The following is penned by Jacob Dreizin, a veteran and current denzien of Washington, DC. He does not yet have a blog and he has given me permission to support his analysis of the current situation in Ukraine:
LATEST NEWS FLASH YOU’LL NEVER HEAR IN THE MSM: On Monday night, Russian forces released news of their capture of a Soviet-era nuclear bunker near Kiev, which was being used by the Ukrainian army as a command complex. 60-some prisoners were taken, reportedly half of them being officers at the rank of Major or above.
In addition to the prisoners, in such a facility the Russians would have captured radio encryption codes/keys and detailed information on Ukrainian army deployment/locations, among other useful information, possibly to include geospatial and/or signals intelligence passed from the U.S., as Uncle Sam is up to his eyeballs in aiding Kiev from the intelligence side. The total number of Ukrainian prisoners passing through Russian or Donetsk/Lugansk custody is likely approaching 2000. Volodomyr Zelensky Bans Political Parties (yes, others have mentioned it, but I give you much more detail, background, and analysis) On March 19th, the Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council issued an edict suspending the operations of (i.e. effectively banning) eleven political parties considered to be insufficiently loyal or nationalistic, first and foremost the leading opposition party in the legislature, the OPZZh, which represents millions of people in southern and eastern Ukraine who—while largely being loyal to the state—don’t really care so much for “the Ukraine agenda” (i.e. the Ukraine being an authentic, pure-blooded Ukraine that’s going to educate their kids to be proud ethnic Ukro-Aryans who hate Russia and everything Russian, even though the parents speak Russian.) As a reminder, all “real” opposition media, including at least three TV channels—this does not include a few “loyalist”/nationalist outlets, such as Channel 5, until recently owned by billionaire ex-president Poroshenko (who is under the U.S. “umbrella”, i.e. can’t be harmed or jailed), and still closely aligned to him—has been shut down or driven underground in a wave of arbitrary, extrajudicial repression that began last summer (long before the invasion), and, over 20 prominent journalists, pundits, and bloggers have been disappeared or placed in detention or under house arrest since the invasion. I guess you could call this “destroying democracy in order to save it.” Also, less than 48 hours after Channel 5 began airing criticism of Zelensky’s pending loss of Mariupol, the Kiev government announced that all TV news programs will have to follow scripts handed to them by Zelensky’s propaganda shop. They won’t be able to broadcast anything else. In this context, I am again attaching a recent “home video” from the head of the National Security and Defense Council, Alexei Danilov, in which he tells OPZZh legislators to stay home, because if they run into “our checkpoints”, they will be shot. (See the attached video titled “Danilov.”) As I said in a recent post, if the Ukraine survives this war in some form, it will be a full-on dictatorship. Ironically, suppression of Channel 5 and similar media on the “Zelensky not doing enough against Russia” spectrum, may be “necessary” and a “good thing”, in order to come to some kind of terms with Russia, thus ending the war and saving what’s left of the country. You see, it’s a lot easier to agree to give away territory, if you don’t have to face any public criticism for it. If Zelensky has complete control of the narrative, he’d be able to spin it like, “We do not recognize, we will never recognize, but in the interests of peace and reconstruction, we have agreed to no longer contest Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the Donbass”—or something like that. And outside of social media, no one will be able to say any different. Clearly, presentation matters. Ukrainians Not Lining Up to Get Killed The attached video titled “Draft Dodgers”—which was posted by Jack Posobiec on his Twitter, though he did not quite understand what was happening—shows about 20 young male Ukrainian draft dodgers, detained by a “round up squad”, and made to lie on a floor with their hands on their heads, watched over by three armed, uniformed men, one of them tapping out the theme to the “Terminator” films on a piano. This video is allegedly from Dnepropetrovsk in east-central Ukraine.
Are they showing you this in the MSM? As I have said before, there is absolutely no “peoples’ war” in the cards for the Ukraine. The number of young or otherwise draft-eligible men who have already fled to other countries, exceeds the total pre-war strength of the Ukrainian armed forces at least several times over. Many others (such as the kids in the video) are/were hiding out inside the country. Many, many more had already emigrated previously (to Poland, Italy, etc.) in search of work, and are NOT hurrying back at this time. On top of that, the strength of the civilian “territorial defense” militia has been vastly overstated. If it was in the hundreds of thousands as has been claimed, they would be a near-permanent presence on every intersection in the country, even in small towns. In reality, they are likely to be under one hundred thousand, with only a fraction of those being truly willing and fit to fight (as opposed to just having lined up to receive a free weapon.) Meanwhile, or as of late last week, according to my contact with friends in the U.S. military intelligence community, as well as media comments by Georgii Shpak, a former commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, long retired and free to speak, the Russian army still has considerable forces on the Ukraine border that have notentered the country. This is contrary to bogus claims in our MSM—based on some unnamed Pentagon source—that Russia has already sent in everything it’s got. (There is evidence that Russia has since sent some reserves up from Crimea, but they have not yet engaged in battle.
The ongoing formation of a new Russian offensive fist in the south is being highly censored, although certainly Kiev is receiving satellite imagery from Uncle Sam.) (I should mention, it’s been clear for some time that Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian army and militia positions is benefiting from “local tips”, to include detailed pointers carried on Telegram channels. These often include specific addresses, precise geographic coordinates, and/or photos from the ground, and can be checked using satellite, aerial, and/or signals reconnaissance.) In short, Russia has a strategic reserve in the area, whereas Ukraine is losing (KIA) up to 130 men per day in combat or from air attacks, and certainly at least as many per day to desertion, not including those wounded or taken prisoner, and its only compensation is to round up teenagers like cattle, and send them to three days of boot camp or whatever—pathetic. When the USSR was attacked in 1941, millions of men (including men living in the Ukraine SSR) crowded the draft boards to the point that most had to be sent home and told not to come back anytime soon. That was a peoples’ war. “Red Dawn” (the film) was a peoples’ war. This is not a peoples’ war; no one is coming out in huge numbers for the Ukraine.
GOP: The Empire Strikes Back It’s obvious the GOP establishment led by “China Mitch” is using the Ukraine war as a way to get their voters—at least, the “cat chasing a laser pointer”, low-IQ ones—to forget about the election fraud, the open border, the January 6th prisoners rotting for a year with no trial date, firing the unvaccinated (and the Senate GOP’s failure to speak out on it, as a group), their lack of interest in challenging dotcom censorship while they were in power, and everything else that inconveniences them, that they’d like you to forget about, that they want to move on from. This is their own little “GREAT RESET.” They figure the War Fever will take their party back from Trump, make people forget what 2016-2020 was all about. It’s a power play. They are milking it with both hands. It’s a convenient “idiot test”, seeing who’s buying it and who’s not. In five seconds, some morons went from “Deep State spied on Trump” and “Dems stole the election” to “Let’s all get behind Brandon, because Russia invaded a sovereign democracy (LOL!!!) without provocation.”
The nicest thing I can say here, there’s no difference in IQ distribution between Republicans and Democrats. Although it started with the Senate GOP, in the last week, the House GOP has gotten so fully on board that even Steve Scalise is talking about “genocide.” You’d think surviving his baseball field incident would have granted him some extra fortitude, but the truth, is, they are almost all so weak and pathetic. When Pelosi put Zelensky on the jumbotron like he was Billy Graham, they figured they had to be in the “amen” corner—no if’s, and’s, or but’s. Weak! Remember, after months of hemming and hawing, when they still had the majority, they couldn’t even give Trump more than one or two billion dollars for his wall, but under Brandon, they found $14 billion for the Ukraine in two seconds, surely with more coming soon.
Also, the harsher the economic war on Russia—disrupting supply chains and trade routes by pushing Russia to sell its oil, metals, and everything else to China instead of Europe—the higher the inflation, and the better they will do in the midterms, or so they figure. It’s so bad that manufacturers don’t know where they will get their metals once their current stocks run out in a few months. The nickel market is still not working; no one can figure out how to fix it. Steel is almost off the chart; they need a new chart. Aluminum is about to follow. The Washington Post is warning about food prices going to the moon, and Bloomberg is telling you to learn to eat lentils instead of meat. Everyone expects oil to explode in the first days of April, after March contracts expire and shippers are no longer obligated to take Russian oil.
And yet, you see Republicans pushing Brandon to go even further, harder on Russia—they are salivating over it. “The worse, the better”—What the GOP has in common with ISIS As I said, it’s about silencing the voices of America First, forever. But I think there’s even more to it. It’s the psychology of a terrorist group that figures “the worse it is for the people, the better for us.” I know that politicians tend to be dumb, but I have trouble believing they don’t know what they’re doing. I warned about the economic impact, over and over, for months. I heard some top, top staff on the Hill were reading me in the last months before the invasion. They probably read my “prophecies” as an opportunity rather than a warning. “The worse, the better.” Now they’re arguing with Brandon over what caused inflation. It’s a big joke. ALL of them caused inflation, starting with the corona and up through today. “We” also caused it by voting for them. And, it will get much worse. For months, I saw the war coming and I said, over and over, “GOP politicians, don’t get with the rah-rah craze, because once the chips fall, and the sparkle wears off (because no one cares about the Ukraine), if you got behind Brandon then you will be blamed EQUALLY for the economic impact, because not every voter is as dumb as you think.” And what happened? Why do you think they feel the need to argue about who’s driving up prices? “No, it’s not Putin, it’s what Brandon did to the pipeline.” You see them nervous already. Of course, it’s not just about oil—it’s about the price of everything, which they are all sending to the moon.
They are risking the midterms Today, it’s even worse than I predicted, because in addition to lining up to get blamed for inflation, they are turning off millions of their own voters by getting behind the Cancel Culture (this time, against Russia and Russians) and standing in the same globalist “we must defend Ukraine at all costs” boat as Klaus Schwab (the “Great Reset” guy) and George Soros (the “One World Government” guy.) You know the voters I’m talking about, the higher-IQ wing of the conservative movement, the ones who listen to Bannon rather than Hannity. They are in shock now. Seeing the GOP rally to this Democrat/globalist cause, all that “uniparty” talk has been proven correct, again, and it’s turning off so many people. Go read the comments on Citizen Free Press, Gateway Pundit, or the Conservative Treehouse—most of those people don’t even recognize the GOP anymore.
Yes, most folks on this mailing list are older (mostly, over 50 or even 55) and while you may be as disgusted as I am, most of you will always vote regardless, and donate if you can, because you’re involved at the local level, or just because you’ve been doing it for so long. But millions of people like me, won’t. I didn’t vote (and never imagined donating one dollar, let alone thousands) for ten years until Trump came around, and now I’m going back into my shell, I won’t give another cent to any Federal candidate, and don’t wake me unless Trump is on the ballot; I don’t care because it makes no difference. These dummies are taking an easy midterm win and putting it in doubt because… they are weak and stupid. The Jesus Zelensky Show As for what’s happening on the ground in the Ukraine, they and all the other dummies are getting sold a bill of goods by the Jesus Zelensky show. Folks, he’s an entertainer by profession, surrounded by a circle of his script writers and producers that he brought into his government. It’s a show. The dummies here will wake up one day and it will be like Afghanistan, “What the hell happened?” What happened is, some fools want to be sold fantasies and lied to, over and over and over. As always, there’s too many gullible, stupid people.
The show is running out of material. There have been no new real videos (not fakes from Syria etc.) of dead Russians or Russian prisoners for well over a week. Some of their propagandists (it’s hard to know who’s paid and who’s a volunteer) were circulating pictures of skinny dead children stacked together in half-open body bags after the school attack in Beslan, Russia in 2004, and claiming it’s Russian soldiers. The show is still claiming about 300 Russian dead per day. In reality, there’s not that many being killed per day (on average) on both sides together, with civilians included. The show is also claiming that entire Russian units are surrendering en masse. The Interior Ministry said it, this past weekend. These people are out in space. I am tracking their news, it’s insane. The smart ones must know it’s all BS, but they’re evidently trying to keep the spirits high. Most people seem to be buying into it. The entire country has become Baghdad Bob. All news outlets that might have presented reality over fantasy, were cancelled and shut down in the big purge last year, with the support of the U.S. Embassy, which cheered the repression as a move against “Russian disinformation.” There’s no one left to tell the truth.
This country is in for a massively rude awakening. Official claims of a major Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kiev are completely fake; it’s totally made-up, it never happened—they simply don’t have a coherent military force in the Kiev area that’s capable of conducting an organized counteroffensive. All they have in and around Kiev is various bits and pieces including police and army special forces, civilian militia, regular police, some air defense, and a few artillery batteries. It’s not an offensive force—it’s a crazy quilt. Deep State Influencing Your Perception: A Case Study Last week, circulating hot on the thinktank/MSM Twitter scene was a Dutch “military analyst” type website (oryxspioenkop.com) that had collected photos of destroyed or allegedly “abandoned” (you can’t know with just a close-up shot with no background in the picture) military vehicles in the Ukraine, and identified about 95 percent of them as Russian, coming to the conclusion that Russia has lost 1400-some tanks, cannon, trucks, planes, etc. in the Ukraine. Of course, collecting, categorizing, and posting this number of photos—among their various other projects, including writing a book on North Korea, and maintaining a Turkish page and a blog in Chinese—is a job for an entire, full-time team, whereas the site has no “about” section, no ads to make money, and no information on its financing, incorporation, office/mailing address, or anything. All they have is a resume link for one “freelance writer” with a bachelor’s degree in math, who supposedly runs the site. With zero information, it’s impossible to prove or disprove, but based on the “M.O.”, the site is very likely to be funded by some Dutch or other NATO government agency of the uniformed, spooky, or information/propaganda variety.
In their “Russian losses” report, they’re showing vehicles with the Ukrainian “digital” camouflage design, and saying it’s all Russian. They’re showing BRDM-2 armored cars (not in the Russian or Donetsk/Lugansk arsenal), some of them in digital camo, as Russian. They’re claiming that nine 152mm Giatsint (“Hyacinth”) guns captured by Russia at the coastal artillery base in Berdiansk (see the attached Russia Today video titled “Hyacinths”) are actually Russian.
On top of that, most of the tanks and other tracked vehicles they show as Russian, don’t have the spraypainted Z or V that the Russians use. It’s mostly Ukrainian stuff, but, they don’t have much to work with. Why am I highlighting this? Because this website is (or has become) part of the propaganda war to convince you that Ukraine is holding out great and in fact, is just about to win, and all that’s needed is to send them more money and weapons. (After all, the public doesn’t want to keep shoveling money down a bottomless black hole—you know, another Afghanistan.) Someone is paying for this “product.”
A top U.S. thinktank guy named Charles Lister, who made his career as a Syria expert, tweeted this link, commenting, “Extraordinary – #Russia’s *visually confirmed* losses”. I looked him up and called him, and he suddenly changed his tune; he said he’s just passing it along, doesn’t vouch for it, and I should put my doubts out into the public domain. I replied, I don’t have time to argue with paid propaganda hacks, I am calling you because you’re supposed to be above that, I just want you to know it’s crap. He said he had to take another call. Although Lister himself doesn’t spend much time on the Ukraine, this just goes to show what our “think tanks” are about. Many of these guys are trash merchants, laundering and bouncing around (“plausibly deniable”, it’s-not-my-product) made-up junk between the Ukrainians (or whoever), the MSM, and Congress.
The way it works, the junk gets out into social media and the MSM and then it becomes conventional wisdom, and then, if you question it, you’re the problem. It was the same with the Collusion Delusion. It’s the fake news conveyor belt. Military Developments What’s left of the Ukrainian army east of the Dniepr river is running out of diesel, and should be out of tube and rocket artillery munitions (and in fact, artillery) by the first week of April. Outside of the Donbass, it’s a war of attrition, with Russia wearing away the Ukraine’s ability to fight, using stand-off weapons (air and missiles) first and foremost. On Sunday, Russia hit a cache of munitions that was being hidden—Hamas-style—at a “vacant” retail and sports complex in downtown Kiev. Russia is finding tons and tons of Ukrainian army materiel, and methodically destroying them.
Over the last week, Russia has also been targeting Ukrainian soldiers and militia where they sleep, which is typically as large groups in community buildings, schools, and even daycare centers (see attached videos titled “Daycare” and “School.”)
Of course, the kids are all at home, but the Ukraine probably figures Russia still won’t touch the schools and daycares. As far as I know, Russia has not yet bombed any schools, but it has bombed other municipal buildings being used as makeshift barracks, as well as hotels in Zhytomyr and Nikolaev where foreign fighters were believed to have been staying. Interestingly enough, in both hotels, which were four or five stories tall, only the top floor was targeted, suggesting that management is happy to take the money (or more likely, is given no choice), but knows it’s a potential target and thus, puts the fighters on the top floor so as to avoid destruction of the entire building.
Early last week, Zelensky shuffled his top military brass; fired some and promoted others. You don’t do that if things are peachy. I’m not looking to sugarcoat it for Russia—those Ukrainian military units that did not simply melt away and disappear in the first days, are putting up a fight. But at some point, very likely in the first half of April, they will simply run out of everything, and they will crumble and then the Russian and Donetsk/Lugansk forces will take all or most of “Left Bank” (east of the Dniepr) Ukraine. (They don’t have the manpower to occupy the Right Bank.)
Russian and Donetsk/Lugansk forces have picked up so many U.S. and British antitank weapons, it’s visually documented they’re now using them on the battlefield.
And, the Stinger missile project has failed totally—Uncle Sam & Co. have moved and continue to move hundreds of Stingers into the Ukraine, but it’s only been documented to have brought down about seven manned aircraft since the invasion, and none in the last ten days or so. Some of those hundreds will get out and be sold and… perhaps you shouldn’t fly internationally anymore. (We voted for this.) The U.S. State Department is so desperate to find a way to bring down Russian aircraft, it has suggested bringing in larger (i.e. can’t necessarily fit inside a barn) air defense complexes, to include “borrowing” Turkey’s Russian-made S-400 missiles and sending them to Ukraine for use against Russia, although there’s no way to actually ship them in and deploy them inside Ukraine without them getting blown to hell, seeing how Russia has already destroyed over 100 medium-to-high altitude missile launchers and associated radars and command vehicles of the Ukrainian army. It’s total desperation!
This is why I am confident that, out of impotent rage if nothing else, NATO forces will move into western Ukraine from Poland by mid-April at the latest, if the war is still on by then. The heavy equipment is already there near the border; bringing in the personnel to link up with it is the easy part. With the recent Russian bombing of the U.S./UK “Ho Chi Minh trail” hub at the Yavorov base near the Polish border, they will get in on the ground (under the guise of protecting their consulates in Lvov or whatever) to make a statement like, “Not again, because we’re here openly now.” No, Brandon doesn’t want to do it, but the hawks in Congress and the MSM are running the show now. There will be escalation. It is baked into the cake. In fact, I predicted before the invasion that Poland would take advantage of the war to create a protectorate in western Ukraine, and I stand by my prediction. Russia’s embassy in Warsaw is now preparing for evacuation.
There are NATO country (reportedly, German) Patriot missiles now in Slovakia that can be used to try to provide cover for Polish forces crossing the border. Of course, Polish forces in Ukraine would not be under NATO’s “Article V” protection. Russia’s as-yet unexplained (seemingly unnecessary, as its cruise missiles work just as well) use of its Kinzhal hypersonic missile to attack a target in western Ukraine, may be a signal that NATO country forces in western Ukraine would have no protection. Late last week, Lugansk forces took Rubezhnoe, at the northern edge of the Lisichansk-Severodonetsk agglomeration, near the border of Lugansk and Donetsk. Severodonetsk is reported to be largely cut off from Lisichansk and partly surrounded; they are evidently chewing up the area into “manageable” pieces. Furthermore, on Friday or Saturday, Ukrainian forces started retreating from Ugledar, southwest of Donetsk city and the last good-sized town before the border with Zaporozhia province. Also over the weekend, Donetsk forces took the garrisoned villages of Stepnoe and Berezovoe among other points southwest of Donetsk city; all qualified analysts say the goal is to come up from the south on the major Ukrainian base at Kurakhovo, west of the city.
(The attached video titled “Stepnoe” shows a not-very-charismatic Russian reporter—evidently suffering from lack of sleep, or a blow to the head—pointing to destroyed Ukrainian equipment including two BMP fighting vehicles and another tracked vehicle in the distance—easy to miss, and he refers to more down the road—and one KRAZ-built armored car.
The attached video titled “Berezovoe” shows another reporter speaking with a batallion commander who shows him two destroyed Ukrainian tanks in Berezovoe—both tank crews did not make it out alive. What’s interesting about the first tank is the applique armor did its job, completely blowing off of the turret during one of the two impacts.)
Lisichansk (mentioned above) is the capital of (what’s left of) the Ukrainian civil-military administration of Lugansk province, run by a local-born Ukrainian nationalist ideologue who made his government career in Carpathia, trying to get the Hungarians there to speak Ukrainian. Other than perhaps his own family and some cronies, he failed to organize the evacuation of a single civilian before the enemy approach. These guys need the civilians as cover; they know what they’re doing and they are scum.
More Fake News I should mention, the hundreds dead in the theater that was bombed in Mariupol, is likely to be some kind of fake news. It’s been claimed by two Ukrainian politicians from the area, that the civilians were sheltering in a basement or sub-basement, and were unharmed (whether they got out in time, or survived the blast in place, is not clear.) The Azov regiment forces that had used the above-ground floors of the building as a headquarters, if they were still there, may not have done as well. Also, the claim that there were 500 or as many as 800 civilians in the building was a stretch to begin with—it seems to be a “plagiarized” version of the USAF bombing of the al-Firdos civil defense shelter in Amiriyah, Baghdad in 1991, which was one for the history books, and is remembered well enough (outside of the U.S.) to potentially be used as a dramatic “inspiration.” There may be some elements of truth (certainly, many hundreds of civilians have been killed throughout the city), but as packaged and presented to you, remember, it’s a show.
Keep in mind, the government of this highly Russian-oriented city (which unsuccessfully rebelled in 2014) is basically a military occupation authority appointed by Kiev; it is part of the propaganda machine. Just because the mayor said something, doesn’t make it any more credible than whatever Zelensky is telling you.
Amazingly, Breitbart carried a headline along the lines of “Mariupol government says civilian evacuees have been forced to go to Russia.” Look here, Mariupol is over 100 kilometers inside Donetsk/Russian lines, and the Kiev government isn’t doing anything for anybody; it has sent no buses to pick people up, and has set up nothing as far as refugee shelters. If people making it out of the city are offered a bus to Russia, yes, most of them will take it, duh. What’s amazing is that Ukrainian authorities have any credibility with Breitbart at this point. Why not just print the daily briefing from Russia’s Ministry of Defense? It may be half lies, but it’s more accurate than the Zelensky show.
The Tochka-U shows a daily cover of Italy’s leading tabloid, with the Italian word for “carnage” above a photo of bodies on the street of (pro-Russian, rebel controlled) Donetsk city two Mondays ago, after a Ukrainian Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile was just barely shot down over downtown, not high enough to keep the submunitions in the warhead from mowing down civilians, killing 20. All text on the cover suggests it was a Russian attack. Editor Massimo Giannini heard some criticism of his front page, and promptly attacked the critics for being losers with an agenda, also tweeting (in Italian), “Where is the disinformation?” You’re the disinformation, Massimo. The second picture in this linked file is an ABC News tweet showing Donetsk security guys standing near a piece of the missile’s tail section lying on the road, but the caption implies it’s from the Russian attack on a Ukrainian army barracks and training center near the Polish border. A few MSM outlets mentioned the Donetsk attack only in the context of “the Ukrainians said it wasn’t them.” (As in, Donetsk bombed itself.) You can imagine they wouldn’t give the same benefit of the doubt to Russia. (All in all, the Ukraine has fired tens of such missiles at Donetsk and Adveevka in the Donbass as well as at Melitopol and Berdiansk and other points that have been under Russian control since the first days, not to mention two into Russia itself this Tuesday morning.) Although one such missile damaged or destroyed three Russian helicopters at an airfield near Kherson this past week, most are intercepted and destroyed in the air. Nonetheless, some wreckage falls and damages homes and kills people on the ground, in one case also starting a major fire after hitting a gas line. The Russian side estimates that as of last month, the Ukraine had as many as 800 of these Soviet-built missiles—still functional or not—and 90 launchers to them. Destroying what’s left of them is a top priority.)
Thanks for passing this along, Larry. Lots of good information.
I’m not surprised by the Republican warmongering. At the national level, they have done nothing to push back against the scary excesses of the Democrats.
This is the same party that despite fervent promises, did not repeal Obamacare after Trump was elected and they had majorities in both houses.
Thanks for the quality recent reports, daily now. I see you getting eyeballs from various folks like Martyanov.
These are troubling times we are living through. I worry that the US/Nato crazies don’t know how to come down from their lofty perch. They are pedal to the metal without a plan B. As of late they are cornered and not likely to compromise without suffering some kind of grave defeat. They will go down swinging.
Hope you can build a following here in the comment section.
It is an interesting read.
When reading this’ I can’t help but think how deeply the asymmetrical digital war of informed ignorance is being rammed down our collective throats.
Agree or not with the points of the article, your funny bone just got a hello from reality.
Ask yourself who benefits?
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mikepompeotexasA&M.htm
Mr. Petroff: All right, I think we have time for one last question.
Question: Hi, Mr. Secretary. My name is Ben Allen [ph], and I’m a civil engineering student. My question for you is: How do you balance condemnations with concessions in diplomacy with a controversial government such as Saudi Arabia? Thank you.
Secretary Pompeo: So I always begin with a deep understanding that no secretary of state gets through their first day without recognizing it’s a tough world out there. We don’t appreciate how glorious it is to be here in the United States of America on a consistent enough basis and with enough fervor. Maybe you do here at Texas A&M, but I think too many Americans don’t understand how blessed we are. These are — are many, many tough places out there.
Having said that, not all tough places are the same. They each present a different set of challenges. I — it reminds me, you would know this as — it’s a bit of an aside. But in terms of how you think about problem sets, I — when I was a cadet, what’s the first — what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s — it was like — we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.
And so when you deal with these countries, you have to just recognize they’re not all the same. Some of these difficult, nasty places want to partner with the United States and just haven’t gotten to the right place yet, just haven’t been able to move their own institutions. And some of them may only be trying half as much as they ought to be trying, but they’re trying to move in the right direction. That presents a very different way of thinking about how the United States ought to address them. In those cases, we ought to assist them.
We should never shy away from calling them out. We have to be consistent. The State Department puts out every year a Human Rights Report. It’s just a compendium of bad acts around the world during the last 12 months. It’s way too long a book. But you should look at it. We call out friends, we call out adversaries, we call out everyone in between. But we have to find places where some of these countries that aren’t living up to our human rights standards — we address it, we work to fix it, we hold them accountable as best we can, and then we work to make sure those things don’t happen again.
There are another set of bad actors who’d just as soon see you all perish from this planet. That calls out for a different American response. And so sorting those through, figuring out exactly the right mix of American tools — diplomatic tools, economic tools, political tools, military tools, figuring out precisely what the right mix is the task that we engage in at the State Department, but we do it with all of our partners in the national security apparatus as well. So the leadership in the White House, the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the Department of Treasury — we were talking about sanctions — all of those have an important piece of figuring out what exactly the right mix is.
And so just two things. One, we need to constantly evaluate if we have that right with respect to every one of those actors. Have we got the right balance? Are they still in the same place? Are they still making progress? Are they still serious about addressing the shortcomings that we identify? And then second, we have to be relentless, whether they are friends or adversaries, in making sure when a nation falls short that America will never shy away from calling them out for that behavior that didn’t rise to the level that we hope every nation can achieve.