody that was there fighting it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes tell us all about the dangers of the media and disinformation dangers… specifically ones regarding this and how it’s impossible that you are buying the wrong parties bullshit. https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/u-s-podcasters-spread-kremlin-narratives-on-nord-stream-sabotage/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Obviously it was the same boat of guys that shot down Flight 800. Why don’t we get Gearpig to post some more Twitter handles with evidence of the grander conspiracy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

“Hey everybody I’m not buying the Russian narrative or trying to convince you to stop providing aid to a country aligned with our interests that is actively fighting them… oh but wait let’s talk about how bad the Ukrainians are again.” Jesus between this and you paddling the conspiracies theorist canoe about Nordstream it’s a wonder we don’t have a moderator run your IP address. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And no you adopt the “No true Scotsman” position to protect the fact you can’t openly say what you actually mean. And you’re in this thread and the one right above it spreading everything from doubts about Ukrainian purity to baseless conspiracy theory. So yeah you get called out for it whether you are a willing bot or just a useful idiot. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No see there it is right at the very end. Don’t do either… you won’t come out and just say what you mean which is walk away from supporting Ukraine and let Russia have its way. You overtly avoid saying that because you know it’s not convincing to the room that knows better. You can’t support that directly so you make noise about how Ukraine is somehow the real unrecognized bad actor or how awful we’ve been in the past so we (US/NATO/West) should just excuse the Russians as they pursue their own. Interests. We have to be paralyzed by some sort of made up guilt. A “western desire to continue” as you say is a cornerstone of wider the Russian IO campaign. The one inserted into our own society as a method to erode any efforts against them in foreign policy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because you are deliberately trying to create parallels where none exist and continuing to support disinformation and present it as fact of some kind of wider hidden western desire to cause/continue this war. Narratives are not equal. You can acknowledge the existence of political or personal motivations to paint a picture without having to adopt the nonsense that somehow the Russian and Western narratives are leading to some sort of “truthful middle ground.” The Russian narratives are bold faced lies. “We didn’t invade Crimea those are separatists.” “We didn’t shoot down MH17 because our forces weren’t there it was Ukrainians.” “We are conducting this war to de-nazify the Ukrainian government.” There is a demonstrated history SPECIFIC to this conflict and you pointing to any past instances of western history is an attempt to distract from that or give them a buffer to continue it. If you think there is any kind of equivalency between western mass media and Russian you are clueless. Likewise if you can’t understand the nuance of providing support while accepting any Ukrainian’s skeletons in their closet as a lesser evil to emboldening/ignoring/rewarding a geo political foe for naked aggression against a democratic European country you are clueless. That’s not Slava Ukraine, that’s looking at a menu of either cold spaghetti or shit and knowing which one you should eat. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And as seen from Covid relief it largely doesn’t even need to be viable support to achieve the effect they want. That desire being wider societal influence and displacing our position as the sort of global center of gravity. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When you had to trade funny QuickTime videos with a 3.5 or if you were rich a CD-R… and they went in the hard drive of the presentation computer to watch between power point classes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Again… you are carefully inserting the Russian narrative counter to exactly what I said or implied like you are here to bat for their team. The one that absolves them and their government from any kind of responsibility for the event. There is no question who was using operating that system that shot down MH17, and it wasn’t a bunch of Ukrainians so why are you attempting to imply it was in the same long winded speech about media and agendas. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So you can see a vast conspiracy by western aligned countries to just allow the US and by extension NATO to widen the risk of war, but you can’t play that a level higher where Russia would use that and an IO campaign to force NATO to deescalate its support of Ukraine? “Oh surely it had to be the Americans… they want to make billions off selling fallout shelters and iodine pills.” Couldn’t possibly be that months into a war going badly, Putin and his guys would sabotage one of a multitude of their own pipelines for their oil exports to create a narrative that uses existing sentiment and forces NATO to attempt to withdraw support to avoid the risk of widening the conflict. What would they possibly have to gain from such a move. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The DOD should be task-able as a logistical arm in humanitarian assistance, but this should be a State department and NGO fight. And even then on an available order of priority option. If available, sure but if tasked to the main DOD mission sorry go find another way. That’s not to say I have a ton of faith in them, but our mandate is foreign policy effect through what is essentially violence. That does not rebuild or progress anybody economically or socially. That is why we should act as the heavy lifting of assets and a small immediate security footprint, but the wider mission should be run by somebody else. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No I think you’re a “useful idiot” dude. Like cool you did some crap way back whenever then hell it was which got you buy in and now you’re just some disgruntled old conspiracy theorist bitching about this fight because of some military industrial complex Illuminati nonsense you’ve been convinced of. You’ve got no idea what the hell is going on and you’re jumping in an Internet forum to present some sort of “alternate to the government narrative” idea as to what’s “really happening.” Just go fishing or something. Find a hobby and stop trying to protect us from actually negatively impacting a geopolitical foe. Because the fact you glossed completely past what I typed about the complexity of operating a Buk ADA system or the fact we knew the reality that the little green men (the ones who were actually VDV and Spetz contract guys masquerading as rebels) were just angry Russian ethnics that happened to have top of the line Russian gear…. Cool you bought the bullshit Russian produced narrative. It’s not their fault…obviously NATO and Lockheed started this war for their own benefit just like the half dozen other times of Russia invade and attempting to annex a neighbor. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

“Transferred missiles to pro Russian….” F me dude. Really you think an SA-11/17 is something a group of rebel separatists not only have in working order but also have the training and wherewithal to be using effectively? Have you ever sat in one? This isn’t something a bunch of pissed off former compulsory conscripts and angry guys with AKs just YouTube directions for or play some warthunder and figure out. ADA is a job normally reserved to involving a team of at least a couple contract soldiers. Just some rando dude that with no help or anything…. Popped one missile with enough Pk to accidentally bring down a 777. Then it randomly moves from the Donbas because reasons and the Russians stop international investigators. Is this like when we pretend those dudes in kit with no patches we can easily identify are just “disgruntled separatists” and not what they clearly were to the adults in the room as they seized key terrain and nodes during the Crimea invasion? Again… you claim you aren’t sympathetic to giving the Russians the benefit of the doubt while you repeatedly dredge shit up on the Uke’s in this thread and others like some kind of foreboding warning to all of us. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk