Leaked U.S. intelligence documents have exposed Western disinformation about Ukraine winning the war. Now the heavy fighting moves to Washington, writes Joe Lauria.
Aerial view of the Washington battleground. (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz/Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
A Washington Post headline last week was a bombshell for someone who has only been reading about the Ukraine war in The Washington Post and other Western media: “U.S. doubts Ukraine counteroffensive will yield big gains, leaked document says.”
The story admits that Western media audiences have been misled about the course of the war, that essentially what mainstream media has been reporting about Ukraine has been a pack of lies: namely that Ukraine is winning the war and is poised to launch an offensive that will lead to a final victory.
Instead, the second paragraph of the piece makes clear the leaked documents show the long-planned Ukrainian offensive will fail miserably — “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military.”
In other words, U.S. officials have been lying about the state of the war to the public and to reporters who have faithfully reported their every word without a hint of skepticism.
The Post said, as if it’s a bad thing, that the leaks will likely “embolden critics who feel the United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.”
That has begun to happen. Writing in the uber-Establishment Foreign Affairs, former State Department official Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, write that “it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed.”
In “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table,” they say:
“The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table.”
The article does not mention the leaks, though it was published after the disclosures made clear that the Ukrainian offensive, intended to break through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, would fail.
Filled with the usual talk about Ukraine having better “operational skill” than Russia, and that the war will end in a “stalemate,” the piece represents an emerging strategy in the West: namely that before negotiating, Ukraine needs to launch its offensive to gain back some territory, “imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement.”
But that is a tall order. Moscow would be unlikely to negotiate at the end of the Ukrainian offensive, particularly as the article acknowledges the “Russian military’s numerical superiority” and that Ukraine is “facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.”
Moscow was ready to cut a deal with Kiev one month after Russia’s intervention but the West, with its strategy of lengthening the war to weaken Russia, quashed it. Why would Moscow accept a deal now when Ukraine is at its weakest and Russia is poised to make significant gains on the battlefield?
The Foreign Affairs piece admits, “This diplomatic gambit may well fail. Even if Russia and Ukraine continue to take significant losses, one or both of them may prefer to keep fighting.”
“Come the end of this fighting season,” the article says, “the United States and Europe will also have good reason to abandon their stated policy of supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes,’ as U.S. President Joe Biden has put it.”
And what comes next? “NATO allies would start a strategic dialogue with Russia on arms control and the broader European security architecture.”
Incredibly this is what Russia was asking for before its February 2022 intervention and it was rebuffed by NATO and the U.S. Now a Foreign Affairs article is recommending it.
Is there no better sign that Ukraine has lost this war?
Going Ahead With the Offensive Anyway
The strategy of Ukraine going ahead with an offensive it knows will achieve little is Kiev’s last gasp — unless delusional neocons continue to outmaneuver the realists in Washington.
Most importantly for the West, the failure of this last-gasp attempt would serve as a way for it to escape the disaster it has created for itself: namely, the backfiring of the economic war on Russia; the failure of the information war in the non-West and ultimately defeat on the battlefield in its proxy war.
Already in February, French President Emmanuel Macron, who is also pushing this strategy, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy that the game was up. This news was brought to us by the establishment Wall Street Journal.
And then ten days later U.S. intelligence provided a story to The New York Times that a pro-Ukraine “group,” and possibly the Ukrainian government itself, was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, a way of distancing the U.S. from Kiev as the exit ramp looms into sight.
Why Did the MSM Publish the Leaks?
Why did the Times, the Post and other establishment outlets publish stories about these leaks if they severely undermined their own credibility? There are three possibilities.
The first is simply competition. The Times or the Post may have gotten word that their rival had their hands on the leaks and did not want to be beat. There is almost nothing worse for an editor or reporter (in the petty world of journalism) then having to “match” a competitors’ story.
The second reason has to do with keeping up appearances. These leaks were eventually to come out somewhere and may not have been easily ignored. What would it have looked like if the big papers didn’t have it first?
More importantly, corporate journalism needs to keep up the pretense that it is actually doing journalism, i.e. that it will publish material from time to time that makes their governments look bad, and in this case, even themselves. They have to convince the public that they haven’t entirely given up on adversarial journalism if they are to survive.
It was the same when corporate outlets partnered with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish leaks that exposed U.S. war crimes. But eventually the media turned on Assange and WikiLeaks, and fell into line with the state.
Why the Media Went After the Leaker
And that is indeed what has happened here. After splashy stories about the leaks, the Times and the Post, teaming with Western intelligence-backed Bellingcat, turned their attention to finding the leaker, in what Elizabeth Vos in an article today on Consortium News argues makes corporate media the anti-WikiLeaks.
Rather than protecting the source of leaks, vital to the public, they hunted down the alleged leaker, 21-year old Air National Guardsman Jack Texiera, who was arrested by military-clad F.B.I. agents outside his Massachusetts home.
So what is the third reason why the major media published the leaks?
Very likely for the same reason they published the stories about Macron and Scholz telling Zelensky he’s lost the war, and that the Ukrainian government may have been responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage: to lay the ground work for the U.S. and its allies to pull the plug on their Ukrainian adventure by finally admitting Ukraine is losing.
Towards that end, there is speculation that Texiera did not act alone with the motive of impressing his teenage followers on the Discord chat forum, as the press has reported.
Former C.I.A. analyst Larry Johnson believes Texiera was set up, possibly by a senior officer. Johnson thinks this because among the documents Texiera allegedly leaked was one from the Central Intelligence Agency Operations Center, where Johnson used to work.
“CIA Operations Center produces two daily reports — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is not a ‘Community’ product, i.e., it is not distributed to the other intelligence agencies. It is an internal CIA document (of course, it is available to the Director of National Intelligence), ” Johnson wrote on his website Son of the New American Revolution.
Texiera was not in the C.I.A. so there is no way he’d have access to an Operations Center document, Johnson wrote. So how did he get his hands on it?
The implication is that Texiera may have been a patsy for someone within the realist wing of the U.S. military or intelligence establishment who opposes the neocons’ obsession with continuing the war at all costs.
The neocons are not going down without a fight, however. John Bolton, the former U.S. national security advisor and chief neocon, wrote a desperate piece in The Wall Street Journal last week, titled, “A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China.”
Bolton gets it that the world is changing, and not in America’s favor. So his response is not to reverse failed U.S. policy, for the U.S. to become part of the rest of the world rather than trying to dominate it, but to double down like a riverboat gambler.
His solution: raise military spending to Reagan-era levels; resume underground nuclear bomb testing and taking “the North Atlantic Treaty Organization global, inviting Japan, Australia, Israel and others committed to NATO defense-spending targets to join.”
Bolton laughingly says the U.S. must “exclude” Moscow and Beijing from the Middle East, where both capitals are orchestrating the most dramatic diplomatic transformation in decades.
But Bolton saves his best laugh for Ukraine:
“After Ukraine wins its war with Russia, we must aim to split the Russia-China axis. Moscow’s defeat could unseat Mr. Putin’s regime. What comes next is a government of unknowable composition. New Russian leaders may or may not look to the West rather than Beijing, and might be so weak that the Russian Federation’s fragmentation, especially east of the Urals, isn’t inconceivable.”
Even if the ludicrous Bolton is dismissed, there’s still a major obstacle in the realists’ way: Biden’s re-election campaign. He says he’s going to announce soon. He’s already thrown his lot in with the neocons.
Is there any conceivable way that Biden could accept Ukraine losing this war, after all the blue and yellow flag-waving, without also losing the election?
The Biden team’s aim was to bleed Russia. But it is Ukraine that is hemorrhaging. Will reality at last overcome delusion in Washington?
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
Actually, sir, Mr. Putin said this himself, in his speech to assembled dignitaries and Russian government officials Sept 30, 2022. He announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine (15% of its land) and characterized it as “reunification with Russia’s historical lands”. His exact words, not the “Western MSM”.
The liberal-fascist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) network has controlled US policy and the corporate media since WW2. This is rule by a corporatist oligarchy behind a false front of liberal democracy, and it must be exposed. See the CFR and WEF websites for their lists of directors and corporate “partners”.
The author fails to mention that “Foreign Affairs” is the CFR journal, or that Richard Haass is the long-time CFR president. He also fails to mention that most of the hated PNAC “neocons” are/were also CFR members, including John Bolton and Dick Cheney, a former CFR director. The NYTimes and WashPost have been CFR mouthpieces for decades. Allen Dulles, who ran the CIA “Operation Mockingbird”, was a CFR director for 40 years. The Sulzbergers and the Meyer/Grahams were CFR members.
The CFR has staffed the key positions in every US admin since WW2. CFR members on the “Biden team” include the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Commerce and ‘Homeland Security’. Also the CIA director, Fed chairman, the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, and dozens of deputies, advisors, ambassadors, etc.
“Ukraine needs to launch its offensive to gain back some territory, “imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement.”
How can so-called intelligent people come up with this stuff? Why would Ukraine want to stop after imposing ‘heave losses on Russia?” For Russia, this is an existential fight. In the most unlikely event that Russia suffered ‘heavy losses,’ would they not double or triple down, to reverse their losses? America, you started this equi-feces, and it ain’t over til Russia says it is.
So… Jack Teixeira is our NewAge Lee Harvey..(Maybe) for him good thing the stakes are Fractional Fiat Financing…
NOT a Bullet to the Brain!
The stated aims of Russia have changed, as witnessed by the Kremlin ceremony when Putin announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine and said that “at long last Russia has been reunited with its historical lands”. Apparently they gave up trying to find Nazis. I wonder if Russia would vote in favor at the UN if, to start, a dozen or so other countries launched wars to recover their “historical lands”.
Dorothea, repeating the claim that the MSM and Western nations have been spreading regarding allegedly Russia reclaiming lost lands, does you no credit. Such claims are simply thoughT projections, projecting Western desires onto others, because that’s exactly how the West behaves. Unfortunately, I’m an individual who makes judgements on people’s real time ACTIONS, and ever since the USSR collapsed, I have seen no signs/actions whatever, that any Russian was desirous of reclaiming lost lands. What I have seen, is genuine, honest attempts be made to be welcome in Western Europe and be a part of it, only to be played and schemed and destroyed by those very same people, it was trying to become a part of. Regards the U.N. what use is this Non functional organisation that has proven beyond a shadow of doubt, it is nothing but another tool of the West to further it’s agenda of World domination. How do you explain the behaviour of the Americans, in refusing a visa to Russian Foreign Minister to do his job in the U.N. ? Indeed, how CAN the U.N. function, if the U.S. can at any time, prevent any U.N. representative of entering the country to carry out their duties within the U.N. ???
Ms. Dorothea, Agree that everything is not so black and white, as much as people try to make it so in their own minds. Russia’s focus on the Donbas region first, is a rational approach. There is no reason to suspect that Russia has yet given up trying to find Nazis in Ukraine. They have killed off many of them in battle already. Many assume that Russia will leave a ‘rump state’ after taking the East and South back into Russia. That might happen but Russia has sacrificed a great deal to make a point to NATO countries. The point that NATO expansion will end at the Polish border. Rump state or not, there will
never be U.S. nuclear warheads or NATO troops in Ukraine. Russia drove Charles XII’s army out of Ukraine in 1709, then again had to drive the Wehrmacht out in 1943. From Russia’s point of view, this shit is getting old. Around 1812, Napoleon also marched through Poland and tried and failed to defeat Russia. Germany and France today are NATO members with Sweden now seeking admission. All are E.U. members and effectively vassal states of U.S. hegemony. Repeating the same error while expecting a different result defines insanity. Once the Zelensky regime is defeated and removed, Putin alone will decide what to do with whatever remains of Ukraine. Russian control of Ukraine lands is inevitable and will be the final result. As the NATO imperialists are so fond of asserting: for as long as it takes.
One detail many antiwar critics get wrong: We in the US should not be demanding negotiations. That is weak tea given that the crisis in Ukraine was stoked and provoked by the US. We should be unconditionally demanding, US/NATO out of Ukraine now!
Right on Bruce. However, in an environment where the U.S. Govt has stated, it never says sorry, I cannot see one Government Official publicly supporting such a move. I believe the onus is on the Europeans to make such a move, as it is their back yard that will suffer the most, as it already is. Simply because their Govts do not have the testicles to do the right thing for their country.
I wonder if/when it will sink in to a European public that the US ‘Full Spectrum Dominance” policy/agenda is aimed at them, too. Biden planned to sacrifice Germany’s lower cost energy needs by sabotaging Nord Stream pipeline well before hostilities started in Ukraine.
As is said, the purpose of NATO is…..> Keep Russia out, Europe down and the US up.
Thanks for your insight, Vlad.
Who is the “Vlad” you are addressing?
As is standard for supporters of the US imperial capitalist project, rather than provide a coherent argument, Michael merely repeats a meme – in this case meaning, obviously, that anyone commenting against US exceptionalism and against NATO must be a mindless drone for the Russian government. Such empty-headed comments are never worth responding to. I suspect that the commenter is incapable of advancing a coherent argument. How many people in the USA or here in the UK leave the education system, never having learned the basics of debate, using language effectively and critical thinking?
I think most of us actually support democracy, accountability from our elected governments, the rule of law and respect for human rights. And I think most of us are sufficiently intelligent to understand what is in our best interest. Obviously your own capacity for critical thinking is limited as evidenced by use of meaningless phrases such as ‘US imperial capitalist project’. I am sure you might be a decent person but I think you are caught up in an anti-Western (whilst enjoying all the benefits) bubble which is deeply respectful to the populations of Europe, America, GB, Australia etc. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should be condemned not excused, and certainly not twisted into some sort of moral action.
Russia’s intervention in Ukraine should be studied carefully, not automatically dismissed as “condemned not excused.” As discussion on this site has indicated for years, tracing back to Robert Parry, we have seen the problem of encroachment into Russia’s security concerns, particularly dramatized with events in 2014 and a coup engineered by the US. And this development cannot be “twisted into some sort of moral action,” as you are doing here apparently.
“How many people in the USA or here in the UK leave the education system, never having learned the basics of debate, using language effectively and critical thinking?”
Well certainly not the ones in government representing the people.
According to the official February 2022 OSCE reports, Ukraine waged a full-scale war on the Donbass 9 days before Russia invaded to protect the Russian-speaking people living there from being slaughtered. —Jim Gala
Right on again. Funny how facts such as this are ignored by the MSM and the Govt’s involved. It’s almost as if those people sacraficed since 2014 did not exist. What does that say about Western society and the MSM. What sort of allegedly God fearing people would behave in such cold hearted manner ????
How does America write off the money lost in Ukraine? Another indicator of accelerated Ukraine collapse is that European countries are not allowing sale of Ukraine grain to their countries. That means Ukraine cannot pay its loans to USA. So a lot of money went flying around which mostly backs military industrial complex with debt assigned to taxpayer. Of course war with China could be a big push for Made in America by regressives. Who is going to work that?
Dear Jim,
No, Ukraine started war against Russia yet in 2014 with all the atrocities reported honestly by Russian media then. And it was Ukraine that started prosecution of Russian majority in Crimea. Putin had no choice but to defend the Russian population in those areas. You should follow official Russian news source more carefully. Russian, and Soviets before have always been the most trustworthy sources of information about about the imperialist West!
It’d be nice to dig even deeper and expose the Kagens as well as Victoria Nuland and the role of the ‘defunct’ PNAC
John Bolton is a psycho Nazi. Just like all the other neocons with dreams of global empire, he has steered the US towards its deserved inevitable collapse. I can’t wait to hear the shrieking cries for revenge when it happens which will fall on deaf ears. May we all survive the brutality of this neocon regime long enough to resurrect some form of social democracy in time to rejoin the community of nations.
And may we all survive the brutality of climate breakdown, before or after this inevitable collapse. We omit at our peril that huge elephant in the room, viying for space.
If past is prologue, what is certain eventually to emerge at the bottom of this so-called revelation is some brand of ass covering &/or face saving (sometimes done simultaneo delecto) by & for the so-called Deciders. Whatever disinfo emerges also is pretty likely to be targeted directly at those who take NYT & WaPo at their word, geo-schmeo schpeaking, of course.
Some comic relief at the start of Act 1, before the ghost comes on? ‘Shows to go’ as my little mate Dick used to say. Too many.
Thanks for all the valuable insight in regards to the dire situation that USA has put the whole world under duress. Putin is the one with the brain in this fiasco!
Why does the citizens of the USA accept Biden (who is mentally incompetent) as their Leader, when it is so dangerous.
Is Bolton even aware of global warming, global climate change, as big problems? Even it Neocon America “wins” victory would be Pyrrhic.
I believe governments are aware lester. They just have no bloody idea how to combat it. It’s runaway catastrophe now. Jacques Cousteau got it right. His predictions are coming to fruition.
The Bolton piece in the WSJ epitomizes the ideological blindness of the neocon wing. It’s too bad that there is not a significant anti-war movement in the United States. It appears to me that most Americans are no longer paying much attention to what goes on in Ukraine. If the US does eventually pull the plug on the war, it may be the doing of the intelligence agencies, one of which was the likely leaker, or even the Pentagon, which has no appetite for continuing to support what is clearly a losing effort.
Bolton is a jas been, forget about him.
The only period that the USA had an effective, large and popular anti-war movement was when its government introduced conscription for the war against the poor of SE Asia in the 1960s. Once that ended in 1973, the movement collapsed, giving rise to the suspicion that most members of it were motivated by reasons other than concern for the victims of US bombings. Given the almost complete lack of foreign news coverage in the American corporate media, why would any American even know about the atrocities their governments commit, let alone care enough to get together with other Americans to form an anti-war movement?
Conscription was not introduced in the USA “for the war … in the 1960s”, It had been in force for many years before that..
But it is true that, after the Korean war, men who were drafted were not in any great danger.
Much more to it. Beware the over-simplifying tendency. The anti-war movement began well back in the mid-sixties accompanied by awareness of the enormous waste and victimization of that war. The government’s rationale of a communist world take-over–its “domino theory”–was also recognized as hollow. In fact, a strong awakening was taking place on the role of corporate America and the Military Industrial Complex, as Eisenhower called it. Galvanizing all this was the murder of a strong president pursuing peace and an alternative vision to global domination. It was a complex, progressive time in this country, including a music revolution reflecting new attitudes toward equal rights and liberty.
Great article Mr. Lauria!!!Thank you!
What chance does this country have for a soft landing, given the delusional NEOCON determination to risk the planet to get China next – after failing to admit their grand disaster on Ukraine while speeding up the shift to a cooperative multipolar world, as the victims of R crazy sanctions run to join the BRICS and SCO.
Can the American people stop being scared of the lying Boltons, Pompeo’s and Nulands’s? The Wynken Blinken and Nods of our delusional set and open their minds to an honest broker courageous enough to run?
Someone like Robert Kennedy Jr or Russ Feingold or both together or someone else who’s been honest and down to earth and cares about the people of this country?
Can we stand up and do that?
I was taken in by Bernie, who doesn’t dare to say that his grand plans for people will never materialize until we stop letting people like hi pal Joe waste $trillions on our for profit war machine?
The psychopaths are somehow in charge…as hard as the wise people try, the fear weighs heavily on poorly informed people.
When will people see that the Emperor has no clothes. What will it take?
now it depends on which way the leaks are spun…’oh poor ukraine is losing, lets get american troops in there to save them’ is one of the ways this could go. i am a pessimist though…
The moment that happens, it’s WW 3, and the nucs start flying. All bets will be off. I understand the neocons believe they will be saved in their bunkers, but Russia has proven, those bunkers do not guarantee their survival. IMHO, it’d be a good thing, if all the Neocons were entombed in their precious bunkers to die there like rats buried in a hole underground.
There must be a helluva’ argument raging among US imperial managers. …….the ‘realists’ vs “we go for broke….we can’t lose – we WON’T lose’ crowd. …… This Jack Texiera being a patsy seems more than plausible.
Meanwhile, how do we make sense of NATO pronouncements about sending up to 300,000 international forces to flank the entire eastern border with Russia?? ….that would include the 800 miles of Finland’s border, too. Macron and Scholz public comments are still fill of ‘war mode’ bluster toward Russia. ……Perhaps just a ‘show of force’ to better any negotiating stance?
After all the claims made by each and everyone of those nations you mention, said claims alledge their amunition situation is perilous. IF such claims have validity, it matters not how many troops they have gathered, fighting with stones won’t achieve much.
Larry Johnson says there’s no way Texeira could have got his hands – or eyes – on an internal CIA document, based on the fact that he and two of his colleagues never saw such documents on Defense Department servers. However, they seem to have been working on the operational side – one of them “recruited foreigners to spy on behalf of the United States, managed highly classified programs and planned and executed many covert actions” according to the article ‘THE 21 YEAR OLD LEAKER — SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT’ on Johnson’s website. Texeira, on the other hand, was ‘a “cyber transport systems specialist”, essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs’ according to the Guardian. Might he have had access to, legitimately or otherwise, or known how to access, materials Johnson and his contacts didn’t?
“The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table.”
This is what the delusional Ze has been saying for months. The Western media keep pretending this is possible. It has long been obvious that Russia will decide the terms. Russia is steadily but surely inviting the AFU into its “meat grinder” while being ready to have talks, which the Uke/ NATO/ USA refuse. Why would Russia stop or offer more, when it is continuing its stated aims of demilitarizing and deNazifying Ukraine?
WELL DONE!, Yet again, Joe. Thanks. ray
Lies, lies and more lies…never ending. And those hooked on ‘smart’ phones totally oblivious to what is going on or why.
Great article! We live in the fact-free zone. Ukraine is loosing the war, but most American media says Ukraine is winning the war. Similar to the war in Syria. The US media screamed about Syrian government losing the war until Trump withdrew American troops and Syrian refugees returned to their devastated country. The same happened in the US invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Serbia and Libya. America lost all those wars, but devastated all those countries and enriched the arms makers. Mission accomplished.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is the only international civilian observer mission allowed to collect information from both sides of the contact line, and its data is the best available. The OSCE has had observers on-the-ground monitoring the situation in Donbas since the outbreak of open conflict began in 2014.
According to thr OSCE’s own official reports, it’s clear that Kieve, not Moscow, launched a full-scale war on the Donbas beginning on Februeary 16, 2022—9 days before Russia’s inasion of Ukrain—to keep the Russians living there from being slaughterd. —Jim Gala
Is it at all possible for the truth about anything political, economic, and social today to broadly emerge?
Can Elon Musk create change through Twitter?
What happens to Biden’s “democracy” vs “authoritarianism” call as USA becomes a sans-truth democracy?
Fascinating speculations – thanks Joe and CN. This is why we all support this site.
It boggles the mind that Biden will be considered a viable candidate, yet he is the D’s frontrunner! If this is not the quintessential house of cards, I don’t know what is. Biden may still be drawing breath in ’24, but the oxygen won’t be reaching his activity-absent brain; and Harris? The very embodiment of “lightweight.” Of course, such realities have seldom bothered the brain trusts of the parties.
So here we are some 14 months later and nothing but a horrific trail of death and destruction to show for the neocons wet dream of finally starting their war with Russia in Europe. Beware Europeans! IT CAN GET MUCH WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER, AND ALL IT WILL TAKE IS CONTINUED SILENCE IN THE FACE OF GLARING LIES.
This “revelation” is the cherry in the sundae. All of this administration in cohoots to destroy a country with nary an eyebrow raised but instead with the cold calculas of a chess player fooling around with moves to whet its power complex must be replaced. Meaning that we with hot blood running in our veins must organize and go beyond our personal comfort zones to effect the change for the country as the Chicagoans did with their new mayor. Where do you draw the line in permitting the current ruling class to continue its destructiveness?
Our aim is to weaken Russia so that it can’t do this again. – SecDef of the US. No, Mr. Austin. I think that it is the US that is being weakened so that it can’t pull its shenanigans anymore. The world would cheer.
Oh what a tangled web they weave…
McCarthy’s backing of the war allows the GOP to bash Biden after the debacle.
Yes, thanks for giving us an alternative to the psychotic manipulations of the corporate press.
I’ve found it impossible to fathom how Americans could think “Ukraine will win!” That would be something like Oregon (after being drained out by years of internal conflict) waging a war against the US. It simply makes no sense. Could Americans seriously be this ignorant about Russia, Ukraine, and the issues involved?
I know it was a rhetorical question, but YES, most Americans appear to be THAT ignorant.
It appears to be so. I don’t know. News USA is the mirror of News Australia. But Hell, there is a universe of other respectable enough alternative news supply and commentary platforms. I lean to thinking many are not ignorant at all but put much energy into not knowing. Why? Would it open a Pandora’s Box of all the ugly suspicions about this and that? And that would be so horrible they’d rather keep getting one more comfortably numb lets pretend day at a time?
Before the Ukraine war started, it was readily apparent that there was no way Ukraine could ever defeat Russia in a shooting war. The war should never have been fought. once it ends, all it will have accomplished is the deaths of up to a million Ukrainians and a lesser but still significant number of Russians. Putin looked at the weakness, incompetence and hubris of the Biden Regime and calculated that the time had arrived for Russia to risk presenting Russian opposition to U.S. and NATO hegemony over Europe. Biden instantly demonstrated his incompetence by cancelling the oil pipeline from Canada. He also sent clear signals to energy companies through added regulations that he intended to reduce exploration and production of oil and gas in the U.S. Biden’s energy policy is the single greatest blunder of any U.S. President in the past 60 years. Hyperinflation immediately spiked and spiraled as the most direct result. Nothing is more central to global inflation than the cost of energy. Combined with the Biden Regime’s cowardly retreat from Afghanistan, Putin understood that he was opposed by a collection of rank amateurs, despite the potent military capabilities of the U.S. It was now or never. The Socialist governments of Western Europe so loathed Trump and preferred Biden. U.S. voters are stuck with the imbecile Biden for another year. But it is Europe that is getting the results of the 2020 U.S. election good and hard. None more so than Ukraine. The people of Ukraine must be starting to understand that they have been sacrificed literally, by fools named Nuland, Blinken Sullivan and Biden. And for no tangible gain other than what Zelensky and his regime have skimmed off of the $100 billion or so that has been heaved into Ukraine. All charged on the U.S. national credit card for the next generation to pay off or default on. Yet another massive lie and psychological operation from the corrupt Biden Regime comes crashing down.
Which countries in Europe have “Socialist” governments?
Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine had nothing to do with the incompetence of the Biden regime in particular. It was the result of his realizing, after one final attempt at diplomacy in December 2021, that the US/NATO (whose policies are more or less unchanged no matter which of the “two parties” is in power) is still bent on planetary domination and will never negotiate.
What really led to the Russian government’s decision to send in the army at that time (after resisting popular and political pressure to intervene before) was its knowledge of the Ukrainian plan for a large-scale assault on the Donbas in a few days.
“The Biden team’s aim was to bleed Russia. But it is Ukraine that is hemorrhaging. ”
Unfortunately, this is literal, not metaphorical. It reminds me Polish encyclopedia from 1970-ties. Entries about the leaders of Polish Communist Party in interwar period were ending with the same sentence “Has fallen victim of false accusations.”, an oblique reference to Stalin’s purges in 1937-8. PPK was dissolved with a claim that it was penetrated by Troskyinst and Polish police, those leaders who were in exile, mostly in France (as PPK was illegal in Poland) went to Moscow to defend themselves. Only those in Polish prisons survived.
Now we again still an avalanche of false accusations and victims. Real blood is flowing, real hunger is spreading. Four riders are running think tanks.
> Four riders are running think tanks.
You mean “the Four Horsemen [of the Apocalypse]”
I too would like to be optimistic on this. But–
“The strategy of Ukraine going ahead with an offensive it knows will achieve little is Kiev’s last gasp — unless delusional neocons continue to outmaneuver the realists in Washington.”
Yesterday Ray McGovern also indicated Jack Texeira as a patsy and suggested someone in intelligence was taking on a similar heroic role to previous historically (he also mentioned Ellsberg at this point).
However, is the opposite possible?
That is, have the neocons themselves engineered these leaks, specifically with Bolton leading, so as to get rid of the baggage-ridden Biden? Emphasis on the terrible messenger also plays into pressure to extradite Assange.
Pressure is mounting on Biden’s dealings with Hunter and Ukraine from his time as VP. Bolton announced a run for the presidency back in January.
The neocons haven’t yet thrown in the towel: PBS aired a blatantly anti-Putin piece last night emphasizing that allegedly Russia holds 400 political prisoners without bothering to mention that the U.S. prison population exceeds that of any other country in the world or our implacable pursuit of extracting and imprisoning Julian Assange for the alleged crime of reporting factual information about our own government’s corruption. It will be a very long time before PBS manages to dim the memory of being our ‘public bullsh!t system’.
There could well be 400 political prisoners in Russia as a result of conflicts created by the encroachment of NATO in Eastern Europe and around Russia’s border, with the West instigating war in neighboring countries.
Stout and hearty bravos to Joe Lauria!
This was one of the very (very) few media reports on the Airman First Class Teixeira classified documents release that did not focus exclusively upon the leaker, his character, his motives, and the process, but rather went directly to the core of the story by asking; was the leaked information true? Has our government in cooperation with the MSM/Silicon Valley been lying about Ukraine? If so, what are implications for the rest of us?
So, why does this feel so much like the Nixon Administration’s orchestrated attempt to smear, threaten, and otherwise intimidate Daniel Ellsberg in order to stop the publication of the Vietnam War era Pentagon Papers? Back then, the NYTs was a lion for the truth in revealing the government’s brazen lies about Vietnam. In the Teixeira case, however, Washington Post along with the entire MSM appears to have become insufferably obedient lapdogs for the government. What happened to these people?
Caveat emptor, I suppose, but well done to Joe, just the same.
Soon the reality will penetrate into even the most nationalistic ukrainians. The US did it again, they used us and now they throw us away. The Ukrainians are left with a rump state with bleak future. The same applies to some extent to Europe. I wonder who will be next in line to put their trust to Uncle Sam? Maybe Taiwan or Maybe my country Finland as we are now more energy indepedent as our new Nuclearreactor is finally working and Nordstream did not mean us so much. Maybe Finland can open a new front and try to capture the areas we lost after WW2. You never know, people here are so crazy.
When Zelensky’s forces attack Donetsk, Luhansk, etc., which country is waging war on which? The Ukraine was a region of Russia from the 1700s until the USSR broke apart in 1991. (Keep in mind that Ukraine is only the size of Texas.) Eastern Ukraine in particular has a majority ethnic Russian population, which had voted (referendum) to rejoin Russia – not align with the West. THAT – not an “invasion” by Russia – is what ignited this war. It’s no secret that Zelensky’s days are numbered. And then? My guess is that Ukraine will be brought back under the protection of Russia.
@D.H. Fabian : ” My guess is that Ukraine will be brought back under the protection of Russia.”
By all accounts, Poland is intending to grab a large slice, possibly even Kiev, and Hungary has historical claims on other parts.
I suspect that Russia is unlikely to want to take over any more than the bits that actually want to be part of the Russian Federation – the four regions that voted to last year, plus Crimea.
So, finally you got your bits together and cobbled together your nuclear reactor after all these years. BUT, from whence will you obtain the fuel to operate this reactor ???? Will the Russians still provide you with this substance ??? At cost ??????
Get John Bolton: ”After Ukraine wins its war with Russia we must aim to split the Russia/China axis.”
Words fail me!
I think that Russia will push on to the East Bank of the Dnieper and then call it a day. The Rump Ukraine will collapse on itself and millions of Ukrainians are now actually making for all points East and West. What is left behind will be anyone’s guess.
Thank you, Mr. Lauria. As for John Bolton, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, and his craziness is important to follow, as it gives some insight into the madness in the heads of Blinken, Sullivan and Nuland. God’s mercy on all non-Azov adjacent Ukrainians.
Mostly right on target. As history repeats during “interesting times.” The Pentagon Papers begets the Pentagram Papers six decades later with plenty of deviltry by the press. Our umpires are actually playing the field don’tcha know?
Let me ask this about the Democrats, as they are the greatest unknown as well as the biggest problem to overcome before everything goes to hell. Do not the rank and file feel that they have been asked to swallow a lot of what they used to consider insane warmongering and rank corporatism mostly in support of the MIC and the “too big to fail” banks (that can magically create money from nothing but the “issuance” of debt. All this festooned with a lot of clearly racist policies and propaganda (which should be unconstitutional, illegal or both), purportedly in a battle against racism that will preclude the inclusion of whites within the party for at least a couple of generations? To accomplish the latter they have basically thrown what was their white working class base under the bus and resent the fact that Trump or any Republicans would ever dare to try to recruit them with the empty siren song of MAGA (which promised much but delivered nothing because it was never intended to, as both parties luxuriate in “bait and switch” tactics). Moreover, the Dem brainiacs seem totally uninterested in lifting a finger (or telling enough truth) to recruit more Asians and Hispanics (who are more perceptive than these posturing moralists really believe) over to their “side.” In short, does not “Biden’s (frankly hypocritical) “way” of shepherding his flock of alleged do-gooders portend only grief for true liberals and progressives in presidential politics?
Or are they counting on the lies they have been telling about Trump, Russia and most of the world outside of the EU and American vassals in the Pacific to keep the focus of hatred against him as strong as Big Brother’s case against Emanuel Goldstein? The threats of “Digital Dollars,” “guaranteed minimum” (and probably maximum) incomes and mandatory EV’s that no one will be able to afford look like just a few examples of other land mines that the party is deliberately planting much to its own detriment. They must be counting on the voters not reading or listening to what they say.
Perhaps I was right the other day when I floated the idea that ending their own clown show presently inhabiting the White House on charges of gross incompetence and corruption might not only facilitate our government’s escape from the catastrophe it has insistently created with Russia by using Ukraine as both fodder and a trap, but also provide the opportunity to search for much saner talent within their ranks (such as they had before forcing Tulsi Gabbard out of the party) that more than knee-jerk woke warmongers could find a reason to vote for. Or will both parties stand pat, insisting that THEIR lying con-artist (be he Biden or Trump) is, honestly, the lesser of what are clearly two evils? Perhaps I was wrong and under the American brand of fascist-democracy, democratic-dictatorship, or just plain demonocracy (call it what you will as long as the demos get the credit) it is simply NEVER permitted to admit your side was wrong, even milliseconds before the nukes detonate over ground zero, even if you could save approximately 8 billion lives in the process. So, no soft landing, only a crash landing to end this crisis. Wouldn’t want to embarrass our politicians.
The tribalism of politics in USA reached such a level that the real question is: what are the independent voters thinking, those who are not emotionally wed to either of the two dominant parties, and who decide elections in “battle ground states” and USA as a whole.
In the same time, Trump seems to see “realism” as a product to sell, and he is a master salesman.
There IS NO WAY the Dems are going to get rid of Cracker Joe for a “much saner” person in their ranks. First off, there is no one who fits that bill. Second, Biden’s main job is to keep Wall Street happy. And, Tulsi Gabbard? Dream on. She’s certainly right-wing, and is no peace-lover, but she has, and had2, zero chance of going anywhere in the Dem Party. She may get somewhere in the Republican Party, but that’s unlikely too.
And they are still at it:
“West prepares for Putin to use ‘whatever tools he’s got left’ in Ukraine”
“Officials ready for nuclear threats and cyber-attacks as part of Russian response to predicted counter-offensive.
(Guardian 18 April)
I’ll believe it when it (whatever “it” is) happens).
They are utterly delusional and/or pathalogical liars.
What is there to negotiate? How about using the United Nations charter as the guide to end the conflict? Both countries are members. And one is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Excellent suggestion! People don’t seem to be aware of NATO Treaty’s Article 7: “This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
I think I made myself unpopular when I raised this matter a few years ago at a University of Ottawa meeting at which Jens Stoltenberg spoke.
It’s insane what Bolton said about “Splitting the Russia-China axis”
You incompetent goons. YOU created the Russia-China axis when your buddies funded neo nazi’s in Ukraine for 9 years and they overthrew a democratically elected government.
They’re such a-holes. Think of all the pain and suffering people like John F*g Bolton have caused. Then think of that stupid f*g mustache being puppeteered by his eyebrows.
This is a bit of a puzzle. While insane, Bolton and his (numerous) ilk are not TOTALLY ignorant, to paraphrase ‘knew everything and learned nothing’, they know quite a bit and the conclusions are bizarre. Perhaps the model is in junior members of the Axis who attempted to break with Germany after defeats, Italy and Hungary come to mind.
However, Belarus will not break with Russia, because we assured that it cannot survive without it, and friendly/neutral countries like China and India fear the rampant behavior of NATO++ to much to wish Russian defeat, one of two colossal mistakes in “Bolton doctrine”.
Another colossal mistake, less obvious, is in perfunctory reading of RAND report on how to overextend Russia. Their argued that the final, decisive stage should be feasible, provided that it will be initiated in the period with a surplus of oil. Which manifestly is not the current period, Russia literally buys allies with oil discounts (and other, even free wheat for Africans), and still has enough revenue to keep going. Putin may be mediocre military strategist, but he prepared the big picture with finesse. Now try to combine words “Bolton” or “Blinken” with “finesse”… or perhaps not, risks range from flooding your keyboard to a medical emergency.
Groucho Marx came to mind with his eyebrows. Thanks for the laugh Nacho.
The “leaks” just tell us the Pentagon is incontinent and now in nappies. Poor Jack is a scapegoat for a top-heavy military bureaucracy and Unintelligent Community that is a senescent circle jerk. In any case, the “leaks” tell us nothing new. Yes, the Ukraine is bleeding. The US is some ways worse off. Biden is a wonderful symbol of the US — of US geriatric dementia.
Bonjour,
Les vampires us qui savaient dès le début que l’OTAN n’avait pas la puissance de la Russie seule ont eu leur quota de sang frais ?
Quand on regarde un pays et que le seul résultat est la répulsion ou un gros vomi, ce pays a des questions à se poser …..
Mais dans l’idiocratie yankee, c’est trop tard, il n’y a pas de cerveau ….il n’y a que sadisme et folie meurtrière !!
C’est un français qui m’a appris un bon règle de survie routière: “priorité à l’imbécile.” Dommage qu’il n’y a pas quelque chose aussi simple pour la survie mondiale.
Thanks Joe. You ask “will reality at last overcome delusion in Washington?” I ask has reality ever overcome delusion in Washington? My answer is the same to both questions.