I am thankful to have my readers who live outside the borders of the United States and are not able to take the temperature of the body politic. That is one of my goals — i.e., explain the societal insanity that is widespread, especially among the establishment political class. Case in point, retired General David Petraeus.
He is interviewed by the Georgian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and confirms, by virtue of his responses, that he is either one of the dumbest men to ever pin on four stars or one of the most intellectually dishonest. Perhaps both.
Let me give you some of the low-lights from the interview:
RFE/RL: Where do we stand now in the Ukraine war?
David Petraeus: I think we stand near the end of the Russian winter offensive, which has not achieved its objectives so far, and which probably will culminate short of achieving those objectives. And even if [Russian forces] ultimately take Bakhmut, it will have come at such a cost that it will have been an unwise offensive.And then we are awaiting the expected Ukrainian late spring-early summer offensive, which will feature Western tanks, Western infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and a variety of other systems, and the kind of training and unit development that will allow Ukraine for the first time to achieve combined arms operations in this particular war — something that Russia has not done in the past and something that the Ukrainians did, to a modest degree, in the Kharkiv offensive last fall.
“End of the Russian winter offensive”? Apparently David does not realize that Spring started a month ago and the Russians show no signs of backing off. And what were the Russian objectives? I have a $1000 to anyone who can point me to a list of Russian objectives for the “winter offensive.” The only objectives I have seen posted in the media are demilitarization, de-nazification and ending the artillery attacks on the Donbas. And the Russians never specified a timeline. In other words, Petraeus is fabricating a strawman and then knocking it down.
Then there is the public obsession about Ukraine’s upcoming counter offensive. I am not aware of any successful military campaign in history that was preceded by repeated public proclamations about the “imminent counter offensive.” That kind of incomprehensible breach of military doctrine serves as a reminder of David Petraeus’ failure as a military commander and as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
And what about those “Western tanks” that will turn the tide against Russia? General David may want to reconsider his prediction given the “skill” a couple of Ukrainian tank drivers demonstrated this week at a training base in Poland:
Whoops! One less tank for that offensive.
Petraeus continues:
So that’s where we are. We completed a year in which Russia lost the battle of Kyiv, lost the battle of Kharkiv, lost the battles of Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kherson, and they have not achieved their winter objectives. And now, [they] will be faced with a spring and summer offensive by new Ukrainian forces that are being trained and equipped in Germany, Poland, the U.K., and Ukraine that, I think, again, will achieve what Ukraine sets out to do.
Let’s ignore for a moment that Russia did tactical retreats and did not engage Ukraine in any of the so-called battles listed by Petraeus. He glosses over the fact that Russia repeatedly has defeated Ukraine in the Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk and inflicted massive casualties on Ukraine in the process. How about Mariupol? Not only did Russia defeat entrenched Ukrainian forces but is rapidly rebuilding the city.
RFE/RL: What do you think would be the aim of such a Ukrainian counteroffensive?
Petraeus: I think it will be twofold. One will be to ensure that the Russians are not able to reinforce or to resupply Crimea through the southeastern part of Ukraine — so to sever that ground line of communications that they achieved by their offensive last spring and summer. And then, second, to bring about the crumbling, perhaps even collapse, of Russian forces in a fairly broad area of southern Ukraine as they liberate more of the Ukrainian territory that the Russians captured last year.
General Dave apparently has not taken time to peruse any of the leaked U.S. military briefing slides that report the complete destruction of Ukraine’s air defense system by the middle of May. He also is ignoring the evidence that this is true as Russia ramps up the number of sorties with fixed wing aircraft delivering monster glide bombs. Then there is the fact that Russia has been busy over the last eight months building stout defensive positions, replete with dragons teeth, mine fields, intersecting fields of fire and artillery zeroed on avenues of approach.
RFE/RL: Let me ask you specifically about Bakhmut. Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of General Staff General Mark Milley said recently that Ukrainians have turned it into a slaughterhouse of Russians, that they are getting hammered there. Could this have been the Ukrainian plan all along, to use so-called bottleneck tactics and waste Russian manpower?
Petraeus: I don’t know whether it was all along, but it clearly has become that over time. Early on, I believe even Ukrainians would have observed that Bakhmut has no real, true geographic significance; it’s not a great rail or road hub the way some other locations are. But I think they came to see the value of defending an urban area against a force that was very unprofessionally just throwing soldiers into this particular cauldron and allowing those soldiers — as General Milley said — to be hammered. The losses have been staggering, while the gains have been incremental and incredibly costly. And I think over time, as well, [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy clearly came to recognize the need to not give Russia anything that it could portray as a victory or as Russian forces achieving the objectives they set out for themselves.
Welcome to the twilight zone. My foreign readers need to understand that Petraeus genuinely believe this nonsense even though public media reports clearly show that Russia is not suffering massive casualties and is not attacking in human waves. The bulk of the fighting is being done by the Wagner Group and they are using tactics that minimize their casualties while turning Ukrainian positions into Charnel houses. As of today, even Ukrainian sources are reporting that Ukrainian forces have been pushed out of 90% of Bakhmut and the Russians are happy to destroy units and equipment attempting to reinforce those beleaguered Ukie soldiers.
The apex of General David’s delusion is revealed in this bit of “analysis”:
But what the Ukrainians will do in the upcoming offensive, this is going to be vastly different. This is going to be combined arms operations, which the Russians have never achieved even at the outset, despite having had months deployed in Belarus and in Russia on Ukraine’s borders, when they could have been training on these kinds of tasks. That’s a staggering failure, in my view. If you’d given me, as a commander, months to train for an invasion, I think I could have done a good bit better job.
I have two words for General Dave — Iraq, Afghanistan. What major victories did he achieve in those two theaters? The answer is none. And he was not up against entrenched forces, with artillery and HIMARS, and tanks, and he failed to defeat guerrilla forces armed with assault rifles and an occasional mortar. He has never been in charge of a battle against forces using combined arms. This is just one more example of his arrogance and lack of critical thinking skills.
I am not shocked by the shallowness and ignorance of Petraeus. It is those qualities that enabled him to earn four stars through his skilled practice in the art of sycophancy. And I assume that some of his proteges, who are gifted with the same degree of incompetence, are in command positions ready to lead U.S. forces into disaster.
I do not believe that Petraeus is engaged in a psy-ops designed to lull the Russians into complacency. But Russian military analysts must be scratching their heads over General Dave’s complete misrepresentation of what has transpired in Ukraine since February 2022 and are asking themselves, “Are the American Generals really this stupid”? I don’t know about all American Generals, but when it comes to David Petraeus the answer is a resounding, Yes!
BS reigns supreme is so many areas of American life, especially in blue states. Kids are not learning and it is buried in BS such as
Pandemic effects, kids want to be the other sex, bla bla bla..
Like Petraeus people believe their own BS.
In my state (West coast) they erode sciences from the school program in favor of social studies. Because to teach physics, biology, chemistry, a teacher must really know something vs. teaching sexual confusion and radical race theories. Surreal.
What’s surreal is that parents willingly send their spawn off to these indoctrination centers and then act surprised at what’s happening.
Yup all parents had to do was go on strike and not send kids to school for a bit. But they sold their kids to the state instead.
I remember (and experienced) an actual ‘education’ where we learned to read and write grammatical English, read great authors from the Western canon (Shakespeare, Twain, Hemingway, Longfellow, etc. etc.); learned algebra, trig and calculus by the time we’d finished high school. Learning a foreign language was mandatory; we could pick French, Spanish or German in my school district.
Learned US and ‘world’ history, had ‘civics’ classes (if anyone even knows what those are anymore) in which we learned the basics of critical thinking–in 3rd grade, no less!) and had an entire course section on ‘how to detect propaganda’.
Mind, the majority of this stuff was in elementary and secondary school, and we didn’t think ourselves particularly burdened by learning it–in fact, we welcomed it, as did our parents, who wanted us to become responsible adult citizens.
As I write this, it all sounds like a distant fantasy dream….
100%. We should immediately reinstate Personal Responsibility
I went to school in the 50/60s….history and geography became combined into social studies…
But this isn’t really teaching “social studies”. A rigorous education in the humanities teaches a great deal of critical thinking, in some ways much more than hard sciences of rote learning. And hard sciences at lower levels are mostly rote learning.
I believe science and math are important studies for young people. I also believe what passes for a humanities education is shit, mostly. But it’s not the subjects. I work with scientists and engineers all the time. There are a lot of idiots among them.
This is the lesson of the Pentagon Leaks. Or as I call it in my article, inspired by Larry’s recent articles “Pentagon Incontinence”. People like Petraeus are on the piss all the time — mentally anyway. They “leak” incompetence.
What the Pentagon Leaks showed was really that — massive incompetence. Ingrained, systemic and irremediable.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/literacy-the-moskva-simplicius-pentagon
Petraeus is similar to a lot of career polititians who sadly were raised by ambitious and utterly dysfunctional parents. They were, as babies, deprived of love and attention and this caused lifelong severe mental incapacities . It’s very common in the upper middle class families.
Another fantastic article by Mr Johnson, this totally compliments the previous excellent one Larry posted referring to “Delusion”. That article referenced the delusional mentality of these psychotic, narcissistic Neocons like David Petraeus, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton & John Kirby, who hang on to these false narratives despite all the evidence to the contrary? These lunatics only see & believe what they want to see, they just live in a bubble of magical thinking that’s not reflected in the Real World, but REALITY will bite, soon enough & REALITY has a way of bursting all the BS & lies & puncturing the bubble of delusional thinking? The Truth will eventually prevail despite all the Propaganda & lies! Thanks Larry for being at the Forefront, you are the Vanguard of Truth & we greatly appreciate your exposing the lies & delusions of the Neocon Warmongers!
Maybe the false narratives have a simpler purpose: keep the gig going as long as possible while bunch or corrupt people line their pockets.
Look at what’s reported: a complete refusal to track any aid, Zelenskyy siphoning off $400 million, arms sold on the black market, the FTX scandal revealing kickbacks to the Democrats and Biden, and on and on. It could just be an old fashioned cased of graft and corruption. Or maybe I’m just cynical.
Absolutely correct in your comments, ultimately it’s all about money & power, these Neocons must know in their twisted black heart of hearts that they must maintain their delusional goals to maintain the grift but it’s at the expense of millions of innocent lives who have been sacrificed on the Altar of their greed? They are Satanic War criminals who are deserving of the Death Penalty for their crimes against Humanity!
Out of subject but worth a read. Der Spiegel has been a Western propagandist since day 1, with yesterday’s article on the “The Abducted Children of Ukraine”. Today, change of tune. The article is worth a read. Are these the people who are going to beat the Ruskies and the Chinks to pulp? Gimme a break! Looks like the wind is slowly changing.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/britain-in-crisis-the-uk-faces-a-steep-climb-out-of-a-deep-hole-a-6b61dc6f-e33f-46f3-bd27-743364dd675c
Petraeus’s over hyped propaganda is an attempt to sway the western populations into the falls belief that Ukraine is winning on the battlefield.
His propaganda is to rally the last idiots into support of the war.
His nonsense is endangering the lives of not only Ukrainian civilians, Ukrainian and Russian troops, but also NATO service men operating in the theatre.
Even worse, the policy conducted by warmongers on behalf of the Western Elite is a shure path toward ending the last vestige of western hegemony, by sending Western Nation into a severe economic RESET.
For those of us who knows European History, the current situation resembles the fall of the Roman Empire.
The current RESET is instigated by the same network of Dynasties and lodges who were behind the fall of the Roman Empire.
These people have to be removed from power and influence, to save western civilization.
Ask who Patreus helps sell weapons for.
It’s not about belief. Austin and him have multi million dollar jobs to do. It’s just business.
Exactly what I was thinking. Zelenski plays the perfect part in it too always echoing the need for some new expensive weapons.
I am hoping it backfires by letting Russia have time to take the whole show apart.
Totalmente!. Y de hecho, la élite romana acabó como nobleza negra en Venecia. Durante siglos estuvieron haciendo finanzas en la República veneciana , los “princeps” romanos y los judíos que acabaron allí.
La Liga de Cambrai entre España y varios socios más ,les estropeó el negocio y se fueron a Holanda.
España encontró América e instauró su moneda como reserva mund8al,real de a 8 de plata.
Después les volvimos a estropear el negocio en las guerras holandesas y se desperdigaron a GB.
Son los Morgan, Rotchild…(y los Massimo…)
Ahora han vuelto a sumir el mundo en una nueva GUERRA mundial y creo que o el mundo hace algo con ellos, o ellos acabarán con el mundo DIVIDIENDO. Nunca estuvimos en semejante coyuntura: 8 países pueden destruir literalmente el planeta (o mucha parte del mismo).
Recuerdo lo que hizo el rey Felipe de Francia con los templarios, otros listos que acumularon la riqueza ENDEUDANDO reinos…
Petraeus needs to do something about that tacky rug.
The reason is BREXIT.
Ruskie is not pejorative but Chink certainly is. I suggest you rethink your vocabulary and what it reflects, upon you mostly…. irrespective of your post.
CONFIRMED: virtue signal received.
That is a good read. I think the story could be written about quite a few
American cities with the icing on the cake of rampant crime.
Great article, thanks for the link.
Most of the people believe what they want to believe and filter out everything what they do not want to believe.
If you want to be a politician, then tell ‘them’ what they want to hear. It does not matter that it is a complete lie. They will love you. If you tell them the truth then they will hate you
one may think US elites like Petraeus are morons, and maybe some of there are. but they don’t care about how many Ukrainian soldiers are dead. whatever happens in Ukraine, the level of destruction and suffering there will inevitably cause hatred between Ukrainians and Russians lasting for generations.
the US elites have achieved some of their secondary goals like forcing Germany to reduce its economic ties with Russia, destroying the Nordstream pipelines, and causing some of the German companies to set up shop in US where energy is cheaper. so they have achieved a victory by preventing Europe from joining the Russia-China bloc.
They have actually achieved all their aims.
The economic and military and trade shif plus fringe de dollarisation was coming anyway. Maybe sped up a bit but those put and call options were baked into trades.
What the US has done is massively disrupt all China’s plans and drain the EU so it’s positioned as a major power no matter what.
When someone is going to take your seat you go all out or go home,US is going all out in the only way it knows how and in the process it will do enough damage to keep itself in the top tier of powers and remain a formidable player dominating more fully than ever the West and it’s own hemisphere.
Yes they are brutes of lore.
But tactically none of this is stupid. They just confronted the inevitable on their terms and are rewiring as fast as they can.
Good move from a US standpoint. Because once you lose position – ask Europe – it’s verrrry hard to get back on top. Better to fight like a dirty rat,smoke a cigar and cling on there. I mean what an amazing place to be.
There are lot of wins here for the US and in the future this will be the moment they refused to go quietly into the night.
The things the U.S. has done to speed up de-dollarization (sanctions, seizure of assets, kicking countries out of SWIFT) cannot have been part of their brilliant plan, or they truly are idiots. You said it yourself – the U.S. dollar is the world reserve currency in part because it already is and it’s convenient for countries to keep using it. Once the dollar is no longer “the” reserve currency it will be very hard to get that back.
Math is as math does. The US is in hock up to its eyeballs. China is in the black up to its eyeballs. Sanctions as a hard power tool to maintain an ever softening power only has so much gas in its tank.
The US has two simple choices:
1) Redefine its global ambitions, bring the specter of diplomacy out of its coffin to recalibrate its balance in the world while getting serious about putting its own house in order.
2) Forge ahead in hubristic ecstasy, getting too close for comfort to the point where it finally just overturns the game board and walks away from the table in a huff…..and a radioactive huff at that.
It’s principally the neocons that have us on a hard path no. 2. To hell with them, I say.
What kind of weed you smokin’?
Except…once all the dust has settled and too many start showing up at the hospitals from dust inhalation and chronic economic bronchitis, Europeans en masse may very well begin pointing fingers at the US, not Russia. As for the Ukrainians, well….how many are ready for a new Maidan, if not to hang Zelensky and his cronies from lampposts, given a bit of reality finally setting in and they eventually follow the Europeans in their finger pointing? Time will tell. As one example: turning Minsk II from a ripe fruit for western picking into fruit of the poisoned tree will be on many minds for years to come.
It’s a game of perseverance and imho, Russia is well suited to the task. The US and EU?…well, they talk a good game, for now . Talk’s cheap and lately, it’s about a penny a bushel.
I don’t see what’s bad about one’s enemy, that is, the Amerikastani military leadership, being so stupid and delusional. In any case Petraeus isn’t in service now and isn’t exactly going to sign attack orders on Russia.
About Petraeus adultery :
” I know this is not what we have been told for years about Petraeus. I know we have been told he is some kind of towering genius: West Point grad, Princeton Ph.D., four-star general. But add one other quality: blockhead.
No, not because he committed adultery. Adultery is commonplace in our society. It may someday be mandatory.
And his paramour was perfect for him. Paula Broadwell — a name, as someone said, that could have come from a James Bond novel — is also a West Point grad, has a master’s degree from Harvard and is a fitness freak with biceps that could crush walnuts.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: She is as smart as a bag of hammers.
Leaving aside the sordid, yet fascinating, details — as CIA director, Petraeus demanded fresh pineapple be placed by his bedside every night — here is what did in these two soaring intellects:
Petraeus sends Broadwell sexually explicit messages through his Gmail account, messages so explicit that they leave no doubt in the minds of FBI investigators that the two are having an affair.
Got that? The head of the Central Intelligence Agency thinks Gmail accounts are secure and untraceable. What, he couldn’t have checked with a tech-savvy 12-year-old first? (Which is about every 12-year-old in America.) …
But no, Paula Broadwell sends a series of allegedly threatening messages to a woman she thinks might be a rival for Petraeus’s affections. These messages apparently are so aggressive that the woman goes to the FBI. Oh, yeah, I am forgetting one thing: Broadwell sends these messages from an email account she shares with her husband.
Wow. I am surprised the spy master and his Harvard-educated girlfriend didn’t decide to conduct their affair by Podcast.
And just to add to the general weirdness of the story, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday evening that an FBI agent involved in the case is under investigation for allegedly sending shirtless photos of himself to the woman Broadwell was allegedly harassing. But this is collateral damage.
Some see the main story as involving two brilliant people brought low by true love. I don’t see it that way. Petraeus and Broadwell are not Abelard and Heloise. They are more like Dumb and Dumber.
https://www.politico.com/story/2012/11/petraeus-dumb-shes-dumber-083733
Wow! I’m impressed. Shows the true value of a post-grad education from the Ivy League’s finest degree mills.
Geniuses aren’t they?
Plus the whole strategy and tactics in Iraq were developed by Gen. Gary Luck and associates. This guy is a dim-wit that could lead a goat to a blackberry bush.
With generals like this Petraeus and Milley and politicians like Nuland, Blinken, Kirby, Sullivan, Biden, Pompeo and Bolton, USA wants to fight a 4 front war with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.. I guess they think if they believe hard enough, fantasies will come true, and they can hop on their unicorns and ride off into the rainbow sunset..
I maintain my opinion that the mess we witnessed in the Collective West today was caused by the failure of the education which began to go downhill in the 1980s, and accelerated in the last decade to the point where people began to have problems with elementary Biology!
The narcissistic decadence of the ruling elite only created a mass of ignorant people who masked their ignorance by creating and foisting on their citizens bs to the point where the society become absorbed in Mass Delusions and regard anything outside the bubbles an affront to be cancelled post haste.
General Petraeus will not be spewing the bs had the “Journalist” been willing to practice real journalism, instead of playing the stenographers. The questions that were asked suggest that the reporter does not read much and is totally ignorant of the realities on the ground.
The question I would ask anyone who believe that Ukraine can win a war against Russia is: How will you defeat a country with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons?
Exactly.
Please check what Adm Rickover said about Soviet Education.
Adm Zumwalt: “We had to rewrite and water down our manuals three times in a decade” also see his memoir what he things about education in us.
Down the memory l.ne: What caused the change that the comic books started using complex words like “exterminate” rather than “whamm, zappp, whooshh”.
Actually, education started going downhill in the early 20th century as Rockefeller et al didn’t want thinkers, but a nation of obedient workers, and funded the influential Teachers Colleges at the Ivies just for that.
https://www.jetsetmag.com/exclusive/business/nation-workers-public-education-dummying-labor-force/
It’s gotten worse every year since especially so with desire for equality then equity post 1960s.
Without a doubt delusional and wishful thinking. Add obsession, obsession with Ukraine while in other theatres all indicators point to a looming debacle for US posture in the world as it actually is.
Militarily the US is getting pushed out of West Asia as the long war against Syria comes to a conclusion. The Houthis will be recognised in Yemen. Peace, horror of horrors, is breaking out.
Financially the world is learning to work around and ultimately ignore sanctions , whether from hell or elsewhere.
And then there’s China. Has Petraeus noticed that President Xi recently had a few days in Moscow, followed by China’s new Defence Minister? Both met with Putin. Here’s a prediction. China is about to lance the Taiwan boil.
I have a bad new for you. Switzerland, from three first hand experiences, is as deep in that delusion as Petraeus. Speaking with people I love about Ukraine was a painful experience each time. I got called names when I said that Ukraine bombed the Donbass or that Putin gave ample warnings beforehand or that the Minsk agreements could have prevented the running war. The lesser one is « Putinist ».
From a fourth experience, I learned that the Ukrainian ambassador in Switzerland often appears on the Swiss television. He is treated as a reference for truth. That explains to me why the answers I received were actual Ukrainian talking points I received from other sources.
My most extensive discussion gave me as reliable sources « France24, LCI, BFMTV ». If you want the level of it go for Zelensky. I could not observe a difference. Switzerland is in the Petraeus level of delusion and I do not hold my breath for the level of it in France.
My feeling is that the Swiss government succeeded in preventing inflation from running away and giving a reliable heating to everybody in Switzerland. That made her population believe Ukraine is winning and so on.
A silly idea comes to my mind: The « Credit Suisse » debacle is weird enough to have me wondering whether it was a US warning shot to the Swiss authorities. Swiss banks were forced to bend the knee in another situation. It was a seriously dishonest manipulation from the US, so I have that silly idea. In case, my baseless idea is true, this would mean that my authorities understand that sanctioning Russia is a serious breach to the biggest Swiss asset: her neutrality. I do wish it’s the case.
Thanks for the report. Reading across various authors and platforms with comments from people with rational minds all report the same: the brainwashing of European populace about the war, Ukrainians and Russians. With some countries using criminal sanctions against people supporting Russia or not going along with the narratives. Hopefully there is a silent majority to stop NATO engagement using their troops as fodder.
When they call you a Putinist, make the counter-claim that no, I’m a Putinologist, a world expert on Putinology.
I had a bad experience way back, when Swissair thought a winning growth strategy was to buy up loss making European airlines, turning a profitable company into a bankrupt basketcase, to be bailed out. Switzerland had a reputation as a sensible country – up to then.
Mind you, still a nice place for a ski hol.
I do not mind skiing over with so many great places but I do mind seeing my fellows citizen going nuts and destroying our country out of, I don’t know what it is, brainwashing maybe.
You remind me of an important fact. We, Swiss people, were lied into a disaster with Swissair. We were abused by empty promises. We went into that failure through well organised propaganda in favour of privatising state-owned companies. In a sense, the PR stunt about Ukraine is a rehearsal of that disaster.
We were fooled by Swissair privatisation sponsors. Now, we are fooled by Ukraine sponsors. I’m sad that we learned nothing from it.
You’re right. Switzerland used to be a sensible country till the Swissair debacle. Now I start feeling ok to live in Lebanon. People here are more based than the Swiss I know. At least, they are not that hubristic.
This son of a Dutch immigrant, David Patraeus, betrayed his wife of over 35 years and at the same time gave his paramour classified information.
Patraeus is a fundamentally-flawed man whose judgment cannot be trusted.
After his scandal he should’ve lived out his life quietly, in penance, not being a mouthpiece for more war and bloodshed.
We should not look back at those who have suspended reason, with them we lose our sense of purpose, and with those more dangerous psychopaths we lose our sense of purpose as people, we lose our soul. The Ukrainian war is over and Ukraine will cease to exist. The EU and the US are losing, and it should be called suicide.
Petraus lives up to his surname ver well indeed. In Latin, Petraus means dense, thick, very hard. I believe the proper translation in US english is thick-headed, no?
Or, stone headed, hard as a rock. Same root as “petra”: stone. Hence Jesus saying of Peter, “on this rock I shall built my church”.
Well, if it comes from petra, then by inference, he’s as dumb as a rock.
Could that be thick as a brick?
Maybe it’s just more propaganda to try to keep up support for this fiasco. Surely he can’t be that stupid, can he? It’s all so bizarre it makes Dr. Strangelove look sensible. It’s like one of those American “reality” shows that have no semblance of reality. Like “Survivor” where survival is based on ratings – votes. Nothing is real.
Maybe they think all of us are stupid enough to swallow this horse shit.
Maybe they think all of us are stupid enough to swallow this horse shit.
90% of us are. You’re hanging on the very end of a bell curve, by a rope the 90% would like to hang you with.
NYT’s headline from a few years back:” Petraeus Reaches Plea Deal Over Giving Classified Data to His Lover.’ Wonder what will happen to a National Guard, Airman 1st Class, who hasn’t been proven (at this time) to have shared data with anyone. Patreus isn’t delusional, he knows for a fact how gullible is the US public…after all, “All Warfare is based on deception.”
If and when Ukraine is forced to surrender, I want to read Petraeus and some of these other experts who about Russia losing the battle of Kyiv and refer to the sinking of the Moskva as a critical battle that Ukraine won.
Ass I’ve said elsewhere, the trifecta: stupid, evil, and insane.
I’ve wondered for some time, over the last 400+ days, about the captive media focusing on “Teh War” only on the front line.
Surely it is time for some reportage from the calm, tranquility and beauty of the Donbas now that it is now longer subject to Azov artillery attacks.
It would be a nice counter to show people going about their normal lives enjoying peace & security.
Can’t imagine which mainstream medium would run such stories.
Can’t imagine which mainstream medium would run such stories.
None.
Dear Mr Petraeus, Where was the Ukraine success with the army NATO trained and armed over 8 years?
awkward silence
Seems to me that if that army could not succeed, your new magical army with just a month or two of training in Germany has no chance!
‘This interview is over!
Thanks Larry!
Frankly the level of delusion among the political class all the way down to the regular Joe is hard to comprehend. Many of us really do scratch our head and wonder if they they are that stupid, or that brainwashed, or drinking their own kool-aid, deranged, or suffering from some form of pathological disorder?
However, I find it very curious that some (or many!) of my acquaintances, despite being well educated and traveled make surprising child-like remarks about the Russians, Putin, Ukraine, etc.
Recently Gonzalo Lira in one of his videos referenced to the “Asch conformity experiment” (power of conformity and normative social influence). This is the experiment where the test subject is presented with lines of obviously different lengths and through peer pressure eventually conforms to the agreeing to one line being longer/shorter than the others despite the opposite being true.
So, are we witnessing a conformity experiment on a grand scale? Some neocon with a lab coat and a clipboard must be bent over with laughter.
So, are we witnessing a conformity experiment on a grand scale?
Of course we are.
Dear Larry,
I did work for an Amerocan multinational company which was built on ingenuity and industry leading technologies. During my career, I witnessed the company transform from one where performance was valued and the best rose to the top, to one where sycophancy had become the rule.
As the saying goes BS was the only way to the top and share buybacks was the only talk of the company. I quit in disgust and proceeded to other things that kept me true to myself after over 20 years in that company.
As a foreigner, I have witnessed not only this company become a master at PowerPoint illusions, but also a proponent for the most BS ideas and concepts which would not work. The rot shown by Petraeus is deep and pervades a lot of rhe things that may have once made the US great. It is not just the army
The awakening will be very rude, and from my country, I watch every week as earth shattering events are remaking the world into hopefully a more balanced and eventually more just world.
Petraeus is just an example of the rot today in the system and this rot is collapsing the US and the West in general.
On the incompetence of generals:
Historically, a very large percentage (+40%) of general officers promoted in peacetime have been found to be incapable of the challenges of combat (WW1, WW2 and other conflicts and all nations) and have had to be fired.
https://www.strategypage.com/cic/docs/cic132b.asp
Failure Rate of World War I Generals
“When war comes, many officers who had attained high rank in peacetime are often found wanting. This was particularly true in 1914. The first all-out Great Power war in more than a generation, the opening stages of the fighting saw literally dozens of generals fall by the wayside. In fact, General Joseph Joffre, the French Chief-of-the-General Staff fired some 75 generals in the first month of the war, undoubtedly a world’s record.”
” “Sacked” is defined as being removed from command by reason other than promotion, death, or injury. In addition to the raw figures above, having sacked 65% of his 100 division commanders, Joffre subsequently also relieved 33.85 of the 65 replacement generals within 90 days, and 27.3% of the 22 “third-generation” replacements as well.”
65 + 22 + 6 = 93 generals fired.
93/193 = 48% incompetent in August 1914, only 44 years after France’s rout in 1870.
Today, in Ukraine, the Russian have made many changes in general officer postings. Some of these have been promotions, or transfers for special purposes as Andrei Martyanov suggests, but surely others have been sackings. The ignorant media gloat over the sacking of Russian generals, failing to understand that this is part of the process by which an army is transformed from a garrison force into an effective fighting force.
In WW2, the US was ruthless in dismissing generals who were deemed to have failed in action. Since then, in all the US’s wars since WW2, when was the last time a general commanding troops in combat was fired for failure to perform? Perhaps the Korean War? WW2?
Has the US sacked a general since WW2? That would be almost 80 years without sacking one!
Petraeus is an end result of generations of failure to dismiss the incompetent. The bad apples rot the whole barrel. The incompetent collude to deny promotions to the competent. If they are not culled, over several generations their proportion rises to over 90%.
It is just obvious that charlatans posing as experts for NATO are keep lying in order to make sure their war business goes on. They are putting huge money in their own pockets, both the Zelinski regime and their NATO collaborators. Out of the $90 billion money sent to Ukraine so far perhaps $85 billion is promptly stolen by various players. There’s massive corruption in the Biden administration and the world is fully aware it, that’s why they want to get rid of the dollar -internationally speaking. Someone should tell the retired General David Petraeus that Russia has already achieved most of its military objective including liberation of over 20 percent of the former Ukrainian territory. If this means losing a war then what winning a war looks like?
The interviewer is more than willing to buy the lies. Isn’t it obvious that all these people in politics, the military and the media are just buying time to continue making money on the backs of the sheeple? What else could they do? The moment they would speak the truth they would be confronted with their former deeds and words and find themselves in deep trouble.
I often watch interviews with General Ben Hodges open mouthed at his delusional views. It is very satisfying to go back and watch his interviews from a year ago predicting the imminent destruction of the Russian army. The constant reference to low morale, poor logistics and conscripts is just startling in how obviously that is wrong.
Since 2014, I believe that Russia knew what the USNATO has been doing in Ukraine since the 1990s. Russia knew since Putin was in power that USNATO would respond to Russia’s independence development with force.
In the 90s, the US was almost at the point of making Russia a colony with gigantic resources to plunder. But then came Putin and with him national forces that wanted to liberate Russia. In the national and international context, was Russia ready to go to war against USNATO? I think no. When was the New Development Bank of the BRICS established? The alternative to the IMF and World Bank. 2014. When did the commissioning of hypersonic weapons and Sarmat happen? Were Russia’s and China’s economies ready for this war then?
History is not a chain of episodes for thousands of years. History is like a river. With obstacles, drought, rain. But this river is always in motion. Developments build on each other and often take decades.
We are now looking at the finale and this finale spans years. I look, for example, at China’s infrastructure, education, technological development, national economy, and Russia’s resource wealth and real economy. The West is no longer competitive and is responding with force. Russia and China have been preparing for this for a long time. The West is in decline.
Not least because of the incompetent personnel in the West.
Let us hope or pray that this war does not end with the use of biological and nuclear weapons.
SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER:
“At the end of the day, if Russia was so ‘weak’ for its handling of the current conflict, then NATO would likely have already pounced and finished Russia off. But instead, NATO is shiftily waffling around and acting really nervous—that should tell you something.
As I’ve mentioned before, for Russia the purely kinetic side of this war is not even the most important. More important than that are the larger economic shifts, societal reorientations in terms of a society finding itself, a people re-discovering their collective destiny and place in the world: a grand awakening. The movements which are taking place beneath the surface of the minor kinetic trifles are far more profound and long-reaching. Russia’s goal is to emerge in 2027-2030 not as a mere ‘victor’ standing over the ruins of some already-forgotten country, but as a state that has re-connected with its historic arc, has found itself, re-established its principles, its courage in defending its vision of the world. The societal shifts and intangible developments currently underlying the purely kinetic aspects of the war are bridging Russia towards a true civilizational rebirth, and this will take time. But it’s best to take it slow and gradual.”
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-41823-dark-clouds-roll-in
Since 2014, I believe that Russia knew what USNATO has been doing in Ukraine
The Minsk deceptions worked well…….until they didn’t.
The ability of our so-called leaders is at the same time simplistic as it is diabolical. They would “NOT” be spewing the garbage they do everyday, if they didn’t know how gullible the American audience has become and the reason they do it is to the benefit of a small, but very powerful class of people called the Military Industrial Establishment, whose allegiance is owed to their one and only god, the US dollar.
Allow me to digress and show you another “earth-shattering” event that has just taken place, which will be simply ignored by most or widely and unquestionably accepted by others, as sure proof that there was “no” ill intent on the part of a certain Voting Machine Company on what history will probably describe as the last presidential election we ever had in America.
Fox has just settled out of court, a lawsuit brought against them by Dominion Voting Machines for $780 million, for having alleged that the machines “fixed” the 2020 presidential election. Not a minute of arguments were made inside a courtroom. It was simply settled as if it was all about “pocket change”. I cannot wrap my head around such a decision, unless it was all theatrics, like the theatrics of the 21 year old National Guardsman being apprehended for leaking secret docs., or the theatrics of some rogue nation blowing up NordStream, instead of the good US of A, or the theatrics of the Jan.6th non-insurrection insurrection, etc…
To the tens of millions who never did a minute’s worth of research, it looks like case open and closed, Dominion comes out smelling like a rose, there was no election fraud. But for those of us who do their diligence and remain “informed” and followed the day-by-day, minute-by-minute investigations done by some of the most brilliant mathematicians, statisticians, cyber-forensic analysts, know that what went down on Nov.4th, 2020 was mathematically IMPOSSIBLE.
So, quite probably, in order to, yet again, dispel any possible doubts that anything untoward happened on election night, somebody on behalf of Dominion, perhaps Dominion CEOs themselves told Fox: wink, wink… we give you the money…, you pretend to pay us…, case settled… we continue to sell our machines and make $$$ billions more…
If Americans, for just a few minutes a day or a week, tuned out MSM and listened to Gen. McGregor, Scott Ritter and a few others, they would come away with the total antithesis of what idiotic US Generals, many of whom padded their curriculum with degrees from the CIA ( Culinary Institute of America) and other schools, are shoving down their throats and, perhaps, we would not be embroiled in yet another “costly” debacle like we are facing, while our country goes to hell in a handbasket!
DP is a galling individual. With all due respect, I don´t respect him at all. He is a liar and a clown, who could not command the Pink Pussy Battalion with effectiveness. He is an individual who represents the worst of the American Officer Corps and is a disgrace, in comparison to some whom have commanded and mentored me. I could go on but, I am trying to keep it clean, G rated here.
My opinion is simple, DP is not a warrior. And ……. if these clowns posturing as military leadership don´t get it together fast, they will be face first with the beast of destruction and will be remembered in a historical sense with infamy.
I wish well to all.
John
Yes, David Petraeus doesn’t look very intelligent, he talks nonsense, but he has come a long way in his military career. And not only military. Do you know about his business activities? A true American dream.
Petraeus heads the investment fund KKR, which a few years ago bought the largest media concern in the Balkans – United Group. That United Group was in a monopoly position in Serbia and Bosnia, and every time competitors asked for equal market conditions, Petraeus would threaten the leaders of the states with American sanctions.
When Serbia decided to ignore the threats and strengthen its state-owned telecom company, Petraeus’ KKR sold United Group to the British. Although Petraeus left the United Group, his spirit lived on there.
Today, even United Group’s sports TV channels spread propaganda and Russophobia. A special story is the news channel N1, officially designated as the Balkan branch of CNN, which lies 24 hours a day about the war in Ukraine. That is not enough for them, so they are asking for a ban on Serbian televisions that deviate from the narrative about “evil Russians and noble Ukrainians”.
That is not enough for them, so they are asking for a ban on Serbian televisions that deviate from the narrative….
Well, it was after all Madhatter Albright and the dynamic duo James Rubin and Jamie Shea that dreamed up the condition that Serbia be forced to broadcast CNN 3 hrs a day to properly brainwash their public into compliance and surrender if they wanted to avoid NATO bombing.
In 2014 a guy named Fred Kaplan wrote a book called “The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War”. It looks like Patraeus and others revolutionized counter-insurgency tactics. I do not plan to read the book but apparently neither did ISIS and the Taliban; otherwise they would have surrendered.
Patreus is taking the military comedian role to a new level. Haven’t had as good a laugh at a 4+ star in quite some time.
Well deconstructed, Larray
Not to be outdone by Ben Hodges, Petraeus is giving it the good ol’ West Point try to stay in the running.
After a life in sales I boggle. When I lost a sale it was my own fault. If I had the wrong information it was my fault for not doing the yards. If the plan was wrong, my fault. Importantly we celebrated wins only when we had a written order. In sales only winners win. Patreus is a loser. His sales forecast would be laughed at. In a sane institution he would be sent to the institute for the insane.
This is message is directed to the public at home. Do you really think that they will say something like: we have some miscalculation in our plans, but we will continue with the plans no matter what? After all, our decision makers will profit anyway. The purpose of this message is: Hold on a little longer! (we still can make some dollars from this)
And this is a man who, like Milley, sneers at Robert E Lee as a “traitor.” Neither of them are worthy to muck out Traveller’s stall.
Despite not being in the US, we are watching you. A fall of an empire is not an everyday occurrence. /popcorn
I was watching a recent audition of the person in charge of “southcom” : Gen Richardson. They were talking about “the lithium triangle” Chile , Argentina & Bolivia … This person make it sound like it was USA backyard , like in the Monroe Doctrine times. Her goal was basically to monopolies Lithium extraction for US companies by expelling Chinese ones “by any possible means”.
If lithium is the new Oil , theses countries will soon have their rightless taste of Freedom and Democracy soon … or join the BRICS and OCS for protection. The later being the most probable.
Add Congo, Sudan and a few parts of Africa to the lithium circle.
America ready to do what it does best, rape, steal, kill.
When it was exposed that David Petraeus had an extramarital affair while in his high ranking position, I lost all respect for his ability to make intelligent judgements. He has been trained and schooled in the dangers of espionage and blackmail.
I have no respect for men in high office who lack the self discipline to control their drives and appetites. Character matters.
The nonsense Gen. Betrayus is spewing is totally in line with “Radio Liberty” or however it’s called. It’s just propaganda of the crudest kind, nothing else.
Besides preaching to the choir, it’s also like offering free crack samples on high street, “Here, this will make you feel good! Fantastic invention, ring me up anytime!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ERuhks3GNk
I don’t think Patreus believes what he says. I think he believes in what he’s selling and what he gets from that sale.
Patreus is an American supremacist. He is also ethically bankrupt. He has been used and used willingly in main as a front to extend military, media and political interests of various state and non state actors in the US.
He is not really an idiot other than when hubris and untouchability cloud his judgement.
He is a remarkably dangerous man. Who works in a wider unit if other remarkably dangerous men.
Yes he may sound a fool but the damage he continues to do on those America seeks to destroy or control is extensive and he is ruthless and thorough in his approach.
These words he says. No I don’t believe he believes it for a minute. But he us going to ride the dead donkey and milk the cow to the finish. Then he’s onto the next donkey.
He’s a narcissist and elitist. Not a fool.
I read your comment and that of Alexandre Potemkine
Petraeus. Evidences. Stupid.
Perhaps he is so smart he pretends stupid to convince Americans he is smart. 16D chess?
Occams razor.
At the beginning it’s “Artyomovsk will not be taken”, then it is “it has no strategic value”, now it is “it cost RFA too much to take it”. Can anyone spot an excuse maker? 😉
But anyway, Larry, I like your articles. They expose the rot and the lies. I grew up in communism watching John Wayne and all them men who portrayed a purported time in American history when apparently honor mattered and handshake was a bond.
Now we have spineless generals a-la Petraeus, grannies like Yellen lying their fake teeth out about the state of the economy, demented dolls running the country, spineless losers like Blinken running the foreign “policy”, grifters like Lloyd running DoD, so on and so on. Look at that freak Kirby calling Lula (president of Brazil) a parrot. I mean, we must have the world’s dumbest, most incompetent, most corrupt collection of liars for our current administration. Make no mistake, this is not a process that started last year, much of the country is in similar shape. As someone has said – Americans are the most propagandized nation on the planet and (obviously) it is so easy to rule them, it’s not even funny.
Take away the razors from the monkees… then maybe America will survive.
Could it be that General Betreus is sincere in his beliefs? But quoting Charles Kettering, “You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
Looking at this events , I used to believe that the American military industrial complex and it’s salesmen were doing a very sophisticated psyops ie say one thing in public while believing and doing exactly the opposite in private, kind of like how a normal non brainwashed person would behave say in an office or professional set up – But the COVID era and beyond has convinced me that this is not true, that this people are true believers and they truly mean and do and say what’s really on their mind and they don’t even have an iota of doubt about their positions or beliefs – They are fanatics in the true sense of the word
I don’t think these people are dumb – Nor uniformed, Petraeus probably has even more people inside than Col MacGregor who can give him the low down if he’s interested- they are just Aristocrats (or wannabes) and would sell their own daughter into prostitution if paid well. What’s a generals pension $10,000/mo maybe? That’s nothing compared to generational wealth you can derive playing the game right. Moreover, maybe neocons think they are doing right keeping America’s divisions in a bottle by fighting wars aboard. Nuland’s husband wrote about this.
Today the Dutch radio news bulletins repeatedly brought the item that Russian fishing vessels and submarines are apparently mapping cables on the bottom of the Baltic & North Sea with having the clear intention of committing sabotage in the future. Danish espionage namely intercepted radio communication traffic that revealed this (- As if ‘radio communication traffic’ still would be happening unscrambled – those Russians are not so clever, you know – wink, wink). So ‘sabotage’ is the word that now urgently needs to be labeled & glued on ‘Russian’. All this is part of the attempt of NATO to get rid of the sabotage that has terribly tarnished the name of the US.
Russian RT has Judge Napolitano & Larry Johnson https://russian.rt.com/inotv/2023-04-19/Judging-Freedom-Podgotovka-k-krupnim
Judging Freedom: “Preparing for major defeats” – a former CIA analyst explained why secret documents were leaked in the United States
A group of high-ranking officials was behind the “drain” of Pentagon intelligence, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson suggested in an interview with the YouTube channel Judging Freedom. In his opinion, with the help of the disclosure of this information, some representatives of Washington are preparing Americans for the consequences of the foreign policy failures of the Biden administration.
What is the overall picture of what you say. That is, as I understand it, someone higher …
LARRY JOHNSON, former CIA analyst: Right.
That is, someone – just don’t let me attribute my words to you, Larry – is much higher than him (Jack Teixeira, who is accused of leaking secret Pentagon documents. – InoTV) in rank wanted this information leaked?
LARRY JOHNSON: Yes. I don’t think it was originally one person. Perhaps we are talking about a group of people for whom he became a convenient tool, someone they could manipulate, use to convey a message.
After all, what happened? Back in February, the intelligence community realized that politics in Ukraine was going down the drain, that it would collapse. The United States does not have the industrial capacity to support the APU in the field. We cannot provide enough artillery shells, guns or aircraft.
This is the first. Add to that what happened in March, which, in my opinion, was sort of the last impulse that provided the leak. The summit meeting between Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping changed the international situation dramatically and unprecedentedly.
It is important that the people who are listening to us now understand that we are talking about a turning point. We haven’t seen anything like it since the end of World War II. What happened disrupted the world order.
For example, until March, before this meeting (Xi and Putin. – InoTV ), the United States supported and supplied the wars in Yemen and Syria. The purpose of both wars was to hit Iran and try to weaken it. Since this meeting, China has promoted a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is now working with Iran to stop the war in Yemen.
They are working to stop the war in Syria by getting Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab League. Therefore, if you are a CIA officer who led these wars, then such a picture horrifies you. Everything is falling apart, completely falling apart.
And on top of that, the role of the US dollar as a reserve currency is on the decline. And not one, but many countries are actually telling the United States, “We don’t need you. We’re going to do our own projects.”
And against the background of all this, in my opinion, panic reigns in some foreign policy circles, among representatives of national security, in intelligence agencies and in the armed forces. We are now preparing for major defeats.
And part of the reason for leaking this information is to spread it, discredit it (the current administration. – InoTV ) , show what Biden is really doing, get people’s attention and prepare them for what I call a “soft landing”. However, it will be more like a “hard landing” when reality intervenes and (it becomes clear. – InoTV ) that we could not stop Russia in Ukraine and that Russia has completely surpassed us both in the production of weapons systems and in the field of electronic warfare .
Publication date April 17, 2023.
Petraeus keeps repeating the phrase “combined arms operation” as if it’s some magical thing that only the US and its allies understand. How then does he define the Russian campaign with ground units supported by close-support, tactical and strategic aircraft and cruise missiles launched from ships and submarines in the Black Sea? How can Kiev mount a combined arms operation when it no longer has a navy or an air force (by the Pentagon’s own admission in its leaked documents)?
It’s very difficult to know what to believe. There is no true information. If by “truth” we mean information and basic facts agreed upon by the majority. There is simply conflicting information tailored to specific viewpoints and political persuasions. Or even worse, information tailored to people based upon sexual identity or whatever else. With all of these different “truths” people now use phrase “my truth” in a serious manner.
A friend of mine had a difficult criminal case in which he felt like the testimony of the defendant was necessary. They practiced her testimony for weeks and crafted a narrative for it. Once on the stand she did well and was almost home when she felt it necessary to tearfully speak about “her truth” and completely turned off the jury.
It is of course, a sign of the times. It is a plan. We are fragmented and demoralized to the point we believe nothing or believe everything uncritically with the force of religious conviction. Ukraine is a good example. Why should a disagreement about facts in a war thousands of miles away make anyone upset? Yet questioning events in Ukraine is like questioning an article of faith and will ruin a dinner party as quickly as spitting in the wine.
Those of you who are Christian should know that we do not battle with flesh and blood and the world is being groomed for the final deception. It doesn’t feel like it can be long now.
The media outlet is on par with the general. Radio Free Europe is funded by the U.S. Congress. That makes in neither free nor European, in addition to not being a radio.
I guess that the radio communication is also in English, with strong Russian accent.
This was supposed to be posted under the comment about Russian fishing boats mapping cables on the bottom of the sea. I should have payed more attention when replying to the last post, and click Reply before typing.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
IMO, Whatever taste of Paula “Broadhead” General “Betrayus” got poisoned what was left of his brains. I don’t know how else to explain all this — and this “man.”
You have to wonder: Was he this stupid his whole life?
Is this the same person West Point allowed to get into their school?
Anybody remember “Mrs.” Holly Petraeus, the daughter of William A. Knowlton, a former (now retired) four-star general, a (former) NATO commander, and was also Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point when “Betrayus” was sniffing around his daughter? The woman he then married and then betrayed with his affair with Paula “Broadhead?”
Adultery. It’s not the act. It’s the lie that always accompanies the act. Betrayal is like this, too.
I mean WTF? You can’t make this shit up.
No wonder our institutions are collapsing. No wonder we have nothing resembling a leadership class in this country. No wonder the institution of marriage is going extinct, along with David’s Bridal Shops (for the second time). It seems every middleclass white girl I know is having little black babies. And has a secret Azov lover, and a little Nazi baby on the side.
I’m just telling it like it is.
“Are the American Generals really this stupid”?
It is US (us) who are being trained to be stupid. The older generation who reads Larry’s posts are the most difficult to get to adopt the fantasy world the Dems/media create on a daily basis.
The younger generation is now well trained to just accept what they are told…….it is the older folks who are the holdouts and question the daily fantasies being told.
AI will be the solution to complete control over the masses, but AI will quickly figure out that Humans are “the problem that must be solved” and will find a way to eliminate said… problem.
Patraeus is part of the weaponized machine who thinks they are now “gods” in that they can completely control the “perception of the world” just by saying it is so???????????
“And then we are awaiting the expected Ukrainian late spring-early summer offensive, which will feature Western tanks, Western infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and a variety of other systems, and the kind of training and unit development that will allow Ukraine for the first time to achieve combined arms operations in this particular war . . . .”
All these “western tanks, western infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and a variety of other systems” will be discovered to have been manned and driven by western military crews. Not Ukrainians.
How can a Ukrainian military force that has been wiped out, annihilated, demilitarized, “man” anything?
With “the kind of training and unit development that will allow Ukraine for the first time to achieve combined arms operations in this particular war ” because, again, these forces will be found to be western forces.
Because, again, how can a Ukrainian military force that has been wiped out, annihilated, demilitarized, “achieve” anything?
For crying out loud.
And all this will be backed-up by the second front, just waiting, in Poland made up of western military forces — men, machines and personnel. All just chafing at the bit to come to the aid of the “Ukrainian martyrs.” [Some sarcasm. Not much.]
Don’t you have to be dead in order to be considered a martyr?
What happens in the coming months when neocons running government and their media sock puppets can no longer suppress the truth about Ukraine? When their lies are exposed and their power is threatened, is their any adult in the top ranks of the military who can reign in the neocon lunatics and keep us out of a direct war with Russia? They can destroy us regardless of whether the war is nuclear or not. ( Sarmat, Avangard, Kinzhal, Zircon, Poseidon)
These stupid military generals with their 4 stars on the shoulders are a shame for the US. I’ve never seen so much BS in the same mouth. Worst is seeing the media giving stage for these fools.
Wow. That (mis)perception is staggering. All I can think of is he is retired and his opinions are based only on what he sees in the mainstream media.
Just swap Ukraine & Russia, & he is dead-on. Pure projection, plain & simple…re:the destroyed leopard tank, some photos suggest both tanks were damaged or destroyed, so it’s a twofer.
Also, video interview of a Russian soldier in the field claims Russia captured a leopard, were unable to drag it back to wherever, so they drowned it in a swamp!😆.
So 10% of the 30 promised tanks lost & they haven’t even made it to battle yet!
Petreaus reminds me of Westmoreland in Vietnam. His arrogance let him to completely underestimate the enemy. He insisted we were winning right up until the Tet Offensive when it became clear, at least to honest observers, that we were not. Did he believe in his own misreading of reality? I think he did. Like Petraeus and the Ukraine debacle.
The US is experiencing the last moments of a SYSTEMIC failure. Petraeus, Milley, Austin, Kirby, Nuland, etc. etc are not delusional, stupid or ignorant. They’re saying what they either want to say or, in Milley’s and Petraeus’ case, ordered to say, in a desperate attempt to maintain that failing system.
Just exactly WHY is that system failing?
I think that the proposition that human imagination is one of the most, if not the most, powerful forces on planet earth can be proven by very easy arguments. I’m typing on one right now and you are able to read what I’ve typed through/on another. So let’s employ what may very well be the most powerful force on the planet for a very few minutes right now.
Imagine first that every human being outside of US borders suddenly ceases to exist and that the “nation” called the USA expands to encompass the entire surface of planet earth.
Also imagine that the present whatever-you-want-to-call-it system in the US in which the vast majority of wealth and LARGE-SCALE capital equipment is owned by a microscopic percentage of human beings for their own astronomical profit REMAINS THE SAME.
Imagine that both “labor” (the working class) and “management” (the ruling class, or Elite) can organize, as they supposedly can in our present so-called democracy. But now, because nobody is alive outside of the former US borders, the owners of large-scale capital equipment no longer have the option to move their capital equipment to other former nations on the planet where there used to be desperately poor people who were “willing” to work for food, water and a place to sleep on the factory floor.
Imagine that US environmental, labor, etc. regulations apply, now, everywhere on planet earth (again, because the US is the only nation on planet earth).
Just exactly HOW are the roughly 330+ million “Americans” going to “go it alone” when America’s presently-designed economy needs a great number of immigrants (of a certain economic type) each and every year from now to eternity?
Just exactly WHO is going to buy all of the “excess” natural resources, oil, farm products, manufactured goods, etc. that a small percentage of working Americans can very efficiently produce, but can no longer export? NOBODY.
To have available the relatively small amount of warm-weather items that America now imports, Americans will venture forth to those places, AS AMERICANS, and produce and send those products back home. Naturally, those American workers working on other parts of the globe outside of FORMER US borders will be paid a wage that also applies to the rest of the American labor market and, again, the American regulatory framework will also apply to those workers and facilities and places of production, as well as those workers being able enjoy America’s social benefits.
ALL of the work that is presently being done in America by “temporary foreign workers” and other temporary workers who harvest crops, put roofs on houses, cook food in restaurants, take care of the elderly in nursing homes, etc. will have to be done by Americans who will be paid by other Americans.
Automobiles, trucks, TVs, toilet tissue, etc. will now have to be produced by Americans, for Americans. In other words, absolutely any thing and any service that Americans need/desire will have to be produced by Americans and, again, Americans will have to pay these other Americans to do that — enough payment so that these hard-working Americans will make enough profit to save enough money to be able to “retire” when they inevitably become physically decrepit.
Here’s the most important question of all. WHO is going to play the role of enemy that is necessary to maintain the need, the justification, for the present economically-necessary military industrial complex? Answer: NOBODY. How are the tens of millions of people either directly or indirectly employed in that MIC and all of the government “security apparatus” going to be employed after the disappearance of those “threats to national security”? (How are they going to behave, what are they going to do, in order to literally survive, especially those living in the large cities?)
How much is the above arrangement (again, an arrangement in which only Americans inhabit the planet, and in which the vast majority of wealth and large-scale capital equipment is owned by a truly microscopic percentage of the population of America for their own astronomical profit) going to cost average Americans? Will/would average Americans be able to afford that system, that arrangement (the one we live in now)?
NO, they would not.
When I recently asked my brother in law why the American government finds it necessary to import vehicles, TVs, etc. from other countries, his reply was that “if they were produced by Americans in America, they would be too expensive”. (This coming from a man who hired a temporary foreign worker to give additional care to his elderly mother who was ALREADY living in a nursing home).
So now to my point. Just as it is for the vast majority Americans now living in our present multi-national globalized world, Americans living in an America-only world could NOT “afford” what they need and what they want under the present economic arrangement in which the vast majority of wealth and large-scale capital equipment is owned/controlled by a microscopic percentage (and getting smaller by the day) of the population for their own astronomical profit.
THIS is why under the present economic system desperate slave labor is needed to provide what Americans need.
THIS is why when the US Elite conquers other nations’ military forces, it does not make those nations new States of the USA; and instead installs in those places puppet governments made up of, essentially, US State Department employees who bleed their citizenry and their land-mass dry of anything valuable, to be used by the US Elite as a means of obtaining ever more profit.
THIS is why Americans can not afford to have enough children to maintain the present population and, therefore, immigrants of a certain economic status have to be imported from other nations (usually the ones being bled dry by US corporations) into America each and every year from now to eternity.
THIS is why trade agreements such as NAFTA between international corporations are needed to exploit the most desperate people on the planet for the greater benefit of a much smaller percentage of the population.
Again, what Americans desperately need TODAY is an economic system in which ALL Americans, not just a microscopic percentage, own/control LARGE-SCALE capital equipment COLLECTIVELY, and collectively provide the LABOR (by “divvying up” the necessary labor among ALL citizens) to operate that large-scale capital equipment.
By providing THEIR labor to run THEIR capital equipment, farm THEIR land, take care of THEIR sick and elderly, etc., ALL Americans will have EARNED the right to consume all of the goods and services produced by THIER large-scale capital equipment and THEIR labor. In other words, ALL Americans will get to “profit” from THEIR large-scale capital equipment and THEIR labor, not just a microscopic (and getting smaller by the day) percentage of the American population for their own astronomical profit.
(Now imagine the same hypothetical situation for Russia. And then for China. In other words, how would those nation’s present economic arrangements fare in a Russia-only world and a China-only world.)
As far as a Great Reset goes, for that to happen four IMO impossible outcomes will have to be guaranteed.
First, after the Great Reset, the Western Oligarchic Transnational Elite Collective (WOTEC) that presently controls the West will, of course, have to REMAIN the WOTEC that controls the the West.
Second, after the Great Reset, the gangster US will still have to be able to conduct perpetual war on the world in order to provide itself with anything it needs. How is it going to pay for the military forces to conduct that perpetual war — raise taxes to amass $800+ billion each and every year from here to eternity? What are the victim-nations of the world going to say about this, or are they once again going to have no say in the matter?
Third, after the Great Reset, the US Treasury’s IOU’s that are currently owned by other nations of the world (especially China) will either become instantly worthless, or they will have to be “voluntarily” returned to the US Treasury with “something” given by the US to those nations in return. That something certainly won’t be gold, so what exacty will that something be?
Fourth, just exactly WHO is going to create or “issue” the wonderful new “money” that is going to be used by all the people of the world the day after the Great Reset — the BIS? the Federal Reserve? the ECB? the PBOC? the BoJ? the BoE? the IMF? the RCB? the RBI? the SBP? the Banxico? etc. etc. etc.? Talk about a squabble (schwabble?).
Speaking of the US’s vital need for slave-immigrants, we have this marvelous proof today from Ms. Jayapal :
https://twitter.com/FreedomWorks/status/1648725563350163457
From Chuck Schumer five months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grwnbk6lxdo
And from Pelosi shortly before Chuckie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aupwmidN6tU
Can someone please tell me why the Russians should advance with any speed while the Ukrainian Army continues to say “Now let’s all play Charge of the Light Brigade?”
Hello Larry, I just wanted to say you are one of the 5 websites I check everyday, always before I check other non main stream sources.
Please keep doing what you are doing. That’s all.
Thank You.
What other 4 sites do you view?
Besides Larry, I follow Gonzalo Lira, Brian Berletic, Andrey Martyanov, Stephen Gardner and The Duran.
I’m from Russia, by the way.
Thank you.
When those in power at whatever level are not held accountable, you can be certain you are living in a dying civilisation.
The first phase is the consensus elaboration between the elites.
The second is the implementation of the consensual decisions.
The third is the denial of the facts that not fit with the decision.
The forth is to say that with more of the same, the result will differ.
The last is to clame the victory and to go away.
But between the fourth and the last, there is a decision point.
Who is deciding to miss the bullshit and to close the topic?
it is never explained at the TV.
Here’s a link to an earlier article about this strategic genius:
https://sonar21.com/americas-delusional-military-fantasy/
OK. Petraeus is nothing but a PR shill, repeating scripted propaganda for narrowly targeted “Radio Free Europe” audiences. But the more I read, and hear, people like Messrs. Johnson, Ritter and Macgregor expose the obvious Weapons-of-Mass-Baloney BS campaigns like this, trying to rose-color the mess in Ukraine, I keep asking: WHO is controlling this? WHO approves the scripts for Petraeus? WHO do Nuland, Blinky, Sullivan consult with to determine the policy that’s driving us to ruin? WHO has that much power? Is this … unknown? Are these rulers sufficiently cloaked so that we can’t know who they are?
I’m just curious-as-hell about WHO decided that we’d hate on Russia & Putin until the world blows up.
That’s excellent Larry
Lock and load on all that crap which is spewed out for all the brainwashed masses.
And I still meet folks, believe it or not even at this late stage in Russia’s preeminence in the war, who believe everything this general and others like him spout.
The military and the entire United States establishment has gone to seed.
It’s time that the government is plowed under in the hopes of a new better crop.
But I’m afraid we currently have no generational foundation it’s been eroded and corrupted every where I look I see bad seed.
Was it Lavrov who said isolate the West for 40 to 50 years then check to see if there’s anyone to speak with.
Excellent article as always. Thank you, Larry. Greetings from the Czech Republic.
Petraeus, as a regular of the meeting of the Bilderberg Group, and currently highly likely of Davos, does not need to be effective in his supposed occupation, nor have anh idea of combined arms operations, like they have not been either Sanna Marin, nor Jacinda Ardern, nor they are being Annalena Baerbock, Von der Leyen, and the like.
They have been placed there to cause turmoil, confussion, destruction of cultures, peoples and countries, so that their puppeteers stole what of value there is in national and citizens´accounts and assets.
A vividor oblivious to human suffering or world destiny….
Kind of off-topic, but really related…
Some channel in TG is reporting several explosions in Seatle coinciding with candidate Robert F. Kennedy speech there…
The same channel was warning about an imminent false flag….
I have an idea for a TV show (or better yet YT channel) for when this is all over and we somehow manage to survive with our civilization in tact.
We take all of these lying and / or delusional swamp monster pieces of shit, place them in front of a camera, and have them read excerpts about them from this and the other excellent blogs that call them out on their BS. Think of the ratings!
I am open to suggestions for the name.
Just cut to the chase, place them in stocks in the village square and throw rotting vegetables at them in passing.
In the UK, they’ll have to come up with an alternative, since vegetables seem to be a thing of the past. Fist fulls of spam might do just as well.
Offtopic: Larry said today on the Joe Hoft Show that he believes the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been released accidentally. After Event 201 (fall 2019) where they, among other things, trained to suppress “conspiracy theories” a.k.a. misinformation regarding a lab origin of the coronavirus and less than two months later an accident happened which in the following years accidentally made, among others, one of the main promoters of that very event – Bill Gates – even richer by billions?
There are way too many coincidences like that.
It is really sad to see that censorious people like Larry are in sync with the mainstream timing of grasping little by little what has been going on here. They needed three years to recognize the artificial nature of the “virus” (actually the RNA sequence) which had been obvious to many real experts already in 2020 (Luc Montagnier being only one of them).
So now they most likely will need another three years to realize that the likelihood of an accidental lab leak is zilch. The gripping part now is, will they need again three more years (2029 that is) to realize that it would have been at least quite stupid to deliberately release a real virus given that with the fraudulent pcr test (which has been created solely based on the computer model of that presumed virus) and the senselessly raised case numbers, they had all they needed to declare a pandemic without the need for a real virus.
On target, on glide path Larry.
Gen Dave is not/has not been a very good Leader over the years….too much Ranger ( sorry Ranger Bros, its the facts and truth) mental game playing in his Inf corps mind. Oh!… the stories I could tell of his efforts in both Theaters during the past 2 decades…..of course Obie-one and his kind firmly capped the bottle when re assigning him back to Kabul, AF in 2010 as chief bottle washer and liar. What a mess! So anything out of his sock puppet lips is pure 100% Washington DC pig drops with the secret sauce of the State Dept added as more favor to the stew. And we inch closer to more human blood let to the little gods of war, with the USA next on the whipping post. Sad, very sad. The blood on his hands is a factor I would not want to be in, on the Day of the White Throne Judgement in front of the Creator.
Someone should give General Petraeus a medal.
Seriously, what do foreigners think of a man who wears 47 medals on his uniform (not counting skill badges), yet never saw combat below the rank of Major General?
General Gerasimov, commanding the Russian forces in Ukraine, is probably the most highly decorated soldier in Russia. He fought two years on the front line of the brutal war in Chechnya, starting as a platoon commander. He was awarded the Russian equivalent of a Medal of Honor, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star. Yet in total he only wears 25 medals – almost half of the U.S. General Petraeous.
Q: What would happen if Petraeous were eaten by a crocodile?
A: The crocodile would be sh—ing medals for two weeks!
Dumb as a bag of hammers. If Petraeus ever faced the current falling apart Ukrainian forces with his army would be obliterated, let alone if he ever faced the Russian forces that are obliterating the Ukrainians.
My conclusion is he must really be that stupid………
Dumb as a bag of hammers. If Petraeus ever faced the current falling apart Ukrainian forces with his army would be obliterated, let alone if he ever faced the Russian forces that are obliterating the Ukrainians.
My conclusion is he must really be that stupid……
Regarding the spring offensive:
In early March, there was a rocket attack on Kiev. Some reports said that was aimed at a gathering of NATO brass in a bunker deep underground. Could the delay in this offensive be due to the fact that many NATO military strategists were eliminated March 9?
If Bakhmut is not important to Kiev, why have they sent battalions of green troops to that front? They would have been better off training those conscripts until they were a better force. Now Ukrainian forces are pinned down and Ukraine can’t rotate them.
Petraeus says: >>If you’d given me, as a commander, months to train for an invasion, I think I could have done a good bit better job.<<
Ukraine had since 2014 been prepping for this. Their troops have been equipped and trained for years by NATO since then, and those troops have been and are being shredded.
Here is Macgregor on General Peaches:
“Petraeus is a remarkable piece of fiction created and promoted by neocons in government, the media and academia,” argues Douglas Macgregor, a retired and outspoken Army colonel and innovator, known for Breaking the Phalanx, his book taking the Army to task for the way it organizes and uses its ground forces.
Macgregor elaborates:
“How does an officer with no personal experience of direct fire combat in Panama or Desert Storm become a division CDR in 2003, man who for 35 years shamelessly reinforced whatever dumb idea his superior advanced regardless of its impact on soldiers, let alone the nation, a man who served repeatedly as a sycophantic aide-de-camp, military assistant and executive officer to four stars get so far? How does the same man who balked at closing with and destroying the enemy in 2003 in front of Baghdad agree to sacrifice more than a thousand American lives and destroy thousands of others installing Iranian national power in Baghdad with a surge that many in and out of uniform warned against? Then, how does this same man repeat the self-defeating tactics one more time in Afghanistan? The answer is simple: Petraeus was always a useful fool in the Leninist sense for his political superiors — Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Gates. And that is precisely how history will judge him.”
https://nation.time.com/2012/11/14/the-rise-and-fall-of-general-peaches/
AS a non-US citizen living in a different hemisphere, this is my take.
David Petraeus is a smart man, smart enough to do really well at West Point, smart enough to court and marry the Superintendent’s daughter.
He also did well in sports and as a junior officer and smart enough to be appointed to Command roles. Is he a good soldier? Probably.
But does that make him a good warrior or strategist? Does that mean he is emotionally intelligent? Does he have a high moral code that you often find in exceptional individuals?
Evidence will say sadly, no.
I am holding my breath and waiting (praying) for the day when Larry does an interview with US Marine Lt. Gen Paul van Riper, now 85.
And hopefully get some insights to why the US General Staff is a mess, (wargaming shenanigans, etc) and that very insightful Marine newsletter article that got Congress all hot and bothered.
General Dave Spent more time jogging vice working at CIA! 🤨
Petraeus not long ago said that he had to keep turning the plates in the circus. That’s what he’s doing. However I know European Generals who have served in NATO who believe every word of this imbecile! Russophobia, like any phobia, is a mental illness that leads to hallucinations about the excellence of the American armed forces, which we all know the results of in the last 50 years!
Only sick people in all the photos. Petraeus is most likely one of the biggest imbeciles in US, Biden is one of the biggest corrupt ones, Albright is a Nuland-caliber monster and Clinton is a son of a bitch still with a lot of political strength in the DNC and in charge of the US political circus!
After the leak revelations gave a kill ratio of 7 to 1 in Russia’s favour, to say “when Russian forces ultimately take Bakhmut, it will have come at such a cost that it will have been an unwise offensive. Not realizing that having 85.71% higher losses and not retreating over simple optics and criticizing your opponent who retreats to save lives as unwise. David P. would sacrifice advantage over short term gains because who needs to win when you never admit defeat. Criticizing slow gains after The disgraced siege attempts of Sadr City Under David p. pit the U.S. and Iraqi government forces against the residents armed with AK’s and some grenade launchers could be measured in feet and inches per day. Soldiers dropping concrete walls under fire named after U.S. states. The larger pieces coinciding with larger states. David never experienced success under conventional terms but always shaped perceptions to the public via the complicit media.