Sometime soon, there are decent odds that while you are watching your favorite sporting event or streaming movie on the television or Web, you see and hear the following message: "We interrupt this programming for a special announcement: The President of the United States, Joe Biden.
Biden will be in the Oval Office, sitting at his desk, and drop a statement something like this:
"Good evening my fellow Americans: Moments ago I ordered Tomahawk missile strikes on Russian military units in Eastern Ukraine. I also authorized our two most advanced military aircraft, the B-2 and F-35 to strike Russian forces along Ukraine's Black Sea coast. We cannot allow war crimes such as those in Bucha, Ukraine, and other communities to go unpunished. President Vladimir Putin will ultimately be held accountable for this heinous act. Some 400 civilians were murdered in Bucha. We can't allow that to stand. American has always stood for freedom and democracy around the world and has sacrificed blood and treasure for those causes. My fellow Americans, there may come a time soon when we will all have to sacrifice in the fight to save the world from autocratic [capitalist] leaders. Our way of life is threatened. We may need more personnel to fight this fight and that means a return to selective service…God Bless America, God Bless our Troops”
The stench from the hypocrisy of such a statement will seep through LCD screens everywhere. Did the entire American populace sign up for US intervention in Ukraine? Did we sign on to higher gas prices, food prices, or to witness a few bad decisions the lead to WWIII? Ukrainian's average income is about $3000 (USD) a year. It is poor and corrupt. And what about Iraq II, Afghanistan? Americans don't remember yesterday as David Bowie sang in Young Americans.
How much more can we tolerate the President of Ukraine, V. Zelensky? He has been sent by the USGOV to elected bodies worldwide begging for NATO aircraft and boots on the ground in Eastern Ukraine. The US Government/CIA and the Pentagon are firmly in charge of Zelensky and Ukraine, make no mistake about it. Zelensky is part of US MISO (see below). He shows up during the Grammy Awards, and is mentioned during the Oscars. Ukraine donation buckets are at 7-11 markets across America. Some homeowners in the suburbs of Washington, DC, have taken to displaying the Ukrainian flag. The local classical music station plays Ukrainian artists and asks us to support them somehow. Employment search engines like Indeed encourage the user to support Ukraine. Zelensky is lionized as a Winston Churchill a wartime leader. Nope, he is just a tool of United States strategy and tactics, and its is no conspiracy but well planned by the USA.
We are experiencing perhaps the most well coordinated war propaganda campaign since WWII. You've got to admit, it is very, very impressive. We are being shaped for a larger conflict. "All part of the plan,” said Heath Ledger's Joker. The United States military taught, indeed is guiding, the Ukrainian's in the art of information warfare, psyops and in particular Military Information Support Operations (MISO). Consider this from Joint Publication 3.13.2. MISO, 2010:
"Military information support operations (MISO) play an important role in DOD communications efforts through the planned use of directed programs specifically designed to support USG and DOD activities and policies. MISO are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals in a manner favorable to the originator's objectives. Military information support (MIS)professionals follow a deliberate process that aligns commander's objectives with an analysis of the environment; select relevant TAs; develop focused, culturally, and environmentally attuned messages and actions; employ sophisticated media delivery means; and produce observable, measurable behavioral responses… MISO are used to establish and reinforce foreign
perceptions of US military, political, and economic power and resolve. In conflict, MISO as a force multiplier can degrade the enemy's relative combat power, reduce civilian interference, minimize collateral damage, and maximize the local populace's support for operations.”
There is transparency about this process. The documentation from the Pentagon is out on the Web for anyone to find and to read. So is the history of the US and CIA training the Ukrainian military. TJ Coles at Gray Zone, in his piece Gods of War, has an excellent, well sourced piece discussing the extent to which Ukrainians have been schooled by the USA to fight the Russians. It is worth checking out for the many links to military documents.
According to Cole, "Beginning 2015, the CIA's Ground Department arranged for Ukrainians to be trained in the US south. The operations continue to the present and have been expanded under the Biden administration. The multiweek, U. S.-based CIA program has included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like "cover and move,' intelligence and other areas.” One senior officer is quoted as saying:
"The United States is training an insurgency … to kill Russians…By bolstering Ukraine's armed forces and goading Russia, US elites have openly used Ukrainian civilians as pawns. For many years, Ukrainian forces were trained in urban combat by US personnel: i. e., to fight Russians in densely-populated civilian areas.”
Indeed, talk about "goading” Russia, Pat Buchanan of the American Conservative Magazine noted on March 25, 2022:
How did we get here? We got here by exploiting our Cold War victory as an opportunity to move NATO, our Cold War alliance, into a dozen countries in Central and Eastern Europe, up to the borders of Russia. Then, we started to bring Ukraine into NATO, the constituent republic of the old Soviet Union with the longest and deepest history with Mother Russia. Thus, while Putin started this war, the U. S. set the table for it. We pushed our military alliance, NATO, set up in 1949 to contain and, if necessary, fight Russia, 1,000 miles to the east, right into Russia's face.”
According to a report by the Associated Press, in leveling Al Raqqa during the battle against ISIS* the US and its Coalition killed nearly 1600 civilians. 60 to 80 percent of the city became uninhabitable. Save the Children reported in 2021 the following"…In four years there has been little rehabilitation of the city that at the peak of the bombing campaign faced 150 airstrikes a day, leaving children living in damaged homes and with nowhere to learn or play but among ruins. Three quarters of Al Raqqa's population are reliant on support to buy food and other basic goods and services. Eighty percent of the city's schools are still damaged, as the conflict and its aftermath have decimated the entire education sector. The worst drought in nine years in North East Syria has led to a lack of access to clean water for families in Al Raqqa, creating a public health crisis with a reported increase in waterborne diseases and challenges in preventing the spread of COVID-19.”
Yes, the US military tries hard to limit CIVCAS or civilian casualties. But a blown apart Arab-Syrian civilian is worth the same measure of salt as a relatively intact dead Ukrainian on the street in Bucha. Or is it?
Well, it seems Russia, like the USA in Al Raqqa, is trying hard to minimize CIVCAS in its long range air & missile targeting in Ukraine. According to a March 22 Newsweek report by William Arkin:
"As destructive as the Ukraine war is, Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U. S. intelligence experts say. Russia's conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage-and it reveals the Russian leader's strategic balancing act…If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict…even in the case of southern cities, where artillery and rockets are within range of populated centers, the strikes seem to be trying to target Ukrainian military units, many of which by necessity operating from inside urban areas.”
In Bucha, Ukraine, Russian troops are alleged to have committed war crimes by killing 300-400 innocent civilians. Images of that alleged atrocity have circulated many dozens of times on the Web, global news channels (Sky, CNN, BBC), and in the USA, led by the New York Times and Washington Post, and on CBS, ABC, and NBC. In fact they have been pounded into the psyche of the West, salivating for Russian heads from President Putin on down.
If, in fact, Russian troops committed such acts, the punishment within Russia would be most severe: Court martial, prison or perhaps even execution for the crime and the damage to the Russian military operation.
But consider that the source for these images is Ukrainian and a lot about the reporting on the alleged atrocities leaves one scratching the head in wonder. The latest images of the 11 or so dead bodies strewn across the road comes from Maxar, a satellite company (and US intelligence contractor) working with the National Reconnaissance Office, the US Army and NASA. They appear to specialize in Geographic Intelligence. According to a Maxar press release (with images), the bodies were out on the street for three weeks.
But Maxar shows no damaged vehicles on the street as the Ukrainian video do. The temperatures during those three weeks were above freezing and even into the 50's (F). Through rain and shine, the bodies appear to be quite intact, like fairly fresh road kill. No mauled parts from hungry stray dogs, carrion, rats or maggots.
So, the White Western World-minus Japan and South Korea-is united in destroying Russia, seeing President Putin hang or overthrown, and a Western friendly ruling elite installed. The colonization/privatization of Russia will begin shortly after. The Western powers will carve up Russia into provinces. Then it is on to China. The USA and its NATO stooges will attempt to break up another nation with nuclear weapons and then where? Well, after the USA beats the world into submission, then what? At that point in the future the US Empire will mirror the Roman Empire: Insurgencies in the Steppes, in Siberia, on the outskirts of Moscow, in Vladivostok, or just about anywhere in China. Colonies will revolt. The US will become overextend, autocratic, bankrupt and collapse. But perhaps Climate Change or nuclear weapons will get us all first. It doesn't have to be that way.
Adults start wars, youngsters die fighting for adults and children in war zones are killed by bombs or missiles as they sleep during their pleasant far away dreams. It is so sad.
Let's end this article with a quote from William Bacevich, President of the Quincy Institute and Vietnam combat veteran, on Russia's operation in Ukraine and the hubris of America's political-military leaders:
"I don't — not for an instant would I want to minimize the horrors that are unfolding in Ukraine today and the deaths and the injuries inflicted on noncombatants. But let's face it, the numbers are minuscule compared to the number of people that died, were displaced, were injured as a consequence of the U. S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The total number — according to the Brown University Costs of War Project, the total number is somewhere in the vicinity of 900,000 deaths resulted from our invasion of Afghanistan and our invasion of Iraq. Now, I understand that Americans don't want to talk about that, don't want to remember that. The political establishment wants to move on from that. But there is, I think, a moral dimension to the present war, to the Ukraine war, that should cause us to be a little bit humble, reticent about pointing our fingers at other people.”
*banned in Russia
John Stanton is at [email protected]
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