Now that the drums are beating for a possible “tactical”nuclear war over Ukraine, just why are we willing to continue this dance with Putin? The Appearance from General Petraeus from this past Sunday’s ABC’s “This Week” has gone largely unnoticed. It seems a little nuclear war won’t be so bad.
“We would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” Petraeus replied.
Karl noted radiation from a nuclear attack in Ukraine would also likely reach nearby NATO countries, effectively making it an attack on the alliance. “Yes. And perhaps you can make that case. The other case is that this is so horrific that there has to be a response”
First the foundation. Then our intrepid Mustang will put his shoulder to the plow and add his thoughts.
President Joe Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris explained the Russia-Ukraine conflict and said, “Ukraine is a country in Europe,” during a segment on 93.9 WKYS’s “The Morning Hustle” on 3/1/2022.
Then Russia has no path to victory in its war against Ukraine even with the threat of nuclear escalation says Gen. David Petraeus on ABC’s “This Week”
Mustang picks up the story here.
But if we are being honest, we must admit that since Biden took his oath of office, Washington politics has been pretty damn entertaining to most of the rest of the world. Uproariously entertaining, even. I wonder if people laughed as Rome burned to the ground.
Well, this has been going on for a while. What were “we the people” thinking while our Washington insiders (people who are “in the know”) decided to intervene in such places as Serbia, Somalia, Syria, or Libya? Were we thinking, “Yeah — let’s kick some ass!”?
Did we ever ask, “Is this (fill in the blank) crisis worth even one drop of blood of a young American soldier?” I suspect not — which means that there was no flood of mail clogging up the postal system inside the House of Representatives … and OUR silence gave the green light to the Beltway Nabobs to do their worst … and they did.
I have to be honest here and say that I’ve never given much thought to Ukraine until it was revealed to me that Joe Biden and his son were somehow involved in a corruption scheme that made both of them richer — while Biden was serving as vice president of the United States.
Should I have been paying better attention? Maybe. But the fact is that Ukraine has never been a nation-state at any time before 1991. If Ukraine didn’t belong to the Russians, it belonged to the Poles or Lithuanians. Before that, it belonged to neanderthal tribalists.
Why are we NOW risking global war for Ukrainians who are no different from the Russians in any category you choose to identify?
If war isn’t scary enough for you, try to imagine an entire world entering the cold winter of economic collapse. Are you living in New England? Do you think that the cost of Russian oil matters to your household budget? Your cost, by the way, doesn’t come as a result of some heroic enterprise to free enslaved people — it is the result of choosing the wrong people to lead the nation.
Well, that is, if you were even paying attention. If you haven’t been paying attention, you aren’t alone. But you’d better start paying attention. Your life, and that of your loved ones, depends on it.
James H. Kunstler (1948-) is an author and social critic. Here’s what he has to say about our madness:
“Let us agree that the place called Ukraine was never any of America’s business. For centuries we ignored it, through all the colorful cavalry charges to-and-fro of Turks and Tatars, the reign of the dashing Zaporizhian Cossacks, the cruel abuses of Stalin, then Hitler, and the dull, gray Khrushchev-to-Yeltsin years. But then, having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and sundry other places all on a great hegemonic lark, the professional warmongers of our land and their catamites in Washington made Ukraine their next special project.
They engineered the 2014 coup in Kyiv that ousted the elected president, Mr. Yanukovych, to set up a giant grifting parlor and international money-laundromat. The other strategic aim was to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership, which would have made it, in effect, a forward missile base right up against Russia’s border. Because, well, Russia, Russia, Russia!
We are wondering whether Washington’s Ukraine policy is worth its cost to America’s present and future generations. We don’t have to be historians to figure out the answer to this question. Even a brief look back to 1991 reveals that every Ukrainian presidential election illustrates a nation split between pro-Russian and anti-Russian sentiments.
It is a fact that begs the question: Isn’t this an issue Ukrainians should figure out for themselves? In any case, here’s what the election map looked like in 2010 — sentiments that are remarkably unchanged today. Still, there’s a problem …
(Readers, there was a visual here but we couldn’t get it in there for some reason. I apologize. In any case, the election map looked EXACTLY like the Russia/Ukraine battle map.)
Alexander G. Markovsky is a member of the London Center for Policy Research (founded by conservative Herbert I. London in 2012). He offers this insight into the issue of America’s involvement in the affairs of Ukraine:
“Today’s Ukrainian civil war is thus greatly exacerbated by the fact that unlike pluralistic societies such as the USA, Canada, Switzerland, and Russia, which are tolerant of different cultures, religions, and languages, Ukraine is not. Unsurprisingly, devotion to pluralism proved not to be her forte. Even though the Kyiv regime had no historical roots in the real estate it inhabited, it imposed Ukrainian rules and the Ukrainian language on non-Ukrainian people after declaring independence.
“As a result, pro-Russian sentiments – ranging from the recognition of the official status of the Russian language to outright secession – have always been prevalent in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Western Ukraine has always gravitated toward its Polish, Romanian, and Hungarian roots. Emphatically anti-Russian, Poland may not miss this strategic opportunity to re-acquire its land and avenge the humiliation inflicted by the Yalta Conference.
“The West’s insistence on maintaining the status quo of the Ukrainian borders established by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler exposes the disconnect between strategic doctrine and moral principles.
“Indeed, Poles make no secret of their ambitions. Polish President Andrzej Duda, recently declared, “For decades, and maybe, God forbid, for centuries, there will be no more borders between our countries – Poland and Ukraine. There will be no such border!”
“Romania is not far behind, especially in light of many inhabitants of former Northern Bukovina already carrying Romanian passports.
“The territory of Ukraine is a mosaic of other people’s lands. If we want to stop this insane war and ensure peace in Europe, instead of calling Russia’s sponsored referendum in Eastern Ukraine a sham, we should conduct an honest referendum in all the disputed territories under the auspices of the UN and let the people decide what government they want.”
I keep wondering: do we American ever get tired of fake news, fake countries, forever wars, and ruinous Washington politicians?
Bonus: This leak become more significant today than 8 years ago when it occurred.
Alleged audio of US diplomat Victoria Nuland
An embarrassing phone conversation about Ukraine politics between two high profile US diplomats has surfaced online. The audio clip of a woman and man is purportedly between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two people are heard discussing strategies to work with the three main opposition figures. She is heard telling him that she doesn’t think boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko should be in a new government and also saying “f**k the EU.”
This episode will be embarrassing for the US as President Barack Obama has denied the administration is manipulating the Ukrainian opposition.
It’s hard to get a bead on where this is coming from. Its only been a month or so… is Biden so bad off that they really are concerned? Was this the plan right along, move Pops out and 25 him so Harris can move right in? In practicality, how would this work? As China fires their nukes the Commander-in Chief is to call around and figure out if we are going to respond? It’s hard to believe this issue would have been raised without Pelosi’s approval. Maybe Biden has been a bit too cantankerous. Maybe just turn the decision over to Facebook and the Twitter guys.
“We respectfully request that you, as president, review ways in which you can end the sole authority you have to launch a nuclear attack, and to install additional checks and balances into the system,” the letter states.
“As president, you will have the final say on any changes to U.S. nuclear policy. We respectfully request that you, as president, review ways in which you can end the sole authority you have to launch a nuclear attack, and to install additional checks and balances into the system,” the letter states.
The letter notes that there have been multiple possible systems proposed and lists several of them. One proposal involves “Requiring additional officials in the line of presidential succession, starting with the vice president and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives — neither of whom can be removed by the president if they disagree — to concur with a launch order, and utilizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s tracking of those officials to ensure prompt communication.”
Enter self-appointed peacemaker Carter: The ex-prez scurried off to Pyongyang and negotiated a sellout deal that gave North Korea two new reactors and $5 billion in aid in return for a promise to quit seeking nukes.
So Obama, Appeaser in chief, went back to playing golf:
It was clear what Obama officials were doing in 2013. The DIA report represented inconvenient facts that threatened President Obama’s North Korea “strategic patience” policy — a policy to do nothing about North Korea and kick this problem down the road to the next president. Obama officials tried to downplay the DIA assessment to prevent it from being used to force the president to employ a more assertive North Korea policy.
Tuesday’s bombshell Washington Post story that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has determined North Korea is capable of constructing miniaturized nuclear weapons that could be used as warheads for missiles – possibly ICBMs – left out a crucial fact: DIA actually concluded this in 2013. The Post also failed to mention that the Obama administration tried to downplay and discredit this report at the time.
During an April 11, 2013, House Armed Services Committee hearing, Congressman Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., inadvertently revealed several unclassified sentences from a DIA report that said DIA had determined with “moderate confidence” that North Korea has the capability to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be launched with a ballistic missile.
The Director of National Intelligence and Obama officials subsequently tried to dismiss Lamborn’s disclosure by claiming the DIA assessment was an outlier that did not reflect the views of the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Obama officials tried to downplay the DIA assessment to prevent it from being used to force the president to employ a more assertive North Korea policy.
For those who still think that Donald is some yahoo that knows little, take a look at this interview done in back 1999. Meanwhile Clinton, Bush and of course, Obama let North Korea get the big one.
In a little reported action of the U.N. last week, the world once again looked into that dark place which makes possible the total annihilation of human life on this beautiful orb known as Mother Earth. Mustang gives us his thoughts with his guest post today.
7 July 2017 – Countries meeting at a United Nations conference in New York adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Controlling Nuclear Arms
Well, the good news is that several countries have participated in a UN conference designed to prohibit nuclear weapons. According to Global Security, this was the first ever multilateral, legally-binding instrument for nuclear disarmament over the past 20 years.
The treaty passed by a vote of 122 for, one against (Netherlands), and one abstention (Singapore). Prohibited will be the undertaking to develop, test, produce, manufacture, acquire, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons or explosives.
Right.
I am not a fan of nuclear war. Neither do I think the US was justified in dropping two atom bombs on Japan in 1945. In late July 1945, the Japanese were ready to throw in the towel. What led us down this unhappy road was no more than a thirst for revenge against the Japanese (never mind that FDR wanted a war with Japan as much as Elvis wanted his first guitar) —and our own hubris. At the same time, how well is our prohibitions of firearms working? Will it be any easier to manage caches of internationally placed atomic weapons, or those as may be stored in such Middle Eastern cesspools?
This move is typical of leftists who think that all we need to do to save the world from idiots such as Fat boy Kim, is to pass a law that cannot and will not be enforced. I will even suggest that doing silly things such as this simply makes our world an even more dangerous place. We will be sticking our heads in the sand, pretending that Pakistan, India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia really do not already have atomic weapons. And, we’ll all be happier in our practiced ignorance.
No, sorry … I don’t buy it. The only effective way of managing North Korea is to drop twenty or thirty MOABs at strategic locations throughout that godforsaken landscape, ten of which we should place at the epicenter Kim’s bedroom.
The icing on this cake is Costa Rica Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez, who told us, “We feel emotional because we are responding to the hopes and dreams of the present and future generations. We are one step closer to a total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Right … feeling emotional.
I came across this interesting quote the other day. It concerns society during the Roman Empire. “There was nothing inherently wrong with Roman society so long as the citizen’s basic needs were met. The Roman was content to be ruled by his betters. For him, that was the natural state of affairs. All he asked was not to be abused by those in power.”
If this doesn’t describe modern socialist society, then I don’t know what does … and to make matters worse, we now have the United Nations organization dictating to us the way our world will be … how, or if, we may defend ourselves against nitwits (who also happen to be leftists). It is an aspect of representative democracy that makes me cringe. I did not elect Gomez to represent my interests in the United Nations … and once more, I will ask: how is that gun control thing working out in Chicago?
Yesiree, Obama’s really worried about Manhattan. So what has he done other than to paint a target on NYC? Why he slashed the Coast Guard units that protect it among other things.
“Russia’s actions are a problem. They don’t pose the No. 1 national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan,” the president said.
Meanwhile, let’s us take a look back at Obama’s past actions to insure the lack of security for our ports, and NYC in particular. Sources at bottom of the post:
October 5, 2010
The Obama administration will announce today it has slashed anti-terror funds for New York City, despite the attempted Times Square bombing less than two weeks ago that underscored the enormous threat to the city.
The Department of Homeland Security informed New York officials yesterday that grants to the city were cut 27 percent for mass transit security and 25 percent for port security.
The mass transit funds dropped $42 million, from $153 million last year to $111 this year.
Port security funds suffered a $11.2 million cut, from $45 million to $33.8 million, officials said.
The timing of the announcement drew howls from New York lawmakers on Capitol Hill, whose recent pleas for increased anti-terror spending in the Big Apple – along with the same plea from Mayor Bloomberg – fell flat.
They said the Times Square bomb attempt shows that New York remains the top target for terrorists and that the city deserves the lion’s share of federal spending on security.
“For the administration to announce these cuts two weeks after the attempted Times Square bombing shows they just don’t get it and are not doing right by New York City on anti-terrorism funding,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said.
Cutting the Coast Guards elite team that patrols our ports.
At a recent hearing, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking member on the committee, said she was shocked that the Obama administration’s budget for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2011 cuts funding for the U.S. Coast Guard while asking for $200 million for security for the Sheikh Mohammed trial.
When asked by ranking minority leader Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) why the DHS budget spends money on securing the trials of terrorists in the U.S. while cutting funding for U.S. Coast Guard, Napolitano defended the Obama administration’s stance on the matter.
Collins said “Decommissioning part of the Coast Guard’s 13th elite maritime security safety teams that protect waterfront cities makes absolutely no sense given the threats to our ports,” adding that she believed the Senate would not fund security for terror trials in the U.S.
Coast Guard commandant Papp, the new head honcho also calls for cuts to the Coast Guard’s largest homeland security operation, which patrols critical infrastructure and other sensitive security structures on or near waterways. And he would decrease the number of specialized units stationed in key coastal areas where an attack could be devastating.
“In view of the fiscal horizon, we must make bold and systematic strategic decisions,” New Coast Guard Head Papp wrote in the memo, dated Nov. 10, 2009.
In the memo, Coast Guard Commandant Papp said he wants to eliminate teams that are trained to respond to and prevent terror attacks. These teams also train other Coast Guard forces on counterterrorism operations.
The memo, marked “sensitive — for internal Coast Guard use only,” was obtained by The Associated Press.
Obama has already proposed closing five of the 12 specialized units in 2011.
Papp’s outline is significant because it could mean major changes for the more than 200-year-old agency that took on substantial homeland security duties after Sept. 11, 2001. Obama’s 2011 proposed budget cuts for the Coast Guard have already caused outrage from some lawmakers.
Iran talks tough, but our plucky foreign policy savant President has it down. Nothing to worry about. Of course, a lot of these folks don’t mind moving on to see Allah sooner rather than later and would like to take us with them. While Obama fiddles, Iran moves on with its nukes. but the man says Iran is just a “tiny country”. So we keep chattering away. POTUS, you are no John Kennedy.
Recall his words:
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.”
Just days after the breakdown of talks with the West over Iran’s nuclear program, the deputy chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards announced that there soon will be war — and that Allah will ensure his forces are victorious.
The last round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany) ended in Moscow last week without any agreement on Iran’s illicit nuclear program.
Gen. Hossein Salami, in a televised interview, boasted that, “Iran has complete control of all the enemy’s interests around the world and is on a path to reach equivalency with world powers.” The commander emphasized that Iran’s nuclear program is irreversible, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
7 July 2017 – Countries meeting at a United Nations 
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 